Note 2008 — SECTION III. HINDŪSTĀN (continued 2)

The passage cut off by my asterisks has this outside interest that it forms the introduction to the so-called “Fragments”, that is, to certain Turkī matter not included in the standard Bābur-nāma, but preserved with the Kehr—Ilminsky—de Courteille text. As is well-known in Bāburiana, opinion has varied as to the genesis of this matter; there is now no doubt that it is a translation into Turkī from the (Persian) Akbar-nāma, prefaced by the above-asterisked passage of the Bābur-nāma and continuous (with slight omissions) from Bib. Ind. ed. i, 106 to 120 (trs. H. Beveridge i, 260 to 282). It covers the time from before the battle of Kanwā to the end of Abū’l-faẓl’s description of Bābur’s death, attainments and Court; it has been made to seem Bābur’s own, down to his death-bed, by changing the third person of A.F.’s narrative into the autobiographical first person. (Cf. Ilminsky, p. 403 l. 4 and p. 494; Mémoires ii, 272 and 443 to 464; JRAS. 1908, p. 76.)

A minute point in the history of the B.N. manuscripts may be placed on record here; viz. that the variants from the true Bābur-nāma text which occur in the Kehr-Ilminsky one, occur also in the corrupt Turkī text of I.O. No. 214 (JRAS 1900, p. 455).