Ali Bilgrami it was lent to me ; it proved to surpass, both in volume
and quality, all other Babur-nama MSS. I had traced ; I made its
merits known to Professor Edward Granville Browne, just when the
E. J. Wilkinson Gibb Trust was in formation, with the happy and
accordant result that the best prose book in classic Turki became
the first item in the Memorial matris ad filium of literary work
done in the name of the Turkish scholar, and Babur's very words
were safeguarded in hundred-fold facsimile. An event so important.
for autobiography and for Turki literature may claim more than
the bald mention of its occurrence, because sincere autobiography,
however ancient, is human and social and undying, so. that this
was no mere case of multiplying copies of a book, but was one of
preserving a man's life in his words. There were, therefore, joyful
red-letter days in the English story of the Codex outstanding from
others being those on which its merits revealed themselves (on
Surrey uplands) the one which brought Professor Browne's
acceptance of it for reproduction by the Trust and the day of
pause from work marked by the accomplished fact of the safety of
the Babur-nama.
XI
The period from cir. 1700, the date of the Haidarabad Codex, and 1810, when the Elphinstone Codex was purchased by its sponsor at Peshawar, appears to have been unfruitful in work on the Hindustan MSS. Causes for this may connect with historic events, e.g. Nadir Shah's desolation of Dihli and the rise of the East India Company, and, in Baburiana, with the disappearance of Babur's autograph Codex (it was unknown to the Scots of 1800-26), and the transfer of the Elphinstone Codex from royal possession this, possibly however, an accident of royal travel to and from Kabul at earlier dates.
The first quarter of the nineteenth century was, on the contrary, most fruitful in valuable work, useful impulse to which was given by Dr. John Leyden who in about 1805 began to look into Turki. Like his contemporary Julius Klaproth {q.v.), he was avid of tongues and attracted by Turki and by Babur's writings of which he
