The Babur
Nama reflects the character and interests of the author, Zehir-ed-Din Muhammad Babur. Babur, the founder of the Mughal dynasty in India, is regarded as one of
the most romantic and interesting personalities of Asian history. He was a man
of indomitable will, a great soldier, and an inspiring leader. But unlike most
men of action he was also a man of letters with fine literary taste and
fastidious critical perception. In Persian, he was an accomplished poet, and in
his mother-tongue, the Turki, he was master of a simple forceful style.
He
was conscious of his own importance and kept a record of his daily activities
in the form of brief notes. He made use of these notes when soon after the
capture of Chanderi on 29 January, 1528; he decided to write his Memoirs. He
chose one of the many gardens around Agra that he had been creating ever since
he had proclaimed himself the padshah of Hindustan and dictated his memoirs,
almost continuously till his death on 26 December, 1530. A painting shows him
dictating his memoirs to a scribe. In less than three years, he succeeded in
giving final form to his autobiography.
At
times Babur was so engrossed in this work that he forgot his surroundings
completely. According to his daughter, Gulbadan, once when he was busy on his
autobiography a storm blew up and the tent in which he was dictating came down
on his head with the result that "sections and book were drenched under
water and gathered together with much difficulty." But he attached such a
great importance to rescuing the papers that he with the help of his daughter
"laid them in the folds of a woolen throne carpet, put this on the throne,
and on it piled blankets and then kindled a fire inspite of the wet" and
occupied himself "till shot of day drying folios and sections."
Babur's
autobiography to which he had perhaps himself given the title of Babur Wind was
written "in the purest dialect of the Turki language. It is reckoned among
the most enthralling and romantic works in the literature of all times. It
makes a delightful reading and "deservedly holds a high place in the
history of human literature."
Babur
Nama was preserved as a valuable treasure in the Royal Library by all the five
successors of Babur, who, together with him, are known as the Great Mughals of
Indian history. In fact each one of them showed his adoration for the Nama in
one form or the other. Humayun on ascending the throne ordered All'u-l-Katib to
copy his father's Turki book and see to it that the work was finished in less
than a month and a half. Perhaps not fully satisfied with this hurriedly done
copy, during the next ten years that he held the reins of the Empire, he had
another copy of the Babur Nama prepared.
Humayun carried Babur's original
manuscript with him to exile from 1551 to 1555 and used his leisure moments to
annotate it. Akbar showed his veneration for the book by ordering, Khan-i-Khana
Abdur Rahim to translate it into Persian. Abdur Rahim is recorded to have
finished the assignment in 1589 when he presented to Akbar, its Persian version
under the title Waquit-i-Baburi. Jahangir retouched a copy of the Babur Nama
which he tried to annotate and complete by supplying the missing links. ShahJahan adored the book. Among the select books that he would daily hear being
recited to him before going to sleep was the Babur Nama. Aurangzeb got
inscribed a number of Babur Nam& from the original preserved in the Royal
Library and sent them to many places of importance in his rapidly expanding
empire.
Humayun carried Babur's original
manuscript with him to exile from 1551 to 1555 and used his leisure moments to
annotate it. Akbar showed his veneration for the book by ordering, Khan-i-Khana
Abdur Rahim to translate it into Persian. Abdur Rahim is recorded to have
finished the assignment in 1589 when he presented to Akbar, its Persian version
under the title Waquit-i-Baburi. Jahangir retouched a copy of the Babur Nama
which he tried to annotate and complete by supplying the missing links. ShahJahan adored the book. Among the select books that he would daily hear being
recited to him before going to sleep was the Babur Nama. Aurangzeb got
inscribed a number of Babur Nam& from the original preserved in the Royal
Library and sent them to many places of importance in his rapidly expanding
empire.
It
appears that inspite of a brilliant translation in Persian available since 1589
it was the Turki Babur Nama that held the place of honour in the Royal Library
of the Mughal Emperors. It seems something of an irony, therefore, that its
original should have been lost and unlike the Persian Waquit-i-Baburi should
have been unavailable even in copy to the European scholars when they started
taking interest in Babur's autobiography. It is surmised that the original of
the Babur Nãmä was either destroyed in the sack of Delhi by Nadir Shah in 1739
or burnt during the Mutiny in that city in 1857. The Persian Waquit-i-Baburi,
however, escaped either of those two fates and attracted the attention of the
European indologists. The first European Indologists to be interested in Babur,
as in other personalities of Mughal period of Indian history, were almost all
Scots, e.g. Dr Leyden, William Erskine, John Malcolm and Mountstuart
Elphinstone.
In
the early years of the nineteenth century when the British interest in the
Mughals and their history was acquiring depth, a translation of the Waquit-i-Baburi,
was started by Dr Leyden. He seems to have liked the work and did lot of
jottings from Waquit-i-Baburi when Elphinstone arrived at Calcutta and sent him
the Babur Nama which he had purchased at Peshawar in 1810. The Babur Nãmã in
Turkish slackened Leyden's enthusiasm for the work that he had been doing and
he left the translation of Waquit-i-Baburi only partially done before his death
in 1811. What Leyden had left half done was completed by Erskine. Perhaps
without knowing that Leyden was engaged in the translation of Waquit-i-Baburi,
Erskine had also been busy translating it but just as he was thinking of giving
final touches to his translation, he received all the jottings and papers of
Leyden passed on to him after the latter's death in Java in 1811. The arrival
of Leyden papers forced Erskine to revise the work that he had al-ready done
and it kept him busy for another five years. It was only in 1816 now that he
passed on the twice done translation to England to be published in the joint
name of Leyden and him-self under the title Memoirs of Babur. A little time
before he had done that like Leyden five years earlier, he too received the Babur
Nama from Elphinstone but, possibly because he was not well-versed in Turki or
felt too tired to begin the translation, already done twice by him, for the
third time, made no use of the Turki manuscript. The Memoirs of Babur in Leyden
and Erskine's name finally published in 1826 were consequently rightly looked
upon by the indologists all over Europe as a translation of a translation of
Babur's memoirs. 
The
Memoirs of Babur was looked upon as a valuable contribution to understanding
Babur. Its extracts were translated and published in German by A. Kaiser in
1828 as Denkwurd-ingkeiton des Zahir-uddin Muhammad Babur. In 1844, R. M.
Galdeff not only based his The Life of Babur on Leyden and Erskine's Memoirs of
Babur but further showed the importance in which he held the latter work by
publishing An Abridgement of the Memoirs, a work which was a summary of Leyden
and Erskine's work published eighteen years earlier.
It
was inevitable that the more the Leyden and Erskine's work was read, the
greater should be the demand for the original Turki Babur Nama and some
translation in a European language done directly from it. This demand was
mistakenly believed to have been satisfied by De Courteille who published in
1871 Les Memoirs de Biz-bur in French. De Courteille had done his translation
from Illminski's edited version of one Kehr's Turki transcript of the Babur Nama
lying at Petersberg but without knowing that Kehr's copy was not made from any
Babur Nama but an original work in Turki by one Timur-pulad, presented to one
of the members of the Russian Government in pursuance of the policy of Peter
the Great to improve Russian relations with the numerous Khanates in Central
Asia. When the mission returned to Petersberg, the member of the mission who
had received Timur-pulad's manuscript passed it on to Petersberg Library in the
Foreign Office. There it was noticed by one Kehr, a teacher in the School of
Oriental Studies at Petersberg. Kehr transcribed it as also translated it into
Latin. Because he had put the two side by side, Kehr's transcript begun to attract
more scholars than Timur-pulad's. In 1857 Illminski made Kehr's transcript as
the basis for preparing an indexed volume of what he believed was the Turkish Babur
Nama. What had been brought out by De Courteille was a French translation of
Illminski work minus the latter's edited remarks. And, since, as subsequently
discovered, Timur-pulad's work was not Babur Nama in Turki but at the best a
retranslation in Turki of the Persian translation of that done by Erskine four
decades earlier.
It
was left to Mrs. A. S. Beveridge to do the translation into English from a
genuine copy Turki Babur Nama. What made it possible for her to do that was
firstly the discovery of a genuine Turki copy of the Babur Nama in Hyderabad
and secondly her success in not only procuring it for herself for some time but
also have a number of fascimiles made of it by the E. J. Wilkinson Gibb Trust.
These fascimiles enabled Mrs. Beveridge to prove to scholars that the Hyderabad
Babur Nama surpassed both in volume and quality, all other Babur Nama. She
wrote a series of articles in the Journal of Royal Asiatic Society between 1900
and 1908 and finally came out with its English translation in 1926. It is this
translation which I have utilized in explaining the contents of paintings.
"Babur's
Memoirs form one of the best and most faithful pieces of autobiography
extant" wrote Dowson. "They are entirely superior to the hypocritical
revelations of Timur, and the pompous declarations of Jahangir not inferior in
any respect to the Expeditions of Xenophon, and rank but little below the
commentaries of Caesar." He further wrote "These Memoirs are the best
Memorial of the life and reign of the frank and jovial conqueror; they are ever
fresh and will long continue to be read with interest and pleasure."
As a picture of the life of an Eastern
sovereign in court and camp, the book stands unrivalled among Oriental
autobiographies. "It is almost the only specimen of real history in
Asia... In Babur Nama the figures, dresses, habits, and tastes, of each
individual introduced are described with such minuteness and reality that we
seem to live among them, and to know their persons as well as we do their
characters. His descriptions of the countries visited, their scenery, climate,
productions, and works of art are more full and accurate than will, perhaps, be
found in equal space in any modern traveller."
"His
Memoirs are no rough soldier's diary, full of marches and counter-marches;...
they contain the personal impressions and acute reflections of a cultivated man
of the world, well read in Eastern literature, a close and curious observer,
quick in perception, a discerning judge of persons, and a devoted lover of
nature.. .The utter frankness of self-revelation, the unconscious portraiture
of all his virtues and follies; his obvious truthfulness and fine sense of
humour give the Memoirs an authority which is equal to their charm."
It is
in truthful narration of events of his personal life that the value of the
Babur Nama lies. Like most adolescents Babur also passed through a homosexual
phase. He thus describes his love for a boy. "At this time there happened
to be a lad belonging to the camp-bazaar, named Baburi. There was an odd sort
of coincidence in our names. Sometimes it happened that Baburi came to visit
me; when, from shame and modesty, I found myself unable to look him direct in
the face. How then is it to be supposed that I could amuse him with
conversation or a disclosure of my passion? From intoxication and confusion of
mind I was unable to thank him for his visit; it is not therefore to be
imagined that I had power to reproach him with his departure. I had not even
self-command enough to receive him with the common forms of politeness. One day
while this affection and attachment lasted, I was by chance passing through a
narrow lane with only a few attendants, when, of a sudden, I met Baburi face to
face. Such was the impression produced on me by this encounter that I almost
fell to pieces. I had not the power to meet his eyes, or to articulate a single
word. With great confusion and shame I passed on and left him, remembering the
verses of Muhammad Salih: "I am abashed whenever T see my love;
My
companions look to me, and I look another way."
"The
verses were wonderfully suited to my situation. From the violence of my passion
and the effervescence of youth and madness, I used to stroll bare-headed and
barefoot through lane and street, garden and orchard, neglecting the attentions
due to friend and stranger; and the respect due to myself and others."
"Babur's
Memoirs reveal the founder of the Mughal rule in India as a constant and jovial
toper who had many a drinking party which were as important to him as his
bottles or negotiations. When we see him move with perfect ease and familiarity
among his company in these drinking parties we forget the prince in the man;
and start sharing the temptations that generally led Babur to those excesses a
shady wood, a hill with a fine prospect, or of a boat floating down a river;
and enjoy the amusements with which they are accompanied, extemporary verses,
recitations in Turki and Persian, with sometimes a song, and often a contest of
repartee.
"On
closing the Memoirs, we have in our possession a Babur who is more real than
political record would make him. We have a Babur who, after many many trials of
a long life, retains the same kind and affectionate heart, and the same easy
and sociable temper with which he had set out on his career and in whom the
possession of power and grandeur had neither blunted the delicacy of his taste,
nor diminished the sensibility to the enjoyment of nature and
imagination."
To
Lane-Poole "Babur's Memoirs are no rough soldier's chronicles of marches,
'Saps, wines, blinds, zabions, palisades, revelings, half-moons and such trumpery';
they contain the personal impressions and acute reflections of a cultivated man
of the world, well read in Eastern literature, a close and curious observer,
quick in preception, discerning judge of men who was well able to express his
thoughts and observations in clear and vigorous language."
Apart
from its value as a source book of history, the importance of the Babur Nama
lies in the fact that it is the first book on Natural History of India. Babur
had keen sense of observation and he describes the physical features of the
country, its people, animals, birds, and vegetation with precision and brevity.
The value of some of the illustrations of the Babur Nama lies in the fact that
these are the first natural history paintings in India.
Writer – M.S. Randhawa
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