The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)Babur, Emperor of Hindustan
History
The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)
Babur, Emperor of Hindustan
Babur, Emperor of Hindustan, 1483-1530; Mogul Empire
The later _Waqi'at-i-baburi_ translated by `Abdu'r-rahim Mirza
is one of the most important items in Baburiana, both by its
special characteristics as the work of a Turkman and not of a
Persian, and by the great service it has done. Its origin is
well-known; it was made at Akbar's order to help Abu'l-faẓl in
the Akbar-nāma account of Babur and also to facilitate perusal
of the _Babur-nama_ in Hindustan. It was presented to Akbar, by
its translator who had come up from Gujrat, in the last week of
November, 1589, on an occasion and at a place of admirable
fitness. For Akbar had gone to Kabul to visit Babur's tomb, and
was halting on his return journey at Barik-ab where Babur had
halted on his march down to Hindustan in the year of victory
1525, at no great distance from "Babur Padshah's Stone-heap".
Abu'l-faẓl's account of the presentation will rest on
`Abdu'r-rahim's information (A.N. trs. cap. ci). The diction of
this translation is noticeable; it gave much trouble to Erskine
who thus writes of it (_Memoirs_ Preface, lx), "Though simple
and precise, a close adherence to the idioms and forms of
expression of the Turki original joined to a want of
distinctness in the use of the relatives, often renders the
meaning extremely obscure, and makes it difficult to discover
the connexion of the different members of the sentence.[17] The
style is frequently not Persian.... Many of the Turki words are
untranslated."
Difficult as these characteristics made Erskine's
interpretation, it appears to me likely that they indirectly
were useful to him by restraining his diction to some extent in
their Turki fettering.—This Turki fettering has another aspect,
apart from Erskine's difficulties, _viz_. it would greatly
facilitate re-translation into Turki, such as has been
effected, I think, in the Farghana section of the Bukhara
compilation.[18]
VIII
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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