Note 2430 — SECTION III. HINDŪSTĀN (continued 4)

To the above news the Akbar-nāma adds the important item reported by Humāyūn, that there was talk of peace. Bābur replied that, if the time for negotiation were not past, Humāyūn was to make peace until such time as the affairs of Hindūstān were cleared off. This is followed in the A. N. by a seeming quotation from Bābur’s letter, saying in effect that he was about to leave Hindūstān, and that his followers in Kābul and Tramontana must prepare for the expedition against Samarkand which would be made on his own arrival. None of the above matter is now with the Bābur-nāma; either it was there once, was used by Abū’l-faz̤l and lost before the Persian trss. were made; or Abū’l-faẓl used Bābur’s original, or copied, letter itself. That desire for peace prevailed is shewn by several matters:—T̤ahmāsp, the victor, asked and obtained the hand of an Aūzbeg in marriage; Aūzbeg envoys came to Āgra, and with them Turk Khwājas having a mission likely to have been towards peace (f. 357b); Bābur’s wish for peace is shewn above and on f. 359 in a summarized letter to Humāyūn. (Cf. Abū’l-ghāzī’s Shajarat-i-Turk [Histoire des Mongols, Désmaisons’ trs. p. 216]; Akbar-nāma, H. B.’s trs. i, 270.)

A here-useful slip of reference is made by the translator of the Akbar-nāma (l.c. n. 3) to the Fragment (Mémoires ii, 456) instead of to the Bābur-nāma translation (Mémoires ii, 381). The utility of the slip lies in its accompanying comment that de C.’s translation is in closer agreement with the Akbar-nāma than with Bābur’s words. Thus the Akbar-nāma passage is brought into comparison with what it is now safe to regard as its off-shoot, through Turkī and French, in the Fragment. When the above comment on their resemblance was made, we were less assured than now as to the genesis of the Fragment (Index s.n. Fragment).