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IX. Further Notes on the Babar-Nama MSS. The Elphinstone Codex

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Extract

The missing Elphinstone Codex of the Bābar-nāma having been found in the Advocates' Library by the Keeper, Mr. William K. Dickson, a first-hand description of it can be offered in supplement of the earlier notices published in the R.A.S. Journal in July 1900 and 1902, and in October 1905.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1907

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References

page 135 note 1 The fact of absent matter in the Persian translations is the more surprising that the Haydarābād Codex exists, competently estimated to be of later date than those translations and demanding a complete archetype. The explanation may lie in the vicissitudes of the royal family fortune and its resultant scattering of Bābar's sons and daughters, which would well allow his own original MS. to have been taken to Kābul and to have remained long, there, or would have taken far from Āgra or Dihlī a direct transcript belonging to a son or daughter.

page 138 note 1 History of India,” Elliot & Dowson, vol. vi. p. 340.Google Scholar

page 139 note 1 f. 216; Memoirs, 302Google Scholar; Ilminsky, 340.Google Scholar

page 140 note 1 The following is the only other known Turkī version of this note and is quoted from the Kāsān imprint:—

The asterisks denote difficulties with Dr. Kehr's transcript. I doubt if it is safe to base any opinion about the note on this form of it, and unfortunately Dr. Kehr's manuscript has not yet been lent to me to examine.

page 141 note 1 f. 238; Mems. 328 absent.

page 141 note 2 f. 208b; Mems. 293 absent.

page 141 note 3 f. 236b, 1. 6 from foot, to f. 239, l. 3, and f. 239, l. 6, to f. 239b, l. 1; Mems. 329 n.

page 141 note 4 In an earlier mention of this note, I made the mistaken conjecture that it was Shāh-jahān's. I had chanced upon it, without context and in Persian, in a volume of Mr. Erskine's literary remains. Imagination failed to warn me that it might be a translation; it was open to suppose it ‘marginal’ in the Elphinstone MS., and propriety forbade the thought that a son would strengthen the case for the merit of a fruit by recalling the depravation of his father's taste through inebriety. Therefore I absolved Humāyūn from this reproach, passed over Jahāngīr because he made his additions to the Bābar-nāma in Turkī, and surmised Shāh-jahān. I am proved wrong (though the last-named emperor owned the codex), because the note is incorporated, is in Turkī, and the age of the transcript is known.

page 142 note 1 f. 207; Mems. 291 absent.