accorded to him. His " I " is. individual. The Memoirs varies much from these uses.
(2) The value of reproducing impersonal statements is seen by the following example, one of many similar : Wl en Babur and a body of men, making a long saddle-journey, halted for rest and refreshment by the road-side ; " There was drinking," he writes, but Erskine," I drank " ; what is likely being that all or all but a few shared the local vin du pays.
(3) The importance of observing Babur's limits of vocabulary needs no stress, since any man of few words differs from any man of many. Measured by the Babur-nama standard, the diction of the Memoirs is redundant throughout, and frequently over-coloured. Of this a pertinent example is provided by a statement of which a minimum of seven occurrences forms my example, namely, that such or such a man whose life Babur sketches was vicious or a vicious person (fisq, fdsiq). Erskine once renders the word by " vicious " but elsewhere enlarges to " debauched, excess of sensual enjoyment, lascivious, libidinous, profligate, voluptuous". The instances are scattered and certainly Erskine could not feel their collective effect, but even scattered, each does its ill-part in distorting the Memoirs portraiture of the man of the one word.1
