Note 2654 — SECTION III. HINDŪSTĀN (continued 4)

The passage contained in this section seems to be a survival of the lost record of 934 AH. (f. 339). I have found it only in the Memoirs p. 420, and in Mr. Erskine’s own Codex of the Wāqi‘āt-i-bāburī (now B.M. Add. 26,200), f. 371 where however several circumstances isolate it from the context. It may be a Persian translation of an authentic Turkī fragment, found, perhaps with other such fragments, in the Royal Library. Its wording disassociates it from the ‘Abdu’r-raḥīm text. The Codex (No. 26,200) breaks off at the foot of a page (supra, Fatḥpūr) with a completed sentence. The supposedly-misplaced passage is entered on the next folio as a sort of ending of the Bābur-nāma writings; in a rough script, inferior to that of the Codex, and is followed by Tam, tam (Finis), and an incomplete date 98-, in words. Beneath this a line is drawn, on which is subtended the triangle frequent with scribes; within this is what seems to be a completion of the date to 980 AH. and a pious wish, scrawled in an even rougher hand than the rest.—Not only in diction and in script but in contents also the passage is a misfit where it now stands; it can hardly describe a village on the Sarū; Bābur in 935 AH. did not march for Ghāzīpūr but may have done so in 934 AH. (p. 656, n. 3); Ismā‘īl Jalwānī had had leave given already in 935 AH. (f. 377) under other conditions, ones bespeaking more trust and tried allegiance.—Possibly the place described as having fine buildings, gardens etc. is Aūd (Ajodhya) where Bābur spent some days in 934 AH. (cf. f. 363b, p. 655 n. 3).