The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)
after writing the _`Arūẓ_, I composed a couplet of 16 feet."—From this
the date of the Treatise is seen to be 931 AH., some two years later
than that of the _Mubīn_. The above metrical exercise was done about the
same time as another concerning which a Treatise was written, viz. that
mentioned on f. 330_b_, when a couplet was transposed into 504 measures
(Section _f_, p. lxv).—The Facsimile, it will be noticed, shows
something unusual in the last line of the prose passage on Plate XVIII
B, where the scattering of the words suggests that the scribe was trying
to copy page _per_ page.
The colophon (which begins on l. 5 of the photograph) is curiously
worded, as though the frequent fate of last pages had befallen its
archetype, that of being mutilated and difficult for a scribe to make
good; it suggests too that the archetype was verse.[2832] Its first
clause, even if read as _Hind-stān jānibī `azīmat qīlghānī_ (i.e. not
_qīlghālī_, as it can be read), has an indirectness unlike Bābur's
corresponding "after coming to Hindūstān" (f. 357_b_), and is not
definite; (2) _bū aīrdī_ (these were) is not the complement suiting _aūl
dūrūr_ (those are); (3) Bābur does not use the form _dūrūr_ in prose;
(4) the undue space after _dūrūr_ suggests connection with verse; (5)
there is no final verb such as prose needs. The meaning, however, may be
as follows:—The poems made after resolving on (the)
Hindūstān parts (_jānibī_?) were these I have written down (_taḥrīr
qīldīm_), and past events are those I have narrated (_taqrīr_) in the
way that (_nī-chūk kīm_) (has been) written in these folios (_aūrāq_)
and recorded in those sections (_ajzā'_).—From this it would appear that
sections of the _Bābur-nāma_ (f. 376_b_, p. 678) accompanied the
Hindūstān poems to the recipient of the message conveyed by the
colophon.
Close under the colophon stands _Ḥarara-hu Bābur_ and the date Monday,
Rabī` II. 15th 935 (Monday, December 27th 1528 AD.), the whole
presumably brought over from the archetype. To the question whether a
signature in the above form would be copied by a scribe, the Elphinstone
Codex gives an affirmative answer by providing several examples of
notes, made by Humāyūn in its archetype, so-signed and brought over
either into its margin or interpolated in its text. Some others of
Humāyūn's notes are not so-signed, the scribe merely saying they are
Humāyūn Pādshāh's.—It makes against taking the above entry of Bābur's
name to be an autograph signature, (1) that it is enclosed in an
ornamented border, as indeed is the case wherever it occurs throughout
the manuscript; (2) that it is followed by the scribe's _mīm_. [See end
of following section.]
_c. The marginal entries shown in the photograph._
The marginal note written length-wise by the side of the text is signed
by Shāh-i-jahān and attests that the _rubā`ī_ and the signature to which
it makes reference are in Bābur's autograph hand-writing. His note
translates as follows:—This quatrain and blessed name are in the actual
hand-writing of that Majesty (_ān ḥaẓrat_) _Firdaus-makānī_ Bābur
Pādshāh _Ghāzī_—May God make his proof clear!—Signed (_Ḥararā-hu_),
Shāh-i-jahān son of Jahāngīr Pādshāh son of Akbar Pādshāh son of Humāyūn
Pādshāh son of Bābur Pādshāh.[2833]
The second marginal entry is the curiously placed _rubā`ī_, which is now
the only one on the page, and now has no signature attaching to it. It
has the character of a personal message to the recipient of one of more
books having identical contents. That these two entries are there while
the text seems so clearly to be written by a scribe, is open to the
explanation that when (as said about the colophon, p. lx) the rectangle
of text was made good from a mutilated archetype, the original margin
was placed round the _rifacimento_? This superposition would explain the
entries and seal-like circles, discernible against a strong light, on
the reverse of the margin only, through the _rifacimento_ page. The
upper edge of the rectangle shows sign that the margin has been adjusted
to it [so far as one can judge from a photograph]. Nothing on the face
of the margin hints that the text itself is autograph; the words of the
colophon, _taḥrīr qīldīm_ (_i.e._ I have written down) cannot hold good
against the cumulative testimony that a scribe copied the whole
manuscript.—The position of the last syllable [_nī_] of the _rubā`ī_
shows that the signature below the colophon was on the margin before the
diagonal couplet of the _rubā`ī_ was written,—therefore when the margin
was fitted, as it looks to have been fitted, to the _rifacimento_. If
this be the order of the two entries [_i.e._ the small-hand signature
and the diagonal couplet], Shāh-i-jahān's "blessed name" may represent
the small-hand signature which certainly shows minute differences from
the writing of the text of the MS. in the name Bābur (_q.v. passim_ in
the Rāmpūr MS.).
_d. The Bāburī-khat̤t̤_ (_Bābūr's script_).
So early as 910 AH. the year of his conquest of Kābul, Bābur devised
what was probably a variety of _nakhsh_, and called it the
_Bāburī-khat̤t̤_ (f. 144_b_), a name used later by Ḥaidar Mīrzā,
Niẕāmu'd-dīn Aḥmad and `Abdu'l-qādir _Badāyūnī_. He writes of it again
(f. 179) _s.a._ 911 AH. when describing an interview had in 912 AH. with
one of the Harāt Qāẓīs, at which the script was discussed, its
specialities (_mufradāt_) exhibited to, and read by the Qāẓī who there
and then wrote in it.[2834] In what remains to us of the _Bābur-nāma_
it is not mentioned again till 935 AH. (fol. 357_b_) but at some
intermediate date Bābur made in it a copy of the Qorān which he sent to
Makka.[2835] In 935 AH. (f. 357_b_) it is mentioned in significant
association with the despatch to each of four persons of a copy of the
Translation (of the _Wālidiyyah-risāla_) and the Hindūstān poems, the
significance of the association being that the simultaneous despatch
with these copies of specimens of the _Bāburī-khat̤t̤_ points to its use
in the manuscripts, and at least in Hind-āl's case, to help given for
reading novel forms in their text. The above are the only instances now
found in the _Bābur-nāma_ of mention of the script.
The little we have met with—we have made no search—about the character
of the script comes from the _Abūshqa_, _s.n._ _sīghnāq_, in the
following entry:—
_Sīghnāq ber nū`ah khat̤t̤ der Chaghatāīda khat̤t̤ Bāburī u ghairī kibī
ki Bābur Mīrzā ash`ār'nda kīlūr bait_
_Khūblār khat̤t̤ī naṣīb'ng būlmāsā Bābur nī tāng?_
_Bāburī khat̤t̤ī aīmās dūr khat̤t̤ sīghnāqī mū dūr?_[2836]
The old Osmanli-Turkish prose part of this appears to mean:—"_Sīghnāq_
is a sort of hand-writing, in Chaghatāī the _Bāburī-khat̤t̤_ and others
resembling it, as appears in Bābur Mīrzā's poems. Couplet":—
Without knowing the context of the couplet I make no attempt
to translate it because its words _khat̤t̤_ or _khaṭ_ and _sīghnāq_
lend themselves to the kind of pun (_īhām_) "which consists
in the employment of a word or phrase having more than one appropriate
meaning, whereby the reader is often left in doubt as to the real
significance of the passage."[2837] The rest of the _rubā`ī_ may be
given [together with the six other quotations of Bābur's verse now known
only through the _Abūshqa_], in early _Taẕkirātu 'sh-shu`āra_ of date
earlier than 967 AH.
The root of the word _sīghnāq_ will be _sīq_, pressed together, crowded,
included, _etc._; taking with this notion of compression, the
explanations _feine Schrift_ of Shaikh Effendi (Kunos) and Vambéry's
_pétite écriture_, the Sīghnāqī and Bāburī Scripts are allowed to have
been what that of the Rāmpūr MS. is, a small, compact, elegant
hand-writing.—A town in the Caucasus named Sīghnākh, "_située à peu près
à 800 mètres d'altitude, commença par être une forteresse et un lieu de
refuge, car telle est la signification de son nom tartare_."[2838]
_Sīghnāqī_ is given by de Courteille (Dict. p. 368) as meaning a place
of refuge or shelter.
The _Bāburī-khat̤t̤_ will be only one of the several hands Bābur is
reputed to have practised; its description matches it with other
niceties he took pleasure in, fine distinctions of eye and ear in
measure and music.
_e. Is the Rāmpūr MS. an example of the Bāburī-khat̤t̤?_
Though only those well-acquainted with Oriental manuscripts dating
before 910 AH. (1504 AD.) can judge whether novelties appear in the
script of the Rāmpūr MS. and this particularly in its head-lines, there
are certain grounds for thinking that though the manuscript be not
Bābur's autograph, it may be in his script and the work of a specially
trained scribe.
I set these grounds down because although the signs of a scribe's work
on the manuscript seem clear, it is "locally" held to be Bābur's
autograph. Has a tradition of its being in the _Bāburī-khat̤t̤_ glided
into its being in the _khat̤t̤-i-Bābur_? Several circumstances suggest
that it may be written in the _Bāburī-khat̤t̤:_—(1) the script is
specially associated with the four transcripts of the Hindūstān poems
(f. 357_b_), for though many letters must have gone to his sons, some
indeed are mentioned in the _Bābur-nāma_, it is only with the poems that
specimens of it are recorded as sent; (2) another matter shows his
personal interest in the arrangement of manuscripts, namely, that as he
himself about a month after the four books had gone off, made a new
ruler, particularly on account of the head-lines of the Translation, it
may be inferred that he had made or had adopted the one he superseded,
and that his plan of arranging the poems was the model for copyists; the
Rāmpūr MS. bearing, in the Translation section, corrections which may be
his own, bears also a date earlier than that at which the four gifts
started; it has its headlines ill-arranged and has throughout 13 lines
to the page; his new ruler had 11; (3) perhaps the words _taḥrīr qīldīm_
used in the colophon of the Rāmpūr MS. should be read with their full
connotation of careful and elegant writing, or, put modestly, as saying,
"I wrote down in my best manner," which for poems is likely to be in the
_Bāburī-khat̤t̤_.[2839]
Perhaps an example of Bābur's script exists in the colophon, if not in
the whole of the _Mubīn_ manuscript once owned by Berézine, by him used
for his _Chréstomathie Turque_, and described by him as "unique". If
this be the actual manuscript Bābur sent into Mā warā'u'n-nahr
(presumably to Khwāja Aḥrārī's family), its colophon which is a personal
message addressed to the recipients, is likely to be autograph.
_f. Metrical amusements._
(1) Of two instances of metrical amusements belonging to the end of 933
AH. and seeming to have been the distractions of illness, one is a
simple transposition "in the fashion of the circles" (_dawā'ir_) into
three measures (Rāmpūr MS. Facsimile, Plate XVIII and p. 22); the other
is difficult because of the high number of 504 into which Bābur says (f.
330_b_) he cut up the following couplet:—
_Gūz u qāsh u soz u tīlīnī mū dī?
Qad u khadd u saj u bīlīnī mū dī?_
All manuscripts agree in having 504, and Bābur wrote a tract (_risāla_)
upon the transpositions.[2840] None of the modern treatises on Oriental
Prosody allow a number so high to be practicable, but Maulānā Saifī of
Bukhārā, of Bābur's own time (f. 180_b_) makes 504 seem even moderate,
since after giving much detail about _rubā`ī_ measures, he observes,
"Some say there are 10,000" (_Arūẓ-i-Saifī_, Ranking's trs. p. 122).
Presumably similar possibilities were open for the couplet in question.
It looks like one made for the game, asks two foolish questions and
gives no reply, lends itself to poetic license, and, if permutation of
words have part in such a game, allows much without change of sense. Was