Baburnama -- Memoirs of Zahiru’d-din Muhammad Translated by Annette S Beveridge

 

History, as I remember it being taught in school, was always a soporific affair, a dull presentation of events in time. In the immortal words of the playwright Alan Bennett, ‘..just one f…g thing after another’.

The reality, of course, was very different and not particularly pleasant in the 15^th and 16^th centuries, the period of the Memoirs under consideration. Life was uncertain, brutal and frequently short, with the violence and horror of war ever-present. This was especially true for members and leaders of war-bands involved in constant bids for territorial acquisitions, raids and plunder.

 Zahiru’d-din Muhammad Babur, one such leader, became ruler of Farghana -- a ‘small country abounding in grain and fruits’ with ‘seven separate townships’ -- at the tender age of twelve. In more familiar terms, one could perhaps call him a big zamindar or minor Raja whose principal occupation during his rather short life of approximately forty- eight years was the waging of war for plunder and finding a kingdom to rule. He lost Farghana, conquered Samarkand and lost it, took Kabul and finally, towards the end of his life and on his fifth raid beyond the Indus, won the throne of Hind by defeating Ibrahim Lodhi at Panipat in 1526. Babur died in 1530

The first Mughal combined a strong sword arm with persistent drive and ambition.

“As there was in me ambition for rule and desire of conquest, I did not sit at gaze when once or twice an affair had made no progress.”

But Babur was more than just a tough warlord on the lookout for loot. And it is those other dimensions of the man that add an intriguing and piquant touch to his terse matter-of-fact prose.

He begins his memoirs with a couple of pages about the Farghana landscape: the flowing waters, the fruit – nashpati of Andijan, almonds of Kand-e-badam, apricots and pomegranates of Marghinan, and the pretty little baghchas (gardens) of Asfara.

 

One thing that strikes a reader on starting the book is the way in which language -- or rather words -- migrate with people. Any Hindi speaker will recognize nashpati, badam, bagcha(bagicha), subz (subzi), darakht, quasba, tariqa, hamesha (always) and many more Turki words that have a regular place in Hindi. Languages grow and are enriched by foreign borrowings and Hindustani is no exception. An occasionally vocalized insistence on ‘purity’ of Hindi -- whatever that may mean -- is retrogression. Still waters stagnate.

In addition to being a war-band leader, Babur wrote poetry, drank alcohol for much of his life, was strongly influenced by his grandmother and built gardens with flowing water-courses. The few revealing passages about his emotional life are short but deserve to be quoted .

Talking about his first marriage when he was about 17 years of age, he says, “Though I was not ill disposed towards her, yet this being my first marriage, out of modesty and bashfulness I used to see her once in 10, 15 or 20 days. Later on when even my first inclination did not last my bashfulness increased. Then my mother Khanim used to send me once a month or every 40 days, with driving and driving, dunnings and worryings.”

A more modern translation would perhaps be more effective but the point is adequately conveyed. A rather inhibited and repressed young man, the first of the Great Mughals!

He also records an infatuation with a pretty boy from the bazaar!

“I discovered in myself a strange inclination, nay! As the verse says ‘I maddened and afflicted myself for a boy in the camp bazaar…Until then I had had no inclination for anyone, indeed of love and desire either by hearsay or experience. I had not heard I had not talked….”

There is no record of how the matter ended.

Life moved on -- another day, another intrigue, another battle.

Once established in Hind, Babur writes in detail about this new land he finds himself in. It’s a brief and quite revealing study of North India -- zoological, biological and sociological. He regards the mango as the best fruit of Hindustan and regrets the absence of ‘flowing waters’ despite the existence of many big rivers and thus builds several gardens with ‘flowing waters’ in, it appears, Agra, Dholpur and Gwalior and possibly elsewhere too.

As Badshah too, Babur spent a great deal of time battling opposition, mostly Afghan residues of the Sultanate, and then died prematurely, aged about 48 years.

Reading the Baburnama can occasionally be a trifle wearisome --details of early raids, intrigues and political maneuvering get a little tiresome since one is not familiar with the people, places and events. The effort to continue , with some judicious skipping, is, however, well worth the while. The man behind the Badshah’s robes is fascinating, as is the nature of life in those desperate times.

Happy reading.