Muttra; and that when the disease baffled medical skill, Babur resolvedto practise the rite believed then and now in theEast to be valid, of intercession and devotion of a suppliant's most valued possession in exchange for a sick man's life. Rejecting counsel to offer the Koh-i-nur for pious uses, he resolved to supplicate for the acceptance of his life. He made intercession through a saint his daughter names, and moved thrice round Humayun's bed, praying, in effect, O God! if a life may be exchanged for a life, I, who am Babur, give my life and my being for Humayun." During the rite fever surged over him, and, convinced that his prayer and offering had prevailed, he cried out, " I have borne it away ! I have borne it away !" * Gul-badan says that he himself fell ill on that very day, while Humayun poured water on his head, came out and gave audience; and that they carried her Father within on account of his illness, where he kept his bed for 2 or 3 months.
There can be no doubt as to Babur's faith in the rite he had practised, or as to his belief that his offering of life was accepted ; moreover actual facts would sustain his faith and belief. Onlookers also must have believed his prayer and offering to have prevailed, since Humayun went back to Sambhal,2 while Babur fell ill at once and died in a few weeks.3
f. A plan to set Babuls sons aside from Ike succession.
Reading the Akbar-nama alone, there would seem to be no question about whether Babur ever intended to give Hindustan, at any rate, to Humayun, but, by piecing together various contributory matters, an opposite opinion is reached, viz. that not Khalifa only whom Abu'1-fazl names perhaps on Nizamu'd-dfn Ahmad's warrant, but Babur also, with some considerable number of chiefs, wished another ruler fox Hindustan. The startingpoint of this opinion is a story in the Tabaqdt-i-akbari and,
1 A closer translation would be, "I have taken up the burden." The verb is bardashtan (cf. f. 349, p. 626 n. 1).
* See Erskine's History of India ii, 9.
3 At this point attention is asked to the value of the Ahmad-i-yadgar interpolation which allows Babur a year of active life before Humayun's illness and his own which followed. With no chronicle known of 936AH. Babur had been supposed ill all through the year, a supposition which destroys the worth of his self-sacrifice. Moreover several inferences have been drawn from the supposed year of illness which are disproved by the activities recorded in that interpolation.
