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PREFACE
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viz. it would greatly facilitate re-translation into Turki, such as has been effected, I think, in the Farghana section of the Bukhara
compilation.1
VIII
This item ot work, a harmless attempt of Salim (i.e. Jahangir Padshah ; 1605-28) to provide the ancestral autobiography with certain stop-gaps, has caused much needless trouble and discussion without effecting any useful result. It is this : In his own autobiography, the Tuzuk-i-jahangiri s.a. 1607, he writes of a Babur-nama Codex he examined, that it was all in Babur's " blessed handwriting " except four portions^ which were in his own and each of which he attested in Turki as so being. Unfortunately he did not specify his topics; unfortunately also no attestation has been found to passages reasonably enough attributable to his activities. His portions may consist of the " Rescue-passage " (App.-D) and a length of translation from the Akbarnama, a continuous part of its Babur chapter but broken up where only I have seen it, i.e. the Bukhara compilation, into (1) a plain tale of Kanwa (1527), (2) episodes of Babur's latter months (1529) both transferred to the first person and (3) an account of Babur's death (December 26th, 1530) and Court.
Jahangir's occupation, harmless in itself, led to an imbroglio of Langles with Erskine, for the former stating in the Biographie Universelle art. Babour, that Babour's Commentaries " augmentis par Jahangir" were translated into Persian by 'Abdu'r-rahim. Erskine made answer, "I know not on what authority the learned Langles hazarded this assertion, which is certainly incorrect" (Memoirs, Preface, p. ix). Had Langles somewhere met with Jahangir's attestations ? He had authority if he had seen merely the statement of 1607, but Erskine was right also, because the Persian translation contains no more than the unaugmented Turki text. The royal stop-gaps are in Kehr's MS. and through Ilminski reached De Courteillo, whence the biting and thorough analysis of the three " Fragments " by Teufel. Both episodes the Langles and the
1 For analysis of a retranslated passage see JRAS. 1908, p. 85.
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