In Bābur’s age the power of the prince was restrained in a considerable degree, in the countries which have been described, by that of his nobles, each of whom had attached to him a numerous train of followers, while some of them were the heads of ancient and nearly independent tribes, warmly devoted to the interest of their chiefs. It was checked also by the influence of the priesthood, but espe­cially of some eminent Khwājehs or religious guides, who to the character of sanctity often joined the possession of ample domains, and had large bands of disciples and followers ready blindly to fulfil their wishes. Each prince had some religious guide of this description. Bābur men­tions more than one, for whom he professes unbounded admiration. The inhabitants were in general devoted to some of these religious teachers, whose dictates they received with submissive reverence. Many of them pre­tended to supernatural communications, and the words that fell from them were treasured up as omens to regulate future conduct. Many instances occur in the history both of India and Māweralnaher, in which, by the force of their religious character, these saints were of much political consequence, and many cities were lost and won by their influence with the inhabitants.

The religion of the country was mingled with numerous superstitions. One of these, which is wholly of a Tartar origin, is often alluded to by Bābur. It is that of the yadeh-stone. The history of this celebrated superstition, as given by D’Herbelot,* is that Japhet, on leaving his father Noah, to go to inhabit his portion of the world, received his father’s blessing, and, at the same time, a stone, on which was engraved the mighty name of God. This stone, called by the Arabs hajar-al-mater, the rain-stone, the Tūrks call yadeh-tāsh, and the Persians sang i yadeh. It had the virtue of causing the rain to fall or to cease; but, in the course of time, this original stone was worn away or lost. It is pretended, however, that others, with a similar virtue, and bearing the same name, are still found among the Tūrks; and the more superstitious affirm, that they were originally produced and multiplied, by some mysterious sort of generation, from the original stone given by Noah to his son.

Izzet-ullah, the intelligent traveller to whom I have already alluded, in giving a description of Yārkand, mentions the yadeh-stone as one of the wonders of the land. He says that it is taken from the head of a horse or cow; and that, if certain ceremonies be previously used, it inevitably produces rain or snow. He who performs the ceremonies is called yadehchī. Izzet-ullah, though, like Bābur, he professes his belief in the virtues of the stone, yet acknowledges that he was never an eyewitness of its effects; he says, however, that he has so often heard the facts concerning its virtues stated over and over again, by men of unimpeachable credit, that he cannot help acquiescing in their evidence. When about to operate, the yadehchī, of whom there are many at this day in Yārkand, steeps the stone in the blood of some animal, and then throws it into water, at the same time repeating certain mysterious words. First of all, a wind is felt blowing, and this is soon succeeded by a fall of snow and rain. The author, aware of the incredulity of his readers, attempts to show that, though these effects certainly follow in the cold country of Yārkand, we are not to look for them in the warm region of Hind; and, further, ingeniously justifies his opinions regarding the unknown and singular qualities of the rain-stone by the equally singular and inexplicable properties of the magnet.

The branch of literature chiefly cultivated to the north of the Oxus, was poetry; and several of the persons mentioned in the progress of the following work had made no mean proficiency in the art. The age which had produced the great divines and philosophers, the Būrhān­eddīns and the Avicennas,* was past away from Māweralna­her; but every department of science and literature was still successfully cultivated on the opposite side of the southern desert, at Herāt in Khorasān, at the splendid court of Sultan Hussain Mirza Baikera.* It is impossible to contemplate the scene which Khorasān then afforded, without lamenting that the instability, inseparable from despotism, should, in every age, have been communicated to the science and literature of the East. Persia, at several different eras of its history, has only wanted the continuous impulse afforded by freedom and security, to enable its literature to rank with the most refined and useful that has adorned or benefited any country. The most polished court in the west of Europe could not, at the close of the fifteenth century, vie in magnificence with that of Herāt; and if we compare the court of Khorasān even with that of Francis the First—the glory of France, at a still later period—an impartial observer will be compelled to acknowledge that in every important department of literature— in poetry, in history, in morals and metaphysics, as well perhaps as in music and the fine arts—the palm of excellence must be assigned to the court of the oriental prince. But the manners of Bābur’s court, in the early part of his reign, were not very refined; the period was one of confusion, rebellion, and force; and his nobles probably bore rather more visible traces of the rude spirit of the inhabitants of the desert from which their Tūrki ancestors had issued, and in which their own followers still dwelt, than of the polished habits of the courtiers who crowd the palaces of princes that have long reigned over a prosperous and submissive people.

Bābur frequently alludes to the Tūreh or Yāsi, that is, the Institutions of Chingiz Khan; and observes that, though they were certainly not of divine appointment, they had been held in respect by all his forefathers. This Tūreh, or Yāsi, was a set of laws which were ascribed to that great conqueror, and were supposed to have been promulgated by him on the day of his enthronization. They seem 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 particular crimes. The punishments were only two—death 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. 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 Musulman religion, and was probably in many respects inconsistent with the Korān, 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. One of these laws ordered adulterers to be punished with death; in consequence of which we are told that the inhabitants of Kaindu, who, from remote times, had been accustomed to resign their wives to the strangers who visited them, retiring from their own houses during their stay, represented to the Tartar Prince the hardship to which this new enactment would subject them, by preventing the exercise of their accustomed hospitality, when they were relieved by a special exception from the oppressive operation of this law.* It is probable that the laws of Chingiz Khan were merely traditionary, and never reduced into writing. In Bābur’s days they were still respected among the wandering tribes, but did not form the law of his kingdom. The present Moghul tribes punish most offences by fines of cattle.

We are so much accustomed to hear the manners and fashions of the East characterized as unchangeable, that it is almost needless to remark that the general manners described by Bābur as belonging to his dominions are as much the manners of the present day as they were of his time. 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 Musulman 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 kaliūn, or hukka, is seldom out of his hand; while the coffee-cup makes its appearance every hour, as if it contained a necessary of life. Perhaps there are 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 period into the system of Asiatic life. Yet we know that the one (which has indeed become a necessary of life to every class of Musulmans) could not have 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 Bābur 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.