The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)
and not for own use. Burnes observes that in 1837 Lūhānī
merchants carried precisely the same articles of trade as in
Bābur's day, 332 years earlier (_Report_ IX p. 99).
[902] Mr. Erskine thought it probable that the first of these
routes went through Kanigūram, and the second through the
Ghwālirī-pass and along the Gūmāl. _Birk_, fastness, would
seem an appropriate name for Kanigūram, but, if Bābur meant to
go to Ghaznī, he would be off the ordinary Gūmāl-Ghaznī route
in going through Farmūl (Aūrgūn). Raverty's _Notes_ give much
useful detail about these routes, drawn from native sources.
For Barak (Birk) _see_ _Notes_ pp. 88, 89; Vigne, p. 102.
[903] From this it would seem that the alternative roads were
approached by one in common.
[904] _tūmshūq_, a bird's bill, used here, as in Selsey-bill,
for the naze (nose), or snout, the last spur, of a range.
[905] Here these words may be common nouns.
[906] Nū-roz, the feast of the old Persian New-year (Erskine);
it is the day on which the Sun enters Aries.
[907] In the [Turkī] Elph. and Ḥai. MSS. and in some Persian
ones, there is a space left here as though to indicate a known
omission.
[908] _kamarī_, sometimes a cattle-enclosure, which may serve
as a _sangur_. The word may stand in one place of its
_Bābur-nāma_ uses for Gum-rāhī (R.'s _Notes_ _s.n._
Gum-rāhān).
[909] Index _s.n._
[910] Vigne, p. 241.
[911] This name can be translated "He turns not back" or "He
stops not".
[912] _i.e._ five from Bīlah.
[913] Raverty gives the saint's name as Pīr Kānūn (Ar.
_kānūn_, listened to). It is the well-known Sakhī-sarwār,
honoured hy Hindūs and Muḥammadans. (G. of I., xxi, 390; R.'s
_Notes_ p. 11 and p. 12 and JASB 1855; Calcutta Review 1875,
Macauliffe's art. _On the fair at Sakhi-sarwar_; Leech's
_Report_ VII, for the route; _Khazīnatu 'l-asfiyā_ iv, 245.)
[914] This seems to be the sub-district of Qandahār, Dūkī or
Dūgī.
[915] _khar-gāh_, a folding tent on lattice frame-work,
perhaps a _khibitka_.
[916] It may be more correct to write Kāh-mard, as the Ḥai.
MS. does and to understand in the name a reference to the
grass(_kāh_)-yielding capacity of the place.
[917] f. 121.
[918] This may mean, what irrigation has not used.
[919] Mr. Erskine notes that the description would lead us to
imagine a flock of flamingoes. Masson found the lake filled
with red-legged, white fowl (i, 262); these and also what
Bābur saw, may have been the China-goose which has body and
neck white, head and tail russet (Bellew's _Mission_ p. 402).
Broadfoot seems to have visited the lake when migrants were
few, and through this to have been led to adverse comment on
Bābur's accuracy (p. 350).
[920] The usual dryness of the bed may have resulted from the
irrigation of much land some 12 miles from Ghaznī.
[921] This is the Luhūgur (Logar) water, knee-deep in winter
at the ford but spreading in flood with the spring-rains.
Bābur, not being able to cross it for the direct roads into
Kābul, kept on along its left bank, crossing it eventually at
the Kamarī of maps, s.e. of Kābul.
[922] This disastrous expedition, full of privation and loss,
had occupied some four months (T.R. p. 201).
[923] f. 145b.
[924] f. 133b and Appendix F.
[925] They were located in Mandrāwar in 926 AH. (f. 251).
[926] This was done, manifestly, with the design of drawing
after the families their fighting men, then away with Bābur.
[927] f. 163. Shaibāq Khān besieged Chīn Ṣufī, Sl. Ḥusain
Mīrzā's man in Khwārizm (T. R. p. 204; _Shaibānī-nāma_,
Vambéry, Table of Contents and note 89).
[928] Survey Map 1889, Sadda. The Rāgh-water flows n.w. into
the Oxus (Amū).
[929] _birk_, a mountain stronghold; cf. f. 149b note to Birk
(Barak).
[930] They were thus driven on from the Bārān-water (f. 154b).
[931] f. 126b.
[932] Ḥiṣār, presumably.
[933] Here "His Honour" translates Bābur's clearly ironical
honorific plural.
[934] These two sulṯāns, almost always mentioned in alliance,
may be Tīmūrids by maternal descent (Index _s.nn._). So far I
have found no direct statement of their parentage. My husband
has shewn me what may be one indication of it, _viz._ that two
of the uncles of Shaibāq Khān (whose kinsmen the sulṯāns seem
to be), Qūj-kūnjī and Sīūnjak, were sons of a daughter of the
Tīmūrid Aūlūgh Beg _Samarkandī_ (Ḥ.S. ii, 318). _See_
Vambéry's _Bukhārā_ p. 248 note.
[935] For the deaths of Taṃbal and Maḥmūd, mentioned in the
above summary of Shaibāq Khān's actions, _see_ the
_Shaibānī-nāma_, Vambéry, p. 323.
[936] Ḥ.S. ii, 323, for Khusrau Shāh's character and death.
[937] f. 124.
[938] Khwāja-of-the-rhubarb, presumably a shrine near
rhubarb-grounds (f. 129b).
[939] _yakshī bārdīlār_, lit. went well, a common expression
in the _Bābur-nāma_, of which the reverse statement is
_yamānlīk bīla bārdī_ (f. 163). Some Persian MSS. make the
Mughūls disloyal but this is not only in opposition to the
Turkī text, it is a redundant statement since if disloyal,
they are included in Bābur's previous statement, as being
Khusrau Shāh's retainers. What might call for comment in
Mughūls would be loyalty to Bābur.
[940] Elph. MS. f. 121b: W.-i-B. I.O. 215 f. 126 and 217 f.
106b; Mems. p. 169.
[941] _tāgh-dāmanasī_, presumably the Koh-dāman, and the
garden will thus be the one of f. 136b.
[942] If these heirs were descendants of Aūlūgh Beg M. one
would be at hand in `Abdu'r-razzāq, then a boy, and another, a
daughter, was the wife of Muqīm _Arghūn_. As Mr. Erskine
notes, Musalmāns are most scrupulous not to bury their dead in
ground gained by violence or wrong.
[943] The news of Aḥmad's death was belated; he died some 13
months earlier, in the end of 909 AH. and in Eastern
Turkistān. Perhaps details now arrived.
[944] _i.e._ the fortieth day of mourning, when alms are
given.
[945] Of those arriving, the first would find her
step-daughter dead, the second her sister, the third, his late
wife's sister (T. R. p. 196).
[946] This will be the earthquake felt in Agra on Ṣafar 3rd
911 AH. (July 5th 1505 AD. Erskine's _History of India_ i, 229
note). Cf. Elliot and Dowson, iv, 465 and v, 99.
[947] Raverty's _Notes_ p. 690.
[948] _bīr kitta tāsh ātīmī_; var. _bāsh ātīmī_. If _tāsh_ be
right, the reference will probably be to the throw of a
catapult.
[949] Here almost certainly, a drummer, because there were two
tambours and because also Bābur uses _`aūdī_ & _ghachakī_ for
the other meanings of _ṯambourchi_, lutanist and guitarist.
The word has found its way, as _tambourgi_, into Childe
Harold's Pilgrimage (Canto ii, lxxii. H. B.).
[950] Kābul-Ghaznī road (R.'s _Notes_ index _s.n._).
[951] var. Yārī. Tāzī is on the Ghaznī-Qalāt-i-ghilzāī road
(R.'s _Notes_, Appendix p. 46).
[952] _i.e._ in Kābul and in the Trans-Himalayan country.
[953] These will be those against Bābur's suzerainty done by
their defence of Qalāt for Muqīm.
[954] _tabaqa_, dynasty. By using this word Bābur shews
recognition of high birth. It is noticeable that he usually
writes of an Arghūn chief either simply as "Beg" or without a
title. This does not appear to imply admission of equality,
since he styles even his brothers and sisters Mīrzā and Begīm;
nor does it shew familiarity of intercourse, since none seems
to have existed between him and Ẕū'n-nūn or Muqīm. That he did
not admit equality is shewn on f. 208. The T.R. styles
Ẕū'n-nūn "Mīrzā", a title by which, as also by Shāh, his
descendants are found styled (A.-i-a. Blochmann, _s.n._).
[955] Turkī _khachar_ is a camel or mule used for carrying
personal effects. The word has been read by some scribes as
_khanjar_, dagger.
[956] In 910 AH. he had induced Bābur to come to Kābul instead
of going into Khurāsān (Ḥ.S. iii, 319); in the same year he
dictated the march to Kohāt, and the rest of that disastrous
travel. His real name was not Bāqī but Muḥammad Bāqir (Ḥ.S.
iii, 311).
[957] These transit or custom duties are so called because the
dutiable articles are stamped with a _ṯamghā_, a wooden stamp.
[958] Perhaps this word is an equivalent of Persian _goshī_, a
tax on cattle and beasts of burden.
[959] Bāqī was one only and not the head of the Lords of the
Gate.
[960] The choice of the number nine, links on presumably to
the mystic value attached to it _e.g._ Tarkhāns had nine
privileges; gifts were made by nines.
[961] It is near Ḥasan-abdāl (A.-i-A. Jarrett, ii, 324).
[962] For the _farmān_, f. 146b; for Gujūrs, G. of I.
[963] var. Khwesh. Its water flows into the Ghūr-bund stream;
it seems to be the Dara-i-Turkmān of Stanford and the Survey
Maps both of which mark Janglīk. For Hazāra turbulence, f.
135b and note.
[964] The repetition of _aūq_ in this sentence can hardly be
accidental.
[965] _ṯaur_ [_dara_], which I take to be Turkī, round,
complete.
[966] Three MSS. of the Turkī text write _bīr sīmīzlūq tīwah_;
but the two Persian translations have _yak shuturlūq farbīh_,
a _shuturlūq_ being a baggage-camel with little hair
(Erskine).
[967] _brochettes_, meat cut into large mouthfuls, spitted and
roasted.
[968] Perhaps he was officially an announcer; the word means
also bearer of good news.
[969] _yīlāng_, without mail, as in the common phrase _yīgīt
yīlāng_, a bare brave.
[970] _aūpchīn_, of horse and man (f. 113b and note).
[971] Manifestly Bābur means that he twice actually helped to
collect the booty.
[972] This is that part of a horse covered by the two
side-pieces of a Turkī saddle, from which the side-arch
springs on either side (Shaw).
[973] _Bārān-nīng ayāghī._ Except the river I have found
nothing called Bārān; the village marked Baian on the French
Map would suit the position; it is n.e. of Chār-yak-kār (f.
184b note).
[974] _i.e._ prepared to fight.
[975] For the Hazāra (Turkī, Mīng) on the Mīrzā's road _see_
Raverty's routes from Ghaznī to the north. An account given by
the _Tārīkh-i-rashīdī_ (p. 196) of Jahāngīr's doings is
confused; its parenthetical "(at the same time)" can hardly be
correct. Jahāngīr left Ghaznī now, (911 AH.), as Bābur left
Kābul in 912 AH. without knowledge of Ḥusain's death (911
AH.). Bābur had heard it (f. 183b) before Jahāngīr joined him
(912 AH.); after their meeting they went on together to Herī.
The petition of which the T. R. speaks as made by Jahāngīr to
Bābur, that he might go into Khurāsān and help the Bāī-qarā
Mīrzās must have been made after the meeting of the two at
Ṣaf-hill (f. 184b).
[976] The plurals _they_ and _their_ of the preceding sentence
stand no doubt for the Mīrzā, Yūsuf and Buhlūl who all had
such punishment due as would lead them to hear threat in
Qāsim's words now when all were within Bābur's pounce.
[977] These are the _aīmāqs_ from which the fighting-men went
east with Bābur in 910 AH. and the families in which Nāṣir
shepherded across Hindu-kush (f. 154 and f. 155).
[978] _yamānlīk bīla bārdī_; cf. f. 156b and n. for its
opposite, _yakhshī bārdīlār_; and T. R. p. 196.
[979] One might be of mail, the other of wadded cloth.
[980] Chīn Ṣūfī was Ḥusain _Bāī-qarā's_ man (T.R. p. 204). His