Promotion of Learning in India during Muhammadan Rule (by Muhammadans) c3.25

c3.25

Bābur is commonly supposed to have spoken very contemptuously of the attractions of India, and there is a famous passage at p. 333 of Leyden and Erskine which begins with the remark, “Hindustan is a country that has few pleasures to recommend it.” But it seems questionable if this translation of his words be correct. It all turns on whether the word in the Turkī be *kam*, “few,” or *kīm*, “which.” The word certainly seems to be *kam* in the Gibb Trust and Ilminsky editions, but there is only a difference of two dots between *kam* and *kīm*, and *kīm* is Turkī, while *kam* is not. P. de Courteille, a thorough Turkī scholar, has read it *kīm*, and translates, “*Quoique l’Hindustan soit un pays naturellement plein de charme*” (vol. iii. p. 226). The corresponding passage on the Ḥaidarābād MSS. is at p. 290, second line from the top. If Erskine’s translation be correct, it contradicts what he represents Bābur as saying some pages earlier, viz. 312, where we have the rendering, “It (India) is a remarkably fine country.” Unfortunately, the word, both in the Turkī and the Persian, in this passage is *gharīb*, which means “strange and wonderful,” rather than “fine,” and M.