272

(June, 1827.)

Memoirs of ZEHIR-ED-DIN MUHAMMED BABER, Emperor of Hindustan, written by himself, in the Jaghatai Turki, and translated, partly by the late JOHN LEYDEN, Esq. M.D., partly by WILLIAM ERSKINE, Esq. With Notes and a Geographical and Historical Introduction : to gether with a Map of the Countries between the Oxus and Jaxartes, and a Memoir regarding its Construction, by CHARLES WADDINGTON, Esq., of the East India Company's Engineers.

London: 1826.

THIS is a very curious, and admirably edited work. But the strongest impression which the perusal of it has left on our minds is the boundlessness of authentic history; and, if we might venture to say it, the uselessness of all history which does not relate to our own fraternity of nations, or even bear, in some way or other, on our own present or future condition.

Tartars to the Celestial Empire of China. It
will not do to say, that we want something
nobler in character, and more exalted in in-
tellect, than is to be met with among those
murderous Orientals-that there is nothing to
interest in the contentions of mere force and
violence; and that it requires no very fine-
drawn reasoning to explain why we should
turn with disgust from the story, if it had
been preserved, of the savage affrays which
have drenched the sands of Africa or the rocks
of New Zealand-through long generations of
murder-with the blood of their brutish popu-
lation. This may be true enough of Mada-
gascar or Dahomy; but it does not apply to
the case before us. The nations of Asia gene-
rally-at least those composing its great states
-were undoubtedly more polished than those
of Europe, during all the period that preceded
their recent connection. Their warriors were
as brave in the field, their statesmen more
subtle and politic in the cabinet: In the arts
of luxury, and all the elegancies of civil life,
they were immeasurably superior; in inge
nuity of speculation-in literature-in social
politeness-the comparison is still in their
favour.

We have here a distinct and faithful account
of some hundreds of battles, sieges, and great
military expeditions, and a character of a pro-
digious number of eminent individuals,-men
famous in their day, over wide regions, for
genius or fortune-poets, conquerors, martyrs
-founders of cities and dynasties-authors
of immortal works-ravagers of vast districts
abounding in wealth and population. Of all
these great personages and events, nobody in
Europe, if we except a score or two of studi-
ous Orientalists, has ever heard before; and
it would not, we imagine, be very easy to
show that we are any better for hearing of
them now. A few curious traits, that hap-
pen to be strikingly in contrast with our own
manners and habits, may remain on the
memory of a reflecting reader-with a gene-
It has often occurred to us, indeed, to con
ral confused recollection of the dark and gor-
geous phantasmagoria. But no one, we may sider what the effect would have been on the
fairly say, will think it worth while to digest fate and fortunes of the world, if, in the four-
or develope the details of the history; or be teenth, or fifteenth century, when the germs
at the pains to become acquainted with the of their present civilisation were first disclosed,
leading individuals, and fix in his memory the the nations of Europe had been introduced to
series and connection of events. Yet the ef- an intimate and friendly acquaintance with
fusion of human blood was as copious-the the great polished communities of the East,
display of talent and courage as imposing- and had been thus led to take them for their
the perversion of high moral qualities, and the masters in intellectual cultivation, and their
waste of the means of enjoyment as unspar-models in all the higher pursuits of genius,
ing, as in other long-past battles and intrigues
and revolutions, over the details of which we
still pore with the most unwearied atten-
tion; and to verify the dates or minute cir-
cumstances of which, is still regarded as a
great exploit in historical research, and among
the noblest employments of human learning
and sagacity.

polity, and art. The difference in our social and moral condition, it would not perhaps be easy to estimate: But one result, we conceive, would unquestionably have been, to make us take the same deep interest in their ancient story, which we now feel, for similar reasons, in that of the sterner barbarians of early Rome, or the more imaginative clans and colonies It is not perhaps very easy to account for of immortal Greece. The experiment, howthe eagerness with which we still follow the ever, though there seemed oftener than once fortunes of Miltiades, Alexander, or Cæsar-to be some openings for it, was not made. of the Bruce and the Black Prince, and the interest which yet belongs to the fields of Marathon and Pharsalia, of Crecy and Bannockburn, compared with the indifference, or rather reluctance, with which we listen to the details of Asiatic warfare-the conquests that transferred to the Moguls the vast sovereignties of India, or raised a dynasty of Manchew

Our crusading ancestors were too rude them-
selves to estimate or to feel the value of the
oriental refinement which presented itself to
their passing gaze, and too entirely occupied
with war and bigotry, to reflect on its causes
or effects; and the first naval adventurers who
opened up India to our commerce, were both
too few and too far off to communicate to

and prosperity is owing to our greater freedom, | of its authors-the substantial advantages of honesty and fair dealing over the most inge nious systems of trickery and fraud;-and even-though this is the last and hardest, as well as the most precious, of all the lessons of reason and experience-that the toleration even of religious errors is not only prudent and merciful in itself, and most becoming a fallible and erring being, but is the surest and speediest way to compose religious differences, and to extinguish that most formidablə bigotry, and those most pernicious errors, which are fed and nourished by persecution. It is the want of this knowledge, or rather of the capacity for attaining it, that constitutes the palpable inferiority of the Eastern races; and, in spite of their fancy, ingenuity, and restless activity, condemns them, it would appear irretrievably, to vices and sufferings, from which nations in a far ruder condition are comparatively free. But we are wandering too far from the magnificent Baber and his commentators, and must now leave these vague and general speculations for the facts and details that lie before us.

we are immediately tempted to ask, by what that freedom has itself been produced? In the same way we might ascribe the superior mildness and h manity of our manners, the abated ferocity of our wars, and generally our respect for human life, to the influence of a Religion which teaches that all men are equal in the sight of God, and inculcates peace and charity as the first of our duties. But, besides the startling contrast between the profligacy, treachery, and cruelty of the Eastern Empire after its conversion to the true faith, and the simple and heroic virtues of the heathen republic, it would still occur to inquire, how it has happened that the nations of European descent have alone embraced the sublime truths, and adopted into their practice the mild precepts, of Christianity, while the people of the East have uniformly rejected and disclaimed them, as alien to their character and habits-in spite of all the efforts of the apostles, fathers, and martyrs, in the primitive and most effective periods of their preaching? How, in short, it has happened that the sensual and sanguinary creed of Mahomet has superseded the pure and pacific doctrines of Christianity in most of those very regions where it was first revealed to mankind, and first established by the greatest of existing governments? The Christian revelation is no doubt the most precious of all Heaven's gifts to the benighted world. But it is plain, that there was a greater aptitude to embrace and to profit by it in the European than in the Asiatic race. A free government, in like manner, is unquestionably the most valuable of all human inventions-the great safeguard of all other temporal blessings, and the mainspring of all intellectual and moral improvement:-But such a government is not the result of a lucky thought or happy casualty; and could only be established among men who had previously learned both to relish the benefits it secures, and to understand the connection between the means it employs and the ends at which it aims. We come then, though a little reluctantly, o the conclusion, that there is a natural and innerent difference in the character and temperament of the European and the Asiatic races -consisting, perhaps, chiefly in a superior capacity of patient and persevering thought in the former-and displaying itself, for the most part, in a more sober and robust understanding, and a more reasonable, principled, and inflexible morality. It is this which has led us, at once to temper our political institutions with prospective checks and suspicious provisions against abuses, and, in our different orders and degrees, to submit without impatience to those checks and restrictions;-to extend our reasonings by repeated observation and experiment, to larger and larger conclusions and thus gradually to discover the paramount importance of discipline and unity of purpose in war, and of absolute security to person and property in all peaceful pursuits-the folly of all passionate and vindictive assertion of supposed rights and pretensions, and the certain recoil of long-continued injustice on the heads

Zehir-ed-din Muhammed, surnamed Baber, or the Tiger, was one of the descendants of Zengiskhan and of Tamerlane; and though inheriting only the small kingdom of Ferghana in Bucharia, ultimately extended his dominions by conquest to Delhi and the greater part of Hindostan; and transmitted to his famous descendants, Akber and Aurengzebe, the magnificent empire of the Moguls. He was born in 1482, and died in 1530. Though passing the greater part of his time in desperate military expeditions, he was an educated and accomplished man; an elegant poet; a minute and fastidious critic in all the niceties and elegances of diction; a curious and exact observer of the statistical pheno mena of every region he entered; a great admirer of beautiful prospects and fine flowers; and, though a devoted Mahometan in his way, a very resolute and jovial drinker of wine. Good-humoured, brave, munificent, sagacious, and frank in his character, he might have been a Henry IV. if his training had been in Europe; and even as he is, is less stained, perhaps, by the Asiatic vices of cruelty and perfidy than any other in the list of her conquerors. The work before us is a faithful translation of his own account of his life and transactions; written, with some considerable blanks, up to the year 1508, in the form of a narrative-and continued afterwards, as a journal, till 1529. It is here illustrated by the most intelligent, learned, and least pedantic notes we have ever seen annexed to such a performance; and by two or three introductory dissertations, more clear, masterly, and full of instruction than any it has ever been our lot to peruse on the history or geography of the East. The translation was begun by the late very learned and enterprising Dr. Leyden. It has been completed, and the whole of the valuable com mentary added by Mr. W. Erskine, on the solicitation of the Hon. Mountstewart Elphin stone and Sir John Malcolm, the two indi.

duals in the world best qualified to judge of the value or execution of such a work. The greater part of the translation was finished and transmitted to this country in 1817; but was only committed to the press in the course of last year.

"The whole of Asia may be considered as divided into two parts by the great chain of mountains which runs from China and the Birman Empire on the east, to the Black Sea and the Mediterranean on the west. From the eastward, where it is of great breadth, it keeps a north-westerly course, rising in height as it advances, and forming the hill The preface contains a learned account of countries of Assâm, Bootân, Nepal, Srinagar, the Turki language, (in which these memoirs Tibet, and Ladak. It encloses the valley of Kashwere written.) the prevailing tongue of Cen-mir, near which it seems to have gained its greatest tral Asia, and of which the Constantinopolitan the north of Peshâwer and Kabul, after which it height, and thence proceeds westward, passing to Turkish is one of the most corrupted dialects, appears to break into a variety of smaller ranges -some valuable corrections of Sir William of hills that proceed in a westerly and south-westJones' notices of the Institutes of Taimur,-erly direction, generally terminating in the province and a very clear explanation of the method of Khorasan. Near Herât, in that province, the employed in the translation, and the various rise again near Meshhed, and is by some considmountains sink away; but the range appears to helps by which the great difficulties of the ered as resuming its course, running to the auth task were relieved. The first Introduction, of the Caspian and bounding Mazenderân, whence however, contains much more valuable mat- it proceeds on through Armenia, and thence into ters: It is devoted to an account of the great Asia Minor, finding its termination in the moun Tartar tribes, who, under the denomination tains of ancient Lycia. This immense range, which of the Turki, the Moghul, and the Mandshur some consider as terminating at Herât, while it divides Bengal, Hindustân, the Penjab, Afghanistan, races, may be said to occupy the whole vast Persia, and part of the Turkish territory, from the extent of Asia, north of Hindostan and part country of the Moghul and Turki tribes, which, of Persia, and westward from China. Of with few exceptions, occupy the whole extent of these, the Mandshurs, who have long been country from the borders of China to the sea of the sovereigns of China, possess the countries Azof, may also be considered as separating in its whole course, nations of comparative civilisation, immediately to the north and east of that from uncivilised tribes. To the south of this range, ancient empire-the Turki, the regions imme- if we perhaps except some part of the Afghân terdiately to the north and westward of India ritory, which, indeed, may rather be held as part and Persia Proper, stretching round the Cas- of the range itself than as south of it, there is no pian, and advancing, by the Constantinopoli-nation which, at some period or other of its history, tan tribes, considerably to the southeast of Europe. The Moghuls lie principally between the other two. These three tribes speak, it would appear, totally different lan-energies of the human mind to follow their natural guages-the name of Tartar or Tatar, by which they are generally designated in Europe, not being acknowledged by any of them, and appearing to have been appropriated only to a small clan of Moghuls. The Huns, who desolated the declining empire under Attila, are thought by Mr. Erskine to have been of the Moghul race; and Zengiskhan, the mighty conqueror of the thirteenth century, was certainly of that family. Their princes, however, were afterwards blended, by family alliances, with those of the Turki; and several of them, reigning exclusively over conquered tribes of that descent, came gradually though of proper Moghul ancestry, to reckon themselves as Turki sovereigns. Of this description was Taimur Beg, or Tamerlane, whose family, though descended from Zengis, had long been settled in the Turki kingdom of Samarkand; and from him the illustrious Baber, the hero of the work before us, a decided Turki in language, character, and prejudices, was lineally sprung. The relative condition of these enterprising nations, and their more peaceful brethren in the south, cannot be more clearly or accurately described than in the words of Mr. Erskine :

The learned translator conceives that the supposed name of this famous barbarian was truly only the denomination of his office. It is known that he succeeded his uncle in the government, though there were children of his alive. It is probable, therefore, that he originally assumed authority in the character of their guardian; and the word Atalik, in Tartar, signifies guardian, or quasi parens.

has not been the seat of a powerful empire, and of

all those arts and refinements of life which attend a numerous and wealthy population, when protected by a government that permits the fancies and

bias. The degrees of civilisation and of happiness possessed in these various regions may have been extremely different; but many of the comforts of wealth and abundance, and no small share of the higher treasures of cultivated judgment and imagi nation, must have been enjoyed by nations that could produce the various systems of Indian philosophy and science, a drama so polished as the Sakontala, a poet like Ferdousi, or a moralist like Sadi. While to the south of this range we every where see flourishing cities, cultivated fields, and all the forms of regular government and policy, to the north of it, if we except China and the countries to the south of the Sirr or Jaxartes, and along day, wander over their extensive regions as their its banks, we find tribes who, down to the present forefathers did, little if at all more refined than they appear to have been at the very dawn of history. Their flocks are still their wealth, their camp their city, and the same government exists of separate chiefs, who are not much exalted in luxury or information above the commonest of their subjects

around them."

These general remarks are followed up by an exact and most luminous geographical enumeration of all the branches of this great northern family,-accompanied with historical notices, and very interesting elucidations of various passages both in ancient and modern writers. The following observations are of more extensive application:

"The general state of society which prevailed in the age of Baber, within the countries that have been described, will be much better understood from a perusal of the following Memoirs than from any prefatory observations that could be offered. It is evident that, in consequence of the protection which had been afforded to the people of Mâweral.

La Roque, Traité Historique de i'Origine et du Prom Au Café, &c. Paris, 1716, 12m3. : &c.