through some 37 years was his twinned comrade, which by its special distinctions has attracted readers for nearly a half-millennium, still attracts and still is a thing apart from autobiographies which look back to recal dead years.
Much circumstance makes for the opinion that Babur left his life-record complete, perhaps repaired in places and recently supplemented, but continuous, orderly and lucid ; this it is not now, nor has been since it was translated into Persian in 1589, for it is fissured by laatme, has neither Preface nor Epilogue,1 opens in an oddly abrupt and incongruous fashion, and consists of a series of fragments so disconnected as to demand considerable preliminary explanation. Needless to say, its dwindled condition notwithstanding, it has olace amongst great autobiographies, still revealing its author playing a man's part in a drama of much historic and personal interest. Its revelation is however now like a portrait out of drawing, because it has not kept the record of certain years of his manhood in which he took momentous decisions, (1) those of 1511-12 [918] in which he accepted reinforcement at a great price from Isma'il the Shi'a Shah of Persia, and in which, if my reading be correct, he first (1512) broke the Law against the use of wine,2 (2) those of 1519-1525 [926-932], in which his literary occupations with orthodox Law (see Mubin) associated with cognate matters of 932 AH. indicate that his return to obedience had begun, in which too was taken the decision that worked out for his fifth expedition across the Indus with its sequel of the conquest of Hind. The loss of matter so weighty cannot but destroy the balance of his record and falsify the drawing of his portrait.
a. Problem of Titles.
As nothing survives to decide what was B'abur's chosen title for his autobiography, a modern assignment of names to distinguish it
' The suggestion, implied by my use of this word, that Babur may have definitely closed his autobiography (as Timor did under other circumstances) is due to the existence of a compelling cause viz. that he would be expectant of death as the price of Humayun's restored life (p. 701).
■ Cf. p. 83 and n. and Add. Note, P. 83 for further emendation of a contradiction effected by some malign influence in the note (p. 83) between parts of that note, and between it »nd Babur's account of his not-drinking in Herat.
