Reply to Carvaka and Huzefa

by Guest Sat May 07, 2011 8:40 am

Carvaka and Huzefa have speculated that the mughal emperor Babur was illiterate in the sense that he was unable to write. Presumably they believe that he could not read as well. His autobiography and poems, they say, could have simply been dictated to someone.

Babur's own autobiography settles the issue.

From the Wheeler Thackston translation of the Baburnama, in the section where Babur gives the complete text of a letter he had written to his son Humayun (the next mughal king, and the father of Akbar the great):

As I asked, you have written your letters, but you didn't read them over, for if you had had a mind to read them, you would have found that you could not. After reading them you certainly would have changed them. Although your writing can be read with difficulty, it is excessively obscure. Who has ever heard of prose designed to be an enigma? Your spelling is not bad, although it is not entirely correct either.

You wrote iltifat with the wrong t; you wrote qulinj with a y. Your handwriting can be made out somehow or the other, but with all these obscure words of yours the meaning is not entirely clear. Probably your laziness in writing letters is due to the fact that you try to make it too fancy. From now on write with uncomplicated, clear, and plain words. This will cause less difficulty both for you and for your reader.

by Guest Sat May 07, 2011 2:06 pm

see, we don't know the truth. there is no doubt that history has been rewritten. that babur was literate is a bit difficult to believe 'cos (i am quoting from memory), at the age of 12 or 13 he swam across a great river in ferghana, as history would have us believe, and conquered all the provinces his father had surrendered. where did he get the time to read and write? it is not unfounded to assume that a good number of those 12 years must have been spent on horseback riding and other physical activities. that he "wrote" in chagtai and not farsi is also a clue. in the silk road, farsi had invaluable currency -- every literate person ought to have known it. ferghana was bang on the silk road.

so, the thing is that it is reasonable to doubt if babur was actually literate. here is a web reference that expresses this doubt:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:YApn2KqQPJYJ:www.docstoc.com/docs/6305014/Babur+baburnama+dictated&cd=31&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=in&client=firefox-a&source=www.google.co.in

by charvaka Sat May 07, 2011 2:50 pm

Rashmun wrote:Carvaka and Huzefa have speculated that the mughal emperor Babur was illiterate in the sense that he was unable to write. Presumably they believe that he could not read as well. His autobiography and poems, they say, could have simply been dictated to someone.

Babur's own autobiography settles the issue.

From the Wheeler Thackston translation of the Baburnama, in the section where Babur gives the complete text of a letter he had written to his son Humayun (the next mughal king, and the father of Akbar the great):

As I asked, you have written your letters, but you didn't read them over, for if you had had a mind to read them, you would have found that you could not. After reading them you certainly would have changed them. Although your writing can be read with difficulty, it is excessively obscure. Who has ever heard of prose designed to be an enigma? Your spelling is not bad, although it is not entirely correct either.

You wrote iltifat with the wrong t; you wrote qulinj with a y. Your handwriting can be made out somehow or the other, but with all these obscure words of yours the meaning is not entirely clear. Probably your laziness in writing letters is due to the fact that you try to make it too fancy. From now on write with uncomplicated, clear, and plain words. This will cause less difficulty both for you and for your reader.

Thanks... this does look like Babur wasn't using a scribe to read / write his letter.

by Guest Sat May 07, 2011 3:07 pm

There is another point that may be of interest to both you and Huzefa. Babur came from a family which placed a lot of emphasis on education. His own grandfather was the well known astronomer Ulugh Beg, said to have been one of the most important observational astronomers of the fifteenth century, and after who a crater on the moon has been named. More about Ulugh Beg here:

http://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/cities/uz/samarkand/obser.html

Of course Babur had only a few years of formal education but it is not very uncommon to come across literary geniuses in history who have had little formal education.

The one person who did manage against the odds to remain illiterate was Akbar. The reason was that despite all the efforts of his teachers and tutors Akbar preferred to spend his childhood and youth in sports. He seems to have picked up rudimentary reading and writing because there exists a painting on which are inscribed some words in childish handwriting and beneath which is a note of Jahangir saying that the writing above his words is of his father. Later on of course he enjoyed having the classics read out to him because of which Will Durant calls him an 'illiterate scholar'.

charvaka wrote:
Rashmun wrote:Carvaka and Huzefa have speculated that the mughal emperor Babur was illiterate in the sense that he was unable to write. Presumably they believe that he could not read as well. His autobiography and poems, they say, could have simply been dictated to someone.

Babur's own autobiography settles the issue.

From the Wheeler Thackston translation of the Baburnama, in the section where Babur gives the complete text of a letter he had written to his son Humayun (the next mughal king, and the father of Akbar the great):

As I asked, you have written your letters, but you didn't read them over, for if you had had a mind to read them, you would have found that you could not. After reading them you certainly would have changed them. Although your writing can be read with difficulty, it is excessively obscure. Who has ever heard of prose designed to be an enigma? Your spelling is not bad, although it is not entirely correct either.

You wrote iltifat with the wrong t; you wrote qulinj with a y. Your handwriting can be made out somehow or the other, but with all these obscure words of yours the meaning is not entirely clear. Probably your laziness in writing letters is due to the fact that you try to make it too fancy. From now on write with uncomplicated, clear, and plain words. This will cause less difficulty both for you and for your reader.
Thanks... this does look like Babur wasn't using a scribe to read / write his letter.

by Guest Sat May 07, 2011 10:58 pm

Rashmun wrote:The one person who did manage against the odds to remain illiterate was Akbar. The reason was that despite all the efforts of his teachers and tutors Akbar preferred to spend his childhood and youth in sports.

there is a theory that akbar was probably dyslexic. i am inclined to go with that theory.

by Guest Sat May 07, 2011 11:06 pm

Huzefa Kapasi wrote:
Rashmun wrote:The one person who did manage against the odds to remain illiterate was Akbar. The reason was that despite all the efforts of his teachers and tutors Akbar preferred to spend his childhood and youth in sports.

there is a theory that akbar was probably dyslexic. i am inclined to go with that theory.

This may be of some interest to you:

From Bamber Gascoigne's 'The Great Moghuls' pg 75,78-79:

One of Humayun's last recorded decisions had been an unusually wise one. Only two months before his death he had appointed Bairam Khan, whose generalship had already recovered the empire for the Moghuls, to be the guardian of Akbar.... those close to the royal circle could not fail to notice that the regent's young charge seemed remarkably uninterested in his responsibilities as emperor.

The most disturbing aspect was his apparent refusal to learn anything of any possible use, apart from the purely physical accomplishments required for doing battle. Abul Fazl, for whom every action of Akbar has to be given at least a gloss of perfection, struggles again and again to explain that his apparently frivolous activities were only 'impenetrable by the superficial of this age' and even if he 'wore the guise of one who did not attend to affairs, in reality he was deeply interested, and was testing the loyal'. Nevertheless, the picture that comes through is a familiar one of a high spirited but idle schoolboy. After the astrologers had computed the perfect hour for the prince's first formal lesson back in the years at Kabul, 'when the master-moment arrived that scholar of God's school had attired himself for sport and had disappeared.' Sport, as usual, was what the schoolmasters were up against, and in particular hunting or any sport that involved animals. Akbar's first tutor had been dismissed for having addicted the boy to pigeon-flying, but it seems just as likely that the pupil corrupted the unfortunate master. Any teacher who has had to write a school report for an influential child will surely admire the skill with which Abul Fazl blends the real with the desired when he announces that the young scholar 'carried off the ball of excellence with the polo stick of divine help'.....

He had had an unsettled childhood, shuttled like a pawn between his father and his uncles, and from a very early age he had taken an active part in military affairs...as a boy in Kabul he had terrified everyone by his passion for riding fierce camels, and later in India he loved nothing more than to be on top of a male elephant fighting another. The very activities which took Akbar away from his books were, in their way, a good preparation for being a soldier king, the only sort of king that it was possible to be in such times.

by Merlot Daruwala Mon May 09, 2011 4:06 am

Rashmun wrote:Abul Fazl, for whom every action of Akbar has to be given at least a gloss of perfection...

Ah. Wonder why that sounds so very familiar...

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