Note 1565 — SECTION III. HINDŪSTĀN
Annette Susannah Beveridge translation
Elph. MS. f. 205b; W.-i-B. I.O. 215 f. 199b omits the year’s events on the ground that Shaikh Zain has translated them; I.O. 217 f. 174; Mems. p. 290; Kehr’s Codex p. 1084.
A considerable amount of reliable textual material for revising the Hindūstān section of the English translation of the Bābur-nāma is wanting through loss of pages from the Elphinstone Codex; in one instance no less than an equivalent of 36 folios of the Ḥaidarābād Codex are missing (f. 356 et seq.), but to set against this loss there is the valuable per contra that Kehr’s manuscript throughout the section becomes of substantial value, losing its Persified character and approximating closely to the true text of the Elphinstone and Ḥaidarābād Codices. Collateral help in revision is given by the works specified (in loco p. 428) as serving to fill the gap existing in Bābur’s narrative previous to 932 AH. and this notably by those described by Elliot and Dowson. Of these last, special help in supplementary details is given for 932 AH. and part of 933 AH. by Shaikh Zain [Khawāfi]’s T̤abaqāt-i-bāburī, which is a highly rhetorical paraphrase of Bābur’s narrative, requiring familiarity with ornate Persian to understand. For all my references to it, I am indebted to my husband. It may be mentioned as an interesting circumstance that the B.M. possesses in Or. 1999 a copy of this work which was transcribed in 998 AH. by one of Khwānd-amīr’s grandsons and, judging from its date, presumably for Abū’l-faẓl’s use in the Akbar-nāma.
Like part of the Kābul section, the Hindūstān one is in diary-form, but it is still more heavily surcharged with matter entered at a date later than the diary. It departs from the style of the preceding diary by an occasional lapse into courtly phrase and by exchange of some Turkī words for Arabic and Persian ones, doubtless found current in Hind, e.g. fauj, dīra, manzil, khail-khāna.