Note 1582 — SECTION III. HINDŪSTĀN

I am unable to attach sense to Bābur’s second line; what is wanted is an illustration of two incompatible things. Bābur’s reflections [infra] condemned his verse. Shaikh Zain describes the whole episode of the verse-making on the raft, and goes on with, “He (Bābur) excised this choice couplet from the pages of his Acts (Wāqi‘āt) with the knife of censure, and scratched it out from the tablets of his noble heart with the finger-nails of repentance. I shall now give an account of this spiritual matter” (i.e. the repentance), “by presenting the recantations of his Solomon-like Majesty in his very own words, which are weightier than any from the lips of Aesop.” Shaikh Zain next quotes the Turkī passage here translated in b. Mention of the Mubīn.