The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)
A few particulars about Akhsī will shew that, in the translations just
quoted, certain small changes of wording are dictated by what, amongst
other writers, Kostenko and von Schwarz have written about the oases of
Turkistān.
The name Akhsī, as used by Ibn Haukal, Yāqūt and Bābur, describes an
oasis township, _i.e._ a walled-town with its adjacent cultivated lands.
In Yāqūt's time Akhsī had a second circumvallation, presumably less for
defence than for the protection of crops against wild animals. The oasis
was created by the Kāsān-water,[2750] upon the riverain loess of the
right and higher bank of the Saiḥūn (Sīr), on level ground west of the
junction of the Nārīn and the Qarā-daryā, west too of spurs from the
northern hills which now abut upon the river. Yāqūt locates it in the
12th century, at one _farsākh_ (_circa_ 4 m.) north of the river.[2751]
Depending as it did solely on the Kāsān-water, nothing dictated its
location close to the Sīr, along which there is now, and there seems to
have been in the 12th century, a strip of waste land. Bābur says of
Akhsī what Kostenko says (i, 321) of modern Tāshkīnt, that it stood
above ravines (_jarlār_). These were natural or artificial channels of
the Kāsān-water.[2752]
To turn now to the translations;—Mr. Erskine imaged Akhsī as a castle,
high on a precipice in process of erosion by the Sīr. But Bābur's word,
_qūrghān_ means the walled-town; his word for a castle is _ark_,
citadel; and his _jar_, a cleft, is not rendered by 'precipice.'
Again;—it is no more necessary to understand that the Sīr flowed close
to the walls than it is to understand, when one says the Thames flows
past below Richmond, that it washes the houses on the hill.
The key to the difficulties in the Turkī passage is provided by a
special use of the word _jar_ for not only natural ravines but
artificial water-cuts for irrigation. This use of it makes clear that
what `Umar Shaikh did at Akhsī was not to make escarpments but to cut
new water-channels. Presumably he joined those 'further out' on the
deltaic fan, on the east and west of the town, so as to secure a
continuous defensive cleft round the town[2753] or it may be, in order
to bring it more water.
Concerning the historic pigeon-house (f. 6_b_), it can be said safely
that it did not fall into the Sīr; it fell from a _jar_, and in this
part of its course, the river flows in a broad bed, with a low left
bank. Moreover the Mīrzā's residence was in the walled-town (f. 110_b_)
and there his son stayed 9 years after the accident. The slip did not
affect the safety of the residence therefore; it may have been local to
the birds' house. It will have been due to some ordinary circumstance
since no cause for it is mentioned by Bābur, Ḥaidar or Abū'l-faẓl. If it
had marked the crisis of the Sīr's approach, Akhsī could hardly have
been described, 25 years later, as a strong fort.
Something is known of Akhsī, in the 10th, the 12th, the 15th and the
19th centuries, which testifies to sæcular decadence. Ibn Haukal and
Yāqūt give the township an extent of 3 _farsākh_ (12 miles), which may
mean from one side to an opposite one. Yāqūt's description of it
mentions four gates, each opening into well-watered lands extending a
whole _farsākh_, in other words it had a ring of garden-suburb four
miles wide.
Two meanings have been given to Bābur's words indicating the status of
the oasis in the 15th century. They are, _maḥallātī qūrghān-dīn bīr
shar`ī yurāqrāq tūshūb tūr_. They have been understood as saying that
the suburbs were two miles from their _urbs_. This may be right but I
hesitate to accept it without pointing out that the words may mean, 'Its
suburbs extend two miles farther than the walled-town.' Whichever verbal
reading is correct, reveals a decayed oasis.
In the 19th century, Nalivkine and Ujfalvy describe the place then
bearing the name Akhsī, as a small village, a mere winter-station, at
some distance from the river's bank, that bank then protected from
denudation by a sand-bank.
Three distinctly-marked stages of decadence in the oasis township are
thus indicated by Yāqūt, Bābur and the two modern travellers.
It is necessary to say something further about the position of the
suburbs in the 15th century. Bābur quotes as especially suitable to
Akhsī, the proverbial questions, 'Where is the village?'[2754] (qy.
Akhsī-kīnt.) 'Where are the trees?' and these might be asked by some-one
in the suburbs unable to see Akhsī or _vice versâ_. But granting that
there were no suburbs within two miles of the town, why had the whole
inner circle, two miles of Yāqūt's four, gone out of cultivation?
Erosion would have affected only land between the river and the town.
Again;—if the Sīr only were working in the 15th century to destroy a
town standing on the Kāsān-water, how is it that this stream does not
yet reach the Sīr?
Various ingatherings of information create the impression that failure
of Kāsān-water has been the dominant factor in the loss of the Akhsī
township. Such failure might be due to the general desiccation of
Central Asia and also to increase of cultivation in the Kāsān-valley
itself. There may have been erosion, and social and military change may
have had its part, but for the loss of the oasis lands and for, as a
sequel, the decay of the town, desiccation seems a sufficient cause.
The Kāsān-water still supports an oasis on its riverain slope, the large
Aūzbeg town of Tūpa-qūrghān (Town-of-the-hill), from the modern castle
of which a superb view is had up the Kāsān-valley, now thickly studded
with villages.[2755]
B.—THE BIRDS, QĪL QŪYIRŪGH AND BĀGHRĪ QARĀ.
Describing a small bird (_qūsh-qīna_), abundant in the Qarshī district
(f. 49_b_), Bābur names it the _qīl-qūyirūgh_, horse-tail, and says it
resembles the _bāghrī qarā_.
Later on he writes (f. 280) that the _bāghrī qarā_ of India is smaller
and more slender than 'those' _i.e._ of Transoxiana (f. 49_b_, n. 1),
the blackness of its breast less deep, and its cry less piercing.
We have had difficulty in identifying the birds but at length conclude
that the _bāghrī qarā_ of Transoxiana is _Pterocles arenarius_, Pallas's
black-bellied sand-grouse and that the Indian one is a smaller
sand-grouse, perhaps a _Syrrhaptes_. As the _qīl qūyirūgh_ resembles the
other two, it may be a yet smaller _Syrrhaptes_.
Muḥ. Ṣāliḥ, writing of sport Shaibāq Khān had in Qarshī
(_Shaibānī-nāma_, Vambéry, p. 192) mentions the 'Little bird (_murghak_)
of Qarshī,' as on all sides making lament. The Sang-lākh[2756] gives its
Persian name as _khar-pala_, ass-hair, says it flies in large flocks
and resembles the _bāghrī qarā_. Of the latter he writes as abundant in
the open country and as making noise (_bāghīr_).
The Sang-lākh (f. 119) gives the earliest and most informing account we
have found of the _bāghrī qarā_. Its says the bird is larger than a
pigeon, marked with various colours, yellow especially, black-breasted
and a dweller in the stony and waterless desert. These details are
followed by a quotation from `Alī-sher _Nawā'ī_, in which he likens his
own heart to that of the bird of the desert, presumably referring to the
gloom of the bird's plumage. Three synonyms are then given; Ar. _qiṯā_,
one due to its cry (Meninsky); Pers. _sang-shikan_, stone-eating,
(Steingass, _sang-khwāra_, stone-eating); and Turkī _bāghīr-tīlāq_ which
refers, I think, to its cry.
Morier (Ḥājī Bābā) in his _Second journey through Persia_ (Lond. 1818,
p. 181), mentions that a bird he calls the black-breasted partridge,
(_i.e._ _Francolinus vulgaris_) is known in Turkish as _bokara kara_ and
in Persian as _siyāh-sīna_, both names, (he says), meaning black-breast;
that it has a horse-shoe of black feathers round the forepart of the
trunk, more strongly marked in the female than in the male; that they
fly in flocks of which he saw immense numbers near Tabrīz (p. 283), have
a soft note, inhabit the plains, and, once settled, do not run. Cock and
hen alike have a small spur,—a characteristic, it may be said,
identifying rather with _Francolinus vulgaris_ than with _Pterocles
arenarius_. Against this identification, however, is Mr. Blandford's
statement that _siyāh-sīna_ (Morier's _bokara kara_) is _Pterocles
arenarius_ (Report of the Persian Boundary Commission, ii, 271).
In Afghānistān and Bikanir, the sand-grouse is called _tūtūrak_ and
_boora kurra_ (Jerdon, ii, 498). Scully explains _baghītāq_ as
_Pterocles arenarius_.
Perhaps I may mention something making me doubt whether it is correct to
translate _bāghrī qarā_ by _black-liver_ and _gorge-noir_ or other names
in which the same meaning is expressed. To translate thus, is to
understand a Turkī noun and adjective in Persian construction, and to
make exception to the rule, amply exemplified in lists of birds, that
Turkī names of birds are commonly in Turkī construction, _e.g._ _qarā
bāsh_ (black-head), _āq-bāsh_ (white-head), _sārīgh-sūndūk_
(yellow-headed wagtail). _Bāghīr_ may refer to the cry of the bird. We
learn from Mr. Ogilvie Grant that the Mongol name for the sand-grouse
_njūpterjūn_, is derived from its cry in flight, _truck_, _truck_, and
its Arabic name _qiṯā_ is said by Meninsky to be derived from its cry
_kaetha_, _kaetha_. Though the dissimilarity of the two cries is against
taking the _njūpterjūn_ and the _qiṯā_ to be of one class of
sand-grouse, the significance of the derivation of the names remains,
and shows that there are examples in support of thinking that when a
sand-grouse is known as _bāghrī qarā_, it may be so known because of its
cry (_bāghir_).
The word _qarā_ finds suggestive interpretation in a B. N. phrase (f.
72_b_) _Taṃbal-nīng qarā-sī_, Taṃbal's blackness, _i.e._ the dark mass
of his moving men, seen at a distance. It is used also for an indefinite
number, _e.g._ 'family, servants, retainers, followers, _qarā_,' and I
think it may imply a massed flock.
Bābur's words (f. 280) _bāghrī-nīng qarā-sī ham kam dūr_, [its belly
(lit. liver) also is less black], do not necessarily contradict the view
that the word _bāghrī_ in the bird's name means crying. The root _bāgh_
has many and pliable derivatives; I suspect both Bābur (here) and Muḥ.
Ṣāliḥ (l. c.) of ringing changes on words.
We are indebted for kind reply to our questions to Mr. Douglas
Carruthers, Mr. Ogilvie Grant and to our friend, Mr. R. S. Whiteway.
C.—ON THE GOSHA-GĪR.
I am indebted to my husband's examination of two Persian MSS. on
archery for an explanation of the word _gosha-gīr_, in its technical
sense in archery. The works consulted are the Cyclopædia of
Archery (_Kulliyatu'r-rāmī_ I. O. 2771) and the Archer's Guide
(_Hidāyatu'r-rāmī_ I. O. 2768).
It should be premised that in archery, the word _gosha_ describes, in
the arrow, the notch by which it grips and can be carried on the string,
and, in the bow, both the tip (horn) and the notch near the tip in which
the string catches. It is explained by Vullers as _cornu et crena arcûs
cui immititur nervus_.
Two passages in the Cyclopædia of Archery (f. 9 and f. 36_b_) shew
_gosha_ as the bow-tip. One says that to bend the bow, two men must
grasp the two _gosha_; the other reports a tradition that the Archangel
Gabriel brought a bow having its two _gosha_ (tips) made of ruby. The
same book directs that the _gosha_ be made of seasoned ivory, the
Archer's Guide prescribing seasoned mulberry wood.
The C. of A. (f. 125_b_) says that a bowman should never be without two
things, his arrows and his _gosha-gīr_. The _gosha-gīr_ may be called an
item of the repairing kit; it is an implement (f. 53) for making good a
warped bow-tip and for holding the string into a displaced notch. It is
known also as the _chaprās_, brooch or buckle, and the _kardāng_; and is