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PREFACE
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letters are those of Malcolm and more occasional correspondents; Leyden's letters (and various papers) are in the Memorial Cottage maintained in his birthplace Denholm (Hawick) by the Edinburgh Border Counties Association; something fitting went to the Bombay Asiatic Society and a volume of diary to the British Museum. Leyden's papers will help his fuller biography; Elphinstone's letters have special value as recording his co-operation with Erskine by much friendly criticism, remonstrance against delay, counsels and encouragement. They, moreover, shew the estimate an accomplished man of modern affairs formed of Babur Padshah's character and conduct; some have been quoted in Colebrooke's Life of Elphinstone, but there they suffer by detachment from the rest of his Baburiana letters ; bound together as they now are, and with brief explanatory interpolations, they would make a welcome item for " Babur Padshah's Book-pile "
XIV
In May 1921 the contents of these volumes were completed, namely, the Babur-nama in English and its supplements, the aims of which are to make Babur known in English diction answering to his ipsissima verba, and to be serviceable to readers and students of his book and of classic Turki.
XV
Of writings based upon or relating to Babur's the following have appeared : Denkwurdigkeiten des Zahir-uddin Muhammad Babar A. Kaiser
(Leipzig, 1828). This consists of extracts translated from the
Memoirs. An abridgement of the Memoirs R. M. Caldecott (London, 1844). History of India Baber and Humayun W. Erskine (Longmans,
1854)Babar Rulers of India series Stanley Lane-Poole (Oxford, 1899). Tuzuk-i-babari or Waqi'at-i-babari {i.e. the Persian trs.) Elliot
and Dowson's History of India, 1872, vol. iv.
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