(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: together 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 | Tartars to the Celestial Empire of China. It 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. We have here a distinct and faithful account of some hundreds of battles, sieges, and great military expeditions, and a character of a prodigious namber 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 studious 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 happen to be strikingly in contrast with our own manners and habits, may remain on the memory of a reflecting reader-with a general confused recollection of the dark and gorgeous phantasmagoria. But no one, we may fairly say, will think it worth while to digest or develope the details of the history; or be at the pains to become acquainted with the leading individuals, and fix in his memory the series and connection of events. Yet the effusion of human blood was as copious-the display of talent and courage as imposingthe perversion of high moral qualities, and the waste of the means of enjoyment as unsparing, as in other long-past battles and intrigues and revolutions, over the details of which we still pore with the most unwearied attention; and to verify the dates or minute circumstances of which, is still regarded as a great exploit in historical research, and among the noblest employments of human learning and sagacity. It is not perhaps very easy to account for the eagerness with which we still follow the will not do to say, that we want something nobler in character, and more exalted in intellect, 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 finedrawn 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 population. This may be true enough of Madagascar or Dahomy; but it does not apply to the case before us. The nations of Asia generally-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. It has often occurred to us, indeed, to consider what the effect would have been on the fate and fortunes of the world, if, in the fourteenth, or fifteenth century, when the germs of their present civilisation were first disclosed, the nations of Europe had been introduced to an intimate and friendly acquaintance with the great polished communities of the East, and had been thus led to take them for their masters in intellectual cultivation, and their models in all the higher pursuits of genius, 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 of immortal Greece. The experiment, however, 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 themselves 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 te their brethren at home any taste for the splen-unknown to the earlier ages of the world-dours which might have excited their own exalted the arts of peace to a dignity with admiration By the time that our intercourse with those regions was enlarged, our own career of iniprovement had been prosperously begun; and our superiority in the art, or at least the discipline of war, having given us a signal advantage in the conflicts to which that extending intercourse immediately led, naturally increased the aversion and disdain with which almost all races of men are apt to regard strangers to their blood and dissenters from their creed. Since that time the genius of Europe has been steadily progressive, whilst that of Asia has been at least stationary, and most probably retrograde; and the descendants of the feudal and predatory warriors of the West have at last attained a decided predominancy over those of their elder brothers in the East; to whom, at that period, they were unquestionably inferior in elegance and ingenuity, and whose hostilities were then conducted on the same system with our own. They, in short, have remained nearly where they were; while we, beginning with the improvement of our governments and military discipline, have gradually outstripped them in all the lesser and more ornamental attainments in which they originally excelled. which they were never before invested; and, by the abolition of domestic servitude, for the first time extended to the bulk of the population those higher capacities and enjoyments which were formerly engrossed by a few. By the invention of printing, they have made all knowledge, not only accessible, but imperishable; and by their improvements in the art of war, have effectually secured themselves against the overwhelming calamity of rarbarous invasion-the risk of subjugation by mere numerical or animal force: Whilst the alternations of conquest and defeat amongst civilised communities, who alone can now be formidable to each other, though productive of great local and temporary evils, may be regarded on the whole as one of the means of promoting and equalising the general civilisation. Rome polished and enlightened all the barbarous nations she subdued and was herself polished and enlightened by her conquest of elegant Greece. If the European parts of Russia had been subjected to the dominion of France, there can be no doubt that the loss of national independence would have been compensated by rapid advances both in liberality and refinement; and if, by a still more disastrous, though less improbable contingency, the Moscovite hordes were ever to overrun the fair countries to the south-west of them, it is equally certain that the invaders would speedily be softened and informed by the union; and be infected more certainly than by any other sort of contact, with the arts and the knowledge of the vanquished. This extraordinary fact of the stationary or degenerate condition of the two oldest and greatest families of mankind-those of Asia and Africa, has always appeared to us a sad obstacle in the way of those who believe in the general progress of the race, and its contant advancement towards a state of perfection. Two or three thousand years ago, those vast communities were certainly in a happier and more prosperous state than they are now; and in many of them we know that their most powerful and flourishing societies have been corrupted and dissolved, not by any accidental or extrinsic disaster, like foreign conquest, pestilence, or elemental devastation, but by what appeared to be the natural consequences of that very greatness and refinement which had marked and rewarded their earlier exer- ority. We should be very glad to ascribe it tions. In Europe, hitherto, the case has cer- to our greater political Freedom:-and no tainly been different: For though darkness did fall upon its nations also, after the lights of Roman civilisation were extinguished, it is to be remembered that they did not burn out of themselves, but were trampled down by hosts of invading barbarians, and that they blazed out anew, with increased splendour and power, when the dulness of that superincumbent mass was at length vivified by their contact, and animated by the fermentation of that leaven which had all along been secretly working in its recesses. In Europe certainly there has been a progress: And the more polished of its present inhabitants have not only regained the place which was held of old by their illustrious masters of Greece and Rome, but have plainly outgone them in the most substantial and exalted of their improvements. Far more humane and refined than the Romans-far less giddy and turbulent and treacherous than the Greeks, they have given a security to life and property that was All these great advantages, however-thia apparently irrepressible impulse to improvement-this security against backsliding and decay, seems peculiar to Europe,* and not capable of being communicated, even by her, to the most docile races of the other quartere of the world: and it is really extremely difficult to explain, upon what are called philosophical principles, the causes of this superi doubt, as a secondary cause, this is among the most powerful; as it is to the maintenance of that freedom that we are indebted for the selfestimation, the feeling of honour, the general equity of the laws, and the substantia. security both from sudden revolution and from capricious oppression, which distinguish our portion of the globe. But we cannot bring ourselves to regard this freedom as a mere accident in our history, that is not itself to be accounted for, as well as its consequences: And when it is said that our greater stability * When we speak of Europe, it will be under. stood that we speak, not of the land, but of the people and include, therefore, all the settlements and colonies of that favoured race, in whatever quarter of the globe they may now be established. Some situations seem more, and some less, favour. able to the preservation of the original character. The Spaniards certainly degenerated in Peru-and the Dutch perhaps in Batavia; but the English remain, we trust, unimpaired in America. and prosperity is owing to our greater freedom, ❘ of its authors-the substantial advantages of we are immediately tempted to ask, by what honesty and fair dealing over the most inge. that freedom has itself been produced? In nious systems of trickery and fraud; and 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. ty. 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 conclusionsand 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 solicitation of the Hon. Mountstewart Elphinrecoil of long-continued injustice on the heads | stone and Sir John Malcolm, the two indi. 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 formidable 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. 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 phenomena 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 commentary added by Mr. W. Erskine, on the iduals 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 preface contains a learned account of the Turki language, (in which these memoirs were written.) the prevailing tongue of Central Asia, and of which the Constantinopolitan Turkish is one of the most corrupted dialects, -some valuable corrections of Sir William Jones' notices of the Institutes of Taimür, and a very clear explanation of the method employed in the translation, and the various helps by which the great difficulties of the task were relieved. The first Introduction, however, contains much more valuable matters: It is devoted to an account of the great Tartar tribes, who, under the denomination of the Turki, the Moghul, and the Mandshur races, may be said to occupy the whole vast extent of Asia, north of Hindostan and part of Persia, and westward from China. Of these, the Mandshurs, who have long been the sovereigns of China, possess the countries immediately to the north and east of that ancient empire-the Turki, the regions immediately to the north and westward of India and Persia Proper, stretching round the Caspian, and advancing, by the Constantinopolitan tribes, considerably to the southeast of Europe. The Moghuls lie principally between the other two. These three tribes "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 countries of Assâm, Bootân, Nepal, Sirinagar, Tibet, and Ladak. It encloses the valley of Kashmîr, near which it seems to have gained its greatest height, and thence proceeds westward, passing to the north of Peshawer and Kabul, after which it appears to break into a variety of smaller ranges of hills that proceed in a westerly and south-westerly direction, generally terminating in the province of Khorasân. Near Herât, in that province, the mountains sink away; but the range appears to rise again near Meshhed, and is by some considered as resuming its course, running to the south of the Caspian and bounding Mazenderân, whence it proceeds on through Armenia, and thence into Asia Minor, finding its termination in the mountains of ancient Lycia. This immense range, which some consider as terminating at Herat, while it divides Bengal, Hindustân, the Penjab, Afghanistan, Persia, and part of the Turkish territory, from the country of the Moghul and Turki tribes, which, with few exceptions, occupy the whole extent of country from the borders of China to the sea of Azof, may also be considered as separating in its whole course, nations of comparative civilisation, from uncivilised tribes. To the south of this range, if we perhaps except some part of the Afghân territory, which, indeed, may rather be held as part of the range itself than as south of it, there is no nation which, at some period or other of its history, 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 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. 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 imagination, 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 a 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 its banks, we find tribes who, down to the present day, wander over their extensive regions as their 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 Maweral. naher by their regular governments, a considerable degree of comfort, and perhaps still more of elegance and civility, prevailed in the towns. The whole age of Baber, however, was one of great confusion. Nothing contributed so much to produce the constant wars, and eventual devastation of the country, which the Memoirs exhibit, as the want of some fixed rule of Succession to the Throne. The ideas of regal descent, according to primogeni. ture, were very indistinct, as is the case in all Oriental, and, in general, in all purely despotic king doms. When the succession to the crown, like every thing else, is subject to the will of the prince, on his death it necessarily becomes the subject of contention; since the will of a dead king is of much less consequence than the intrigues of an able minister, or the sword of a successful commander. It is the privilege of liberty and of law alone to bestow equal security on the rights of the monarch and of the people. The death of the ablest sovereign was only the signal for a general war. The different parties at court, or in the harem of the prince, espoused the cause of different competitors, and every neighbouring potentate believed himself to be perfectly justified in marching to seize his portion of the spoil. In the course of the Me. moirs, we shall find that the grandees of the court, while they take their place by the side of the candidate of their choice, do not appear to believe that fidelity to him is any very necessary virtue. The nobility, unable to predict the events of one twelvemonth, degenerate into a set of selfish, calculating, though perhaps brave partizans. Rank, and wealth, and present enjoyment, become their idols. The prince feels the influence of the general want of stability, and is himself educated in the loose principles of an adventurer. In all about him he sees merely the instruments of his power. The subject, seeing the prince consult only his pleasures, learns on his part to consult only his private convenience. In such societies, the steadiness of principle that flows from the love of right and of our country can have no place. It may be questioned whether the prevalence of the Mahommedan religion, by swallowing up civil in religious distinctions, has not a tendency to increase this indifference to country, wherever it is established." "That the fashions of the East are unchanged, is, in general, certainly true; because the climate and the despotism, from the one or other of which a very large proportion of them arises, have continued the same. Yet one who observes the way in which a Mussulman of rank spends his day, will be led to suspect that the maxim has sometimes been adopted with too little limitation. Take the example of his pipe and his coffee. The Kalliûn, or Hukka, is seldom out of his hand; while the coffee-cup makes its appearance every hour, as if no enjoyments the loss of which he would feel more severely; or which, were we to judge only by the frequency of the call for them, we should suppose to have entered from a more remote pe riod into the system of Asiatic life. Yet we know that the one (which has indeed become a necessary it contained a necessary of life. Perhaps there are of life to every class of Mussulmans) could not been enjoyed before the discovery of America; and there is every reason to believe that the other was not introduced into Arabia from Africa, where coffee is indigenous, previously to the sixteenth century; and what marks the circumstance more strongly, both of these habits have forced their way, in spite of the remonstrances of the rigorists in religion. Perhaps it would have been fortunate for Baber had they prevailed in his age, as they might have diverted him from the immoderate use first of wine, and afterwards of deleterious drugs, which ruined his constitution, and hastened on his end." La Roque, Traité Historique de i' Origine et du Progrés du Café, &c. Paris, 1716, 18mo. The Yasi, or institutions of Chengiz, are often mentioned. "They seem," says Mr. Erskine, "to have been a collection of the old usages of the Moghul tribes, comprehending some rules of state and ceremony, and some injunctions for the punishment of partic. ular crimes. The punishments were only twodeath and the bastinado*; the number of blows extending from seven to seven hundred. There is something very Chinese in the whole of the Moghul system of punishment, even princes advanced in years, and in command of large armies, being punished by bastinado with a stick, by their father's orders.t Whether they received their usage in this respect from the Chinese, or communicated it to them, is not very certain. As the whole body of their laws or customs was formed before the introduction of the Mussulman religion, and was probably in many respects inconsistent with the Koran, as, for instance, in allowing the use of the blood of animals, and in the extent of toleration granted to other religions, it gradually fell into decay." The present Moghul tribes, it is added, punish most offences by fines of cattle. The art of war in the days of Baber had not been very greatly matured; ured; and though matchlocks and unwieldy cannon had been recently in. troduced from the West, the arms chiefly relied on were still the bow and the spear, the sabre and the battle-axe. Mining was practised in sieges, and cavalry seems to have formed the least considerable part of the army. There is a second Introduction, containing a clear and brief abstract of the history of those regions from the time of Tamerlane to that of Baber,-together with an excellent Memoir on the annexed map, and an account of the hills and rivers of Bokara, of which it would be idle to attempt any abstract. As to the Memoirs themselves, we have already said that we think it in vain to recommend them as a portion of History with which our readers should be acquainted,or consequently to aim at presenting them with any thing in the nature of an abstract, or connected account of the events they so minutely detail. All that we propose to do, therefore, is, to extract a few of the traits which appear to us the most striking and characteristic, and to endeavour, in a very short compass, to give an idea of whatever curiosity or interest the work possesses. The most remarkable thing about it, or at least that which first strikes us, is the simplicity of the style, and the good sense, varied knowledge, and extraordinary industry of the royal author. It is difficult, indeed, to believe that it is the work of an Asiatic, and a sovereign. Though copiously, and rather diffusely written, it is perfectly free from the ornamental verbosity, the eternal metaphor, and puerile exaggerations of most Oriental compositions; and though savouring so far of royalty as to abound in descriptions of dresses and cere. monies, is yet occupied in the main with concerns greatly too rational and humble to be much in favour with monarchs. As a specimen of the adventurous life of the chieftains ! &c. * D'Herbelot, Biblioth. Orient. art. Turk. |