I venture to suggest what appears to me to explain M. de Courteille's acceptance of the Rescue passage. Down to its insertion, the Kehr-Ilminsky text is so continuously and so curiously corrupt that it seems necessary to regard it as being a re-translation into Turk! from one of the Persian translations of the Bdbur-ndma. There being these textual defects in it, it would create on the mind of a reader initiated through it, only, in the book, an incorrect impression of Babur's style and vocabulary, and such a reader would feel no transition when passing on from it to the Rescue passage.
In opposition to this explanation, it might be said that a wrong standard set up by the corrupt text, would or could be changed by the excellence of later parts of the Kehr-Ilminsky one. In words, this is sound, no doubt, and such reflex criticism is now easy, but more than the one defective MS. was wanted even to suggest the need of such reflex criticism. The Bdbur-ndma is lengthy, ponderous to poise and grasp, and
