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PREFACE
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Babur Padshah-Ghazi H. Beveridge (Calcutta Review,. 1899). Babur's diamond, was it the Koh-i-nur ? H. Beveridge, Asiatic
Quarterly Review, April, 1899. Was 'Abdu'r-rahim the translator of Babur's Memoirs ? {i.e. the
Babitr-nama) H. Beveridge, AQR., July-'and October./igoo. An Empire-builder of the 16th century, Babur Laurence F. L.
Williams (Allahabad, 1918). Notes on the MSS. of the Turki text {Babur-nama) A. S. Beveridge,
JRAS. 1900, 1902, 1921, 1905, and Part II 1906, 1907, 1908,
p. 52 and p. 828,1909 p. 452 {see Index, s.n. A. S. B. for topics). [For other articles and notes by H. B. see Index s.n.]
Part III. The " Bukhara Babur-nama ".
This is a singular book and has had a career as singular as its characteristics, a very comedy of (blameless) errors and mischance. For it is a compilation of items diverse in origin, diction, and age, planned to be a record of the Acts of Babur and Humayun, dependent through its Babur portion on the 'Abdu 'r-rahim Persian translation for re-translation, or verbatim quotation, or dove-tailing effected on the tattered fragments of what had once been Kamran s Codex of the Babur-nama proper, the whole interspersed by stop-gaps attributable to Jahangir. These and other specialities notwithstanding, it ranked for nearly 200 years as a reproduction of Babur's authentic text, as such was sent abroad, as such was reconstructed and printed in Kasan (1857), translated in Paris (1871), catalogued for thePetrograd Oriental School (1894), and for the India Office (1903).
Manifest causes for the confusion of identity are, (1) lack of the guidance in Bukhara and Petrograd of collation with the true text,
(2) want of information, in the Petrograd of 1700-25, about Babur's career, coupled with the difficulties of communication with Bukhara,
(3) the misleading feature in.the compiled book of its author's retention of the .autobiographic form of his sources, without explanation as to whether he entered surviving fragments of Kamran's
The last blow was given to the phantasmal reputation of the book "fV the' authoritative a'Qarabad Codex which now can be seen in facsimile in many Libraries.
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