The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)
remarks, made in his preface, on Kehr's text. He, like M. de Courteille,
worked with a single Turkī MS. and neither of the two ever saw a
complete true text. When their source (the Kehr-Ilminsky) was able to be
collated with the Elph. and Ḥai. MSS. much and singular divergence was
discovered.
I venture to suggest what appears to me to explain M. de Courteille's
acceptance of the Rescue passage. Down to its insertion, the
Kehr-Ilminsky text is so continuously and so curiously corrupt that it
seems necessary to regard it as being a re-translation into Turkī from
one of the Persian translations of the _Bābur-nāma_. There being these
textual defects in it, it would create on the mind of a reader initiated
through it, only, in the book, an incorrect impression of Bābur's style
and vocabulary, and such a reader would feel no transition when passing
on from it to the Rescue passage.
In opposition to this explanation, it might be said that a wrong
standard set up by the corrupt text, would or could be changed by the
excellence of later parts of the Kehr-Ilminsky one. In words, this is
sound, no doubt, and such reflex criticism is now easy, but more than
the one defective MS. was wanted even to suggest the need of such reflex
criticism. The _Bābur-nāma_ is lengthy, ponderous to poise and grasp,
and work on it is still tentative, even with the literary gains since
the Seventies.
Few of the grounds which weigh with us for the rejection of the Rescue
passage were known to Dr. Ilminsky or M. de Courteille;—the two good
Codices bring each its own and varied help; Teufel's critique on the
'Fragments,' though made without acquaintance with those adjuncts as
they stand in Kehr's own volume, is of much collateral value; several
useful oriental histories seem not to have been available for M. de
Courteille's use. I may add, for my own part, that I have the great
advantage of my husband's companionship and the guidance of his wide
acquaintance with related oriental books. In truth, looking at the
drawbacks now removed, an earlier acceptance of the passage appears as
natural as does today's rejection.
GROUNDS FOR REJECTING THE RESCUE PASSAGE.
The grounds for rejecting the passage need here little more than
recapitulation from my husband's article in the JASB. 1910, p. 221, and
are as follows;—
i. The passage is in neither of the _Wāqi`āt-i-bāburī_.
ii. The dreams detailed are too à propos and marvellous for
credence.
iii. Khwāja Yaḥyā is not known to have had a son, named
Ya`qūb.
iv. The _Bābur-nāma_ does not contain the names assigned to
the rescuers.
v. The Khāns were not in Andijān and Bābur did not go there.
vi. He did not set out for Khurāsān after spending 4 months
with The Khāns but after Aḥmad's death (end of 909 AH.), while
Maḥmud was still in Eastern Turkistān and after about a year's
stay in Sūkh.
vii. The followers who gathered to him were not 'more than
300' but between 2 and 300.
viii. The '3 days,' and the 'day and two nights,' and the '5
days' journey was one of some 70 miles, and one recorded as
made in far less time.
ix. The passage is singularly inadequate to fill a gap of 14
to 16 months, during which events of the first importance
occurred to Bābur and to the Chaghatāī dynasty.
x. Khwāja _Aḥrārī's_ promises did nothing to fulfil Bābur's
wishes for 908 AH. while those of Ya`qūb for immediate victory
were closely followed by defeat and exile. Bābur knew the
facts; the passage cannot be his. It looks as though the
writer saw Bābur in Karnān across Tīmūrid success in
Hindūstān.
xi. The style and wording of the passage are not in harmony
with those of the true text.
Other reasons for rejection are marked change in choice of the details
chosen for commemoration, _e.g._ when Bābur mentions prayer, he does so
simply; when he tells a dream, it seems a real one. The passage leaves
the impression that the writer did not think in Turkī, composed in it
with difficulty, and looked at life from another view-point than
Bābur's.
On these various grounds, we have come to the conclusion that it is no
part of the _Bābur-nāma_.
[APPENDICES TO THE KĀBUL SECTION.]
E.—NAGARAHĀR, AND NĪNG-NAHĀR
Those who consult books and maps about the riverain tract between the
Safed-koh (Spīn-ghur) and (Anglicé) the Kābul-river find its name in
several forms, the most common being Nangrahār and Nangnahār (with
variant vowels). It would be useful to establish a European book-name
for the district. As European opinion differs about the origin and
meaning of the names now in use, and as a good deal of interesting
circumstance gathers round the small problem of a correct form (there
may be two), I offer about the matter what has come into the restricted
field of my own work, premising that I do this merely as one who drops a
casual pebble on the cairn of observation already long rising for
scholarly examination.
_a. The origin and meaning of the names._
I have met with three opinions about the origin and meaning of the names
found now and earlier. To each one of them obvious objection can be
made. They are:—
1. That all forms now in use are corruptions of the Sanscrit
word Nagarahāra, the name of the Town-of-towns which in the
_dū-āb_ of the Bārān-sū and Sūrkh-rūd left the ruins Masson
describes in Wilson's _Ariana Antigua_. But if this is so, why
is the Town-of-towns multiplied into the nine of Na-nagrahār
(Nangrahār)?[2773]
2. That the names found represent Sanscrit _nawā vihāra_, nine
monasteries, an opinion the Gazetteer of India of 1907 has
adopted from Bellew. But why precisely nine monasteries? Nine
appears an understatement.
3. That Nang (Ning or Nung) -nahār verbally means nine
streams, (Bābur's Tūqūz-rūd,) an interpretation of long
standing (Section _b infra_). But whence _nang_, _ning_,
_nung_, for nine? Such forms are not in Persian, Turkī or
Pushtu dictionaries, and, as Sir G. A. Grierson assures me, do
not come into the Linguistic Survey.
_b. On nang, ning, nung for nine._
Spite of their absence from the natural homes of words, however, the
above sounds have been heard and recorded as symbols of the number nine
by careful men through a long space of time.
The following instances of the use of "Nangnahār" show this, and also
show that behind the variant forms there may be not a single word but
two of distinct origin and sense.
1. In Chinese annals two names appear as those of the district
and town (I am not able to allocate their application with
certainty). The first is Na-kie-lo-ho-lo, the second
Nang-g-lo-ho-lo and these, I understand to represent
Nagara-hāra and Nang-nahār, due allowance being made for
Chinese idiosyncrasy.[2774]
2. Some 900 years later (1527-30 AD.) Bābur also gives two
names, Nagarahār (as the book-name of his _tūmān_) and
Nīng-nahār.[2775] He says the first is found in several
histories (B.N. f. 131_b_); the second will have been what he
heard and also presumably what appeared in revenue accounts;
of it he says, "it is nine torrents" (_tūqūz-rūd_).
3. Some 300 years after Bābur, Elphinstone gives two names
for the district, neither of them being Bābur's book-name,
"Nangrahaur[2776] or Nungnahaur, from the nine streams which
issue from the Safed-koh, _nung_ in Pushtoo signifying _nine_,
and _nahaura_, a stream" (_Caubul_, i, 160).
4. In 1881 Colonel H. S. Tanner had heard, in Nūr-valley on
the north side of the Kābul-water, that the name of the
opposite district was Nīng-nahār and its meaning Nine-streams.
He did not get a list of the nine and all he heard named do
not flow from Safed-koh.
5. In 1884 Colonel H. G. McGregor gives two names with their
explanation, "Ningrahar and Nungnihar; the former is a
corruption of the latter word[2777] which in the Afghān
language signifies nine rivers or rivulets." He names nine,
but of them six only issue from Safed-koh.
6. I have come across the following instances in which the
number nine is represented by other words than _na_ (_ni_ or
_nu_); _viz._ the _nenhan_ of the Chitrālī Kāfir and the
_noun_ of the Panjābi, recorded by Leech,—the _nyon_ of the
Khowārī and the _huncha_ of the Boorishki, recorded by Colonel
Biddulph.
The above instances allow opinion that in the region concerned and
through a long period of time, nine has been expressed by _nang_ (_ning_
or _nung_) and other nasal or high palatal sounds, side by side with
_na_ (_ni_ or _nu_). The whole matter may be one of nasal
utterance,[2778] but since a large number of tribesmen express nine by a
word containing a nasal sound, should that word not find place in lists
of recognized symbols of sounds?
_c. Are there two names of distinct origin?_
1. Certainly it makes a well-connected story of decay in the Sanscrit
word Nagarahāra to suppose that tribesmen, prone by their organism to
nasal utterance, pronounced that word Nangrahār, and by force of their
numbers made this corruption current,—that this was recognized as the
name of the town while the Town-of-towns was great or in men's memory,
and that when through the decay of the town its name became a
meaningless husk, the wrong meaning of the Nine-streams should enter
into possession.
But as another and better one can be put together, this fair-seeming
story may be baseless. Its substitute has the advantage of explaining
the double sequence of names shown in Section _b_.
The second story makes all the variant names represent one or other of
two distinct originals. It leaves Nagrahār to represent Nagarahāra, the
dead town; it makes the nine torrents of Safed-koh the primeval sponsors
of Nīng-nahār, the name of the riverain tract. Both names, it makes
contemporary in the relatively brief interlude of the life of the town.
For the fertilizing streams will have been the dominant factors of
settlement and of revenue from the earliest times of population and
government. They arrest the eye where they and their ribbons of
cultivation space the riverain waste; they are obvious units for
grouping into a sub-government. Their name has a counterpart in adjacent
Panj-āb; the two may have been given by one dominant power, how long
ago, in what tongue matters not. The riverain tract, by virtue of its
place on a highway of transit, must have been inhabited long before the
town Nagarahāra was built, and must have been known by a name. What
better one than Nine-streams can be thought of?
2. Bellew is quoted by the Gazetteer of India (ed. 1907) as saying, in
his argument in favour of _nawā vihāra_, that no nine streams are found
to stand sponsor, but modern maps shew nine outflows from Safed-koh to
the Kābul-river between the Sūrkh-rūd and Daka, while if affluents to
the former stream be reckoned, more than nine issue from the
range.[2779]
Against Bellew's view that there are not nine streams, is the long
persistence of the number nine in the popular name (Sect. _b_).
It is also against his view that he supposes there were nine
monasteries, because each of the nine must have had its fertilizing
water.
Bābur says there were nine; there must have been nine of significance;
he knew his _tūmān_ not only by frequent transit but by his revenue
accounts. A supporting point in those accounts is likely to have been
that the individual names of the villages on the nine streams would
appear, with each its payment of revenue.
3. In this also is some weight of circumstance against taking Nagarahāra
to be the parent of Nīng-nahār:—An earlier name of the town is said to