Description
This is not a novel, neither is it a history. It is the life-story of a man, taken from his own memoirs. '' Tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, gentleman, apothecary, ploughboy, thief." So runs the jingle. The hero of this book might have claimed as many personalities in himself, for Zahir-ud-din Mahomed commonly called Babar, Emperor of India, the first of the dynasty which we mis-name the Great Moghuls, was at one and the same time poet, painter, soldier, athlete, gentleman, musician, beggar and the errant King. He lived the most adventurous life a man ever lived, in the end of the fifteenth, the beginning of the sixteenth centuries; and he kept a record of it. On this record I have worked. Reading between the lines often, at times supplying details that must have occurred, doing my best to present, without flaw, the lovable, versatile, volatile soul which wrote down its virtues and its vices, its successes and its failures with equally unsparing truth, and equally invariable sense of honour and humour. The incident of the crystal bowl, and the details of Babar's subsequent marriage to Maham (the woman who was to be to him what Ayesha was to Mahomed), are purely imaginary. I found it necessary to supply some explanation of the curious coincidence in time of this undoubted marriage with the pitifully brief romance of little Cousin Ma'asuma; for Babar was above all things affectionate. I trust my imagining fits in with the general tone of my hero's life.