sighnaq lend themselves to the kind of pun (jhdiii) " which consists in the employment of a word or phrase having more than one appropriate meaning, whereby the reader is often left in doubt as to the real significance of the passage." * The rest of the rubd'i may be given [together with the six other quotations of Babur's verse now known only through the Abtlshqd], in early Tazkiratu 'sk-shu'dra of date earlier than 967 AH.
The root of the word sighnaq will be siq, pressed together, crowded, included, etc. ; taking with this notion of compression, the explanations feine Schrift of Shaikh Effendi (Kunos) and Vambery's petite ecriture, the Slghnaql and Baburl Scripts are allowed to have been what that of the Rampur MS. is, a small, compact, elegant hand-writing. A town in the Caucasus named Slghnakh, " situe'e a pen pres a 800 metres d'altitude, commenca par eire une forteresse et un lieu de refuge, car telle est la signification de son nom tartare." 2 Stghndqi is given by de Courteille (Diet. p. 368) as meaning a place of refuge or shelter.
The Bdburi-khatt will be only one of the several hands Babur is reputed to have practised ; its description matches it with other niceties he took pleasure in, fine distinctions of eye and ear in measure and music.
e. Is the Rampur MS. an example of the Bdburi-khatt ?
Though only those well-acquainted with Oriental manuscripts dating before 91OAH. (1504ad.) can judge whether novelties appear in the script of the Rampur MS. and this particularly in its head-lines, there are certain grounds for thinking that though the manuscript be not Babur's autograph, it may be in his script and the work of a specially trained scribe.
I set these grounds down because although the signs of a scribe's work on the manuscript seem clear, it is " locally " held to be Babur's autograph. Has a tradition of its being in the Bdburikhatt glided into its being in the khatt-i-Baburl Several circumstances suggest that it may be written in the Bdburi-khatt :■ (1) the script is specially associated with the four transcripts
1 Gibb's History of Ottoman Poetry i, 113 and ii, 137. " Rectus' L 'Asie Russe p. 238.
