The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)
by rendering them as _oat_ and _coat_. The other is on pointed
and unpointed letters, _i.e._ _ghala_ and _`ala_. We cannot
find however a Persian word _`ala_, meaning garment.
[552] Bābur's refrain is _ghūsīdūr_, his rhymes _būl_,
_(buyur)ūl_ and _tūl_. Binā'ī makes _būlghūsīdūr_ his refrain
but his rhymes are not true _viz._ _yīr_, _(sa)mar_ and _lār_.
[553] Shawwāl 906 AH. began April 20th. 1501.
[554] From the _Bū-stān_, Graf ed. p. 55, l. 246.
[555] Sīkīz Yīldūz. _See_ Chardin's _Voyages_, v, 136 and
Table; also Stanley Lane Poole's _Bābur_, p. 56.
[556] In 1791 AD. Muḥ. Effendi shot 482 yards from a Turkish
bow, before the R. Tox. S.; not a good shot, he declared.
Longer ones are on record. _See_ Payne-Gallwey's _Cross-bow_
and AQR. 1911, H. Beveridge's _Oriental Cross-bows_.
[557] In the margin of the Elph. Codex, here, stands a Persian
verse which appears more likely to be Humāyūn's than Bābur's.
It is as follows:
Were the Mughūl race angels, they would be bad;
Written in gold, the name Mughūl would be bad;
Pluck not an ear from the Mughūl's corn-land,
What is sown with Mughūl seed will be bad.
This verse is written into the text of the First W.-i-B. (I.O.
215 f. 72) and is introduced by a scribe's statement that it
is by _ān Ḥaẓrat_, much as notes known to be Humāyūn's are
elsewhere attested in the Elph. Codex. It is not in the Ḥai.
and Kehr's MSS. nor with, at least many, good copies of the
Second W.-i-B.
[558] This subterranean water-course, issuing in a flowing
well (Erskine) gave its name to a bastion (Ḥ.S. ii, 300).
[559] _nāwak_, a diminutive of _nāo_, a tube. It is described,
in a MS. of Bābur's time, by Muḥ. Budhā'ī, and, in a second of
later date, by Amīnu'd-dīn (AQR 1911, H.B.'s _Oriental
Cross-bows_).
[560] Kostenko, i, 344, would make the rounds 9 m.
[561] _bīr yūz ātliqnīng ātinī nāwak aūqī bila yakhshī atīm._
This has been read by Erskine as though _būz āt_, pale horse,
and not _yūz ātlīq_, Centurion, were written. De. C.
translates by Centurion and a marginal note of the Elph. Codex
explains _yūz ātlīq_ by _ṣad aspagī_.
[562] The Sh. N. gives the reverse side of the picture, the
plenty enjoyed by the besiegers.
[563] He may have been attached to the tomb of Khwāja
`Abdu'l-lāh _Anṣārī_ in Harāt.
[564] The brusque entry here and elsewhere of _e.g._ Taṃbal's
affairs, allows the inference that Bābur was quoting from
perhaps a news-writer's, contemporary records. For a different
view of Taṃbal, the Sh. N. cap. xxxiii should be read.
[565] Five-villages, on the main Khujand-Tāshkīnt road.
[566] _turk_, as on f. 28 of Khusrau Shāh.
[567] Elph. MS. f. 68b; W.-i-B. I.O. 215 f. 78 and 217 f. 61b;
Mems. p. 97.
The Kehr-Ilminsky text shews, in this year, a good example of
its Persification and of Dr. Ilminsky's dealings with his
difficult archetype by the help of the Memoirs.
[568] _tāshlāb._ The Sh. N. places these desertions as after
four months of siege.
[569] It strikes one as strange to find Long Ḥasan described,
as here, in terms of his younger brother. The singularity may
be due to the fact that Ḥusain was with Bābur and may have
invited Ḥasan. It may be noted here that Ḥusain seems likely
to be that father-in-law of `Umar Shaikh mentioned on f. 12b
and 13b.
[570] This laudatory comment I find nowhere but in the Ḥai.
Codex.
[571] There is some uncertainty about the names of those who
left.
[572] The Sh. N. is interesting here as giving an eye-witness'
account of the surrender of the town and of the part played in
the surrender by Khān-zāda's marriage (cap. xxxix).
[573] The first seems likely to be a relation of Niẕāmu'd-dīn
`Alī Khalīfa; the second was Mole-marked, a foster-sister. The
party numbered some 100 persons of whom Abū'l-makāram was one
(Ḥ.S. ii, 310).
[574] Bābur's brevity is misleading; his sister was not
captured but married with her own and her mother's consent
before attempt to leave the town was made. _Cf._ Gul-badan's
H.N. f. 3b and Sh. N. Vambéry, p. 145.
[575] The route taken avoided the main road for Dīzak; it can
be traced by the physical features, mentioned by Bābur, on the
Fr. map of 1904. The Sh. N. says the night was extraordinarily
dark. Departure in blinding darkness and by unusual ways shews
distrust of Shaibāq's safe-conduct suggesting that Yaḥyā's
fate was in the minds of the fugitives.
[576] The texts differ as to whether the last two lines are
prose or verse. All four are in Turkī, but I surmise a
clerical error in the refrain of the third, where _būlūb_ is
written for _būldī_.
[577] The second was in 908 AH. (f. 18_b_); the third in 914
AH. (f. 216 _b_); the fourth is not described in the B.N.; it
followed Bābur's defeat at Ghaj-diwān in 918 AH. (Erskine's
_History of India_, i, 325). He had a fifth, but of a
different kind, when he survived poison in 933 AH. (f. 305).
[578] Ḥai. MS. _qāqāsrāq_; Elph. MS. _yānasrāq_.
[579] _ātūn_, one who instructs in reading, writing and
embroidery. _Cf._ Gulbadan's H.N. f. 26. The distance walked
may have been 70 or 80 m.
[580] She was the wife of the then Governor of Aūrā-tīpā, Muḥ.
Ḥusain _Dūghlāt_.
[581] It may be noted here that in speaking of these elder
women Bābur uses the honorific plural, a form of rare
occurrence except for such women, for saintly persons and
exceptionally for The supreme Khān. For his father he has
never used it.
[582] This name has several variants. The village lies, in a
valley-bottom, on the Aq-sū and on a road. _See_ Kostenko, i,
119.
[583] She had been divorced from Shaibānī in order to allow
him to make legal marriage with her niece, Khān-zāda.
[584] Amongst the variants of this name, I select the modern
one. Macha is the upper valley of the Zar-afshān.
[585] Tīmūr took Dihlī in 801 AH. (Dec. 1398), _i.e._ 103
solar and 106 lunar years earlier. The ancient dame would then
have been under 5 years old. It is not surprising therefore
that in repeating her story Bābur should use a tense
betokening hear-say matter (_bārib īkān dūr_).
[586] The anecdote here following, has been analysed in JRAS
1908, p. 87, in order to show warrant for the opinion that
parts of the Kehr-Ilminsky text are retranslations from the
Persian W.-i-B.
[587] Amongst those thus leaving seem to have been Qaṃbar-`alī
(f. 99b).
[588] _Cf._ f. 107 foot.
[589] The Sh. N. speaks of the cold in that winter (Vambéry,
p. 160). It was unusual for the Sīr to freeze in this part of
its course (Sh. N. p. 172) where it is extremely rapid
(Kostenko, i, 213).
[590] _Cf._ f. 4b.
[591] Point to point, some 50 miles.
[592] _Āhangarān-julgasī_, a name narrowed on maps to Angren
(valley).
[593] _Faut shūd Nuyān._ The numerical value of these words is
907. Bābur when writing, looks back 26 years to the death of
this friend.
[594] Āb-burdan village is on the Zar-afshān; the pass is
11,200 ft. above the sea. Bābur's boundaries still hold good
and the spring still flows. _See_ Ujfalvy _l.c._ i. 14;
Kostenko, i, 119 and 193; Rickmers, JRGS 1907, p. 358.
[595] From the _Bū-stān_ (Graf's ed. Vienna 1858, p. 561). The
last couplet is also in the _Gulistān_ (Platts' ed. p. 72).
The Bombay lith. ed. of the _Bū-stān_ explains (p. 39) that
the "We" of the third couplet means Jamshīd and his
predecessors who have rested by his fountain.
[596] _nīma._ The First W.-i-B. (I.O. 215 f. 81 l. 8) writes
_tawārīkh_, annals.
[597] This may be the Khwāja Hijrī of the A.N. (index _s.n._);
and Badāyūnī's Ḥasan _Hijrī_, Bib. Ind. iii, 385; and Ethé's
Pers. Cat. No. 793; and Bod. Cat. No. 189.
[598] The Ḥai. MS. points in the last line as though punning
on Khān and Jān, but appears to be wrong.
[599] For an account of the waste of crops, the Sh. N. should
be seen (p. 162 and 180).
[600] I think this refers to last year's move (f. 94 foot).
[601] In other words, the T. preposition, meaning E. in, at,
_etc._ may be written with t or d, as _ta(tā)_ or as _da(dā)_.
Also the one meaning E. towards, may be _gha_, _qa_, or _ka_
(with long or short vowel).
[602] _dīm_, a word found difficult. It may be a derivative of
root _de_, tell, and a noun with the meaning of English tale
(number). The First W.-i-B. renders it by _san_, and by _san_,
Abū'l-ghāzī expresses what Bābur's _dīm_ expresses, the
numbering of troops. It occurs thrice in the B.N. (here, on f.
183b and on f. 264b). In the Elphinstone Codex it has been
written-over into _Ivīm_, once resembles _vīm_ more than _dīm_
and once is omitted. The L. and E. _Memoirs_ (p. 303) inserts
what seems a gloss, saying that a whip or bow is used in the
count, presumably held by the teller to 'keep his place' in
the march past. The _Siyāsat-nāma_ (Schefer, trs. p. 22) names
the whip as used in numbering an army.
[603] The acclamation of the standards is depicted in B.M.
W.-i-B. Or. 3714 f. 128b. One cloth is shewn tied to the off
fore-leg of a live cow, above the knee, Bābur's word being
_aūrtā aīlīk_ (middle-hand).
[604] The libation was of fermented mares'-milk.
[605] _lit._ their one way.
[606] _Cf._ T.R. p. 308.
[607] Elph. MS. f. 74; W.-i-B. I.O. 215 f. 83 and 217 f. 66;
Mems. p. 104.
[608] It may be noted that Bābur calls his mother's brothers,
not _ṯaghāī_ but _dādā_ father. I have not met with an
instance of his saying 'My ṯaghāī' as he says 'My dādā.' _Cf._
index _s.n._ _taghāī_.
[609] _kūrūnūsh qīlīb_, reflective from _kūrmak_, to see.
[610] A rider's metaphor.
[611] As touching the misnomer, 'Mughūl dynasty' for the
Tīmūrid rulers in Hindūstān, it may be noted that here, as
Bābur is speaking to a Chaghatāī Mughūl, his 'Turk' is left to
apply to himself.
[612] Gulistān, cap. viii, Maxim 12 (Platts' ed. p. 147).
[613] This backward count is to 890 AH. when Aḥmad fled from
cultivated lands (T.R. p. 113).
[614] It becomes clear that Aḥmad had already been asked to
come to Tāshkīnt.
[615] _Cf._ f. 96b for his first departure without help.
[616] Yagha (Yaghma) is not on the Fr. map of 1904, but
suitably located is Turbat (Tomb) to which roads converge.
[617] Elph. MS. _tūshkūcha_; Ḥai. MS. _yūkūnchā_. The
importance Aḥmad attached to ceremony can be inferred by the
details given (f. 103) of his meeting with Maḥmūd.
[618] _kūrūshkāīlār._ _Cf._ Redhouse who gives no support for
reading the verb _kūrmak_ as meaning _to embrace_.
[619] _būrk_, a tall felt cap (Redhouse). In the adjective
applied to the cap there are several variants. The Ḥai. MS.
writes _muftūl_, solid or twisted. The Elph. MS. has
_muftūn-lūq_ which has been understood by Mr. Erskine to mean,
gold-embroidered.
[620] The wording suggests that the decoration is in
chain-stitch, pricked up and down through the stuff.
[621] _tāsh chantāī._ These words have been taken to mean
whet-stone (_bilgū-tāsh_). I have found no authority for
reading _tāsh_ as whet-stone. Moreover to allow 'bag of the
stone' to be read would require _tāsh (nīng) chantāī-sī_ in
the text.
[622] lit. bag-like things. Some will have held spare
bow-strings and archers' rings, and other articles of
'repairing kit.' With the gifts, it seems probable that the