The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)
troops were measured off as so many bow- or whip-lengths
(Index _s.n._ _dīm_).
[1660] These _arāba_ may have been the baggage-carts of the
army and also carts procured on the spot. Erskine omits
(_Memoirs_ p. 304) the words which show how many carts were
collected and from whom. Doubtless it would be through not
having these circumstances in his mind that he took the
_arāba_ for gun-carriages. His incomplete translation, again,
led Stanley Lane-Poole to write an interesting note in his
_Bābur_ (p. 161) to support Erskine against de Courteille
(with whose rendering mine agrees) by quoting the circumstance
that Humāyūn had 700 guns at Qanauj in 1540 AD. It must be
said in opposition to his support of Erskine's "gun-carriages"
that there is no textual or circumstantial warrant for
supposing Bābur to have had guns, even if made in parts, in
such number as to demand 700 gun-carriages for their
transport. What guns Bābur had at Pānī-pat will have been
brought from his Kābul base; if he had acquired any, say from
Lāhor, he would hardly omit to mention such an important
reinforcement of his armament; if he had brought many guns on
carts from Kābul, he must have met with transit-difficulties
harassing enough to chronicle, while he was making that long
journey from Kābul to Pānī-pat, over passes, through
skirt-hills and many fords. The elephants he had in Bīgrām may
have been his transport for what guns he had; he does not
mention his number at Pānī-pat; he makes his victory a
bow-man's success; he can be read as indicating that he had
two guns only.
[1661] These Ottoman (text, _Rūmī_, Roman) defences Ustād
`Alī-qulī may have seen at the battle of Chāldirān fought some
40 leagues from Tābrīz between Sl. Salīm _Rūmī_ and Shāh
Ismā`īl _Ṣafawī_ on Rajab 1st 920 AH. (Aug. 22nd 1514 AD.). Of
this battle Khwānd-amīr gives a long account, dwelling on the
effective use made in it of chained carts and palisades
(_Ḥabību's-siyar_ iii, part 4, p. 78; _Akbar-nāma_ trs. i,
241).
[1662] Is this the village of the Pānī Afghāns?
[1663] Index _s.n._ arrow.
[1664] _Pareshān jam`ī u jam`ī pareshān;
Giriftār qaumī u qaumī `ajā'ib._
These two lines do not translate easily without the context of
their original place of occurrence. I have not found their
source.
[1665] _i.e._ of his father and grandfather, Sikandar and
Buhlūl.
[1666] As to the form of this word the authoritative MSS. of
the Turkī text agree and with them also numerous good ones of
the Persian translation. I have made careful examination of
the word because it is replaced or explained here and there in
MSS. by _s:hb:ndī_, the origin of which is said to be obscure.
The sense of _b:d-hindī_ and of _s:hb:ndī_ is the same, _i.e._
irregular levy. The word as Bābur wrote it must have been
understood by earlier Indian scribes of both the Turkī and
Persian texts of the _Bābur-nāma_. Some light on its
correctness may be thought given by Hobson Jobson (Crooke's
ed. p. 136) _s.n._ Byde or Bede Horse, where the word Byde is
said to be an equivalent of _pindārī_, _lūtī_, and _qāzzāq_,
raider, plunderer, so that Bābur's word _b:d-hindī_ may mean
_qāzzāq_ of Hind. Wherever I have referred to the word in many
MSS. it is pointed to read _b:d_, and not _p:d_, thus
affording no warrant for understanding _pad_, foot, foot-man,
infantry, and also negativing the spelling _bīd_, _i.e._ with
a long vowel as in _Byde_.
It may be noted here that Muḥ. _Shīrāzī_ (p. 174) substituted
_s:hb:ndī_ for Bābur's word and that this led our friend the
late William Irvine to attribute mistake to de Courteille who
follows the Turkī text (_Army of the Mughūls_ p. 66 and
_Mémoires_ ii, 163).
[1667] _bī tajarba yīgīt aīdī_ of which the sense may be that
Bābur ranked Ibrāhīm, as a soldier, with a brave who has not
yet proved himself deserving of the rank of beg. It cannot
mean that he was a youth (_yīgīt_) without experience of
battle.
[1668] Well-known are the three decisive historical battles
fought near the town of Pānī-pat, _viz._ those of Bābur and
Ibrāhīm in 1526, of Akbar and Hīmū in 1556, and of Aḥmad
_Abdālī_ with the Mahratta Confederacy in 1761. The following
lesser particulars about the battle-field are not so
frequently mentioned:—(_i_) that the scene of Bābur's victory
was long held to be haunted, Badāyūnī himself, passing it at
dawn some 62 years later, heard with dismay the din of
conflict and the shouts of the combatants; (_ii_) that Bābur
built a (perhaps commemorative) mosque one mile to the n.e. of
the town; (_iii_) that one of the unaccomplished desires of
Sher Shāh _Sūr_, the conqueror of Bābur's son Humāyūn, was to
raise two monuments on the battle-field of Pānī-pat, one to
Ibrāhīm, the other to those Chaghatāī sulṯāns whose martyrdom
he himself had brought about; (_iv_) that in 1910 AD. the
British Government placed a monument to mark the scene of Shāh
_Abdālī's_ victory of 1761 AD. This monument would appear,
from Sayyid Ghulām-i-`alī's _Nigār-nāma-i-hind_, to stand
close to the scene of Bābur's victory also, since the
Mahrattas were entrenched as he was outside the town of
Pānī-pat. (Cf. E. & D. viii, 401.)
[1669] This important date is omitted from the L. & E.
_Memoirs_.
[1670] This wording will cover armour of man and horse.
[1671] _ātlāndūk_, Pers. trs. _sūwār shudīm_. Some later
oriental writers locate Bābur's battle at two or more miles
from the town of Pānī-pat, and Bābur's word _ātlāndūk_ might
imply that his cavalry rode forth and arrayed outside his
defences, but his narrative allows of his delivering attack,
through the wide sally-ports, after arraying behind the carts
and mantelets which checked his adversary's swift advance. The
Mahrattas, who may have occupied the same ground as Bābur,
fortified themselves more strongly than he did, as having
powerful artillery against them. Aḥmad Shāh _Abdālī's_ defence
against them was an ordinary ditch and _abbattis_, [Bābur's
ditch and branch,] mostly of _dhāk_ trees (_Butea frondosa_),
a local product Bābur also is likely to have used.
[1672] The preceding three words seem to distinguish this Shāh
Ḥusain from several others of his name and may imply that he
was the son of _Yāragī Mughūl Ghānchī_ (Index and I.O. 217 f.
184b l. 7).
[1673] For Bābur's terms _vide_ f. 209_b_
[1674] This is Mīrzā Khān's son, _i.e._ Wais _Mīrān-shāhī's_.
[1675] A dispute for this right-hand post of honour is
recorded on f. 100_b_, as also in accounts of Culloden.
[1676] _tartīb u yāsāl_, which may include, as Erskine took it
to do, the carts and mantelets; of these however, Ibrāhīm can
hardly have failed to hear before he rode out of camp.
[1677] f. 217_b_ and note; Irvine's _Army of the Indian
Mughuls_ p. 133. Here Erskine notes (_Mems._ p. 306) "The size
of these artillery at this time is very uncertain. The word
_firingī_ is now (1826 AD.) used in the Deccan for a swivel.
At the present day, _zarb-zan_ in common usage is a small
species of swivel. Both words in Bābur's time appear to have
been used for field-cannon." (For an account of guns,
intermediate in date between Bābur and Erskine, _see_ the
_Āyīn-i-akbarī_. Cf. f. 264 n. on the carts (_arāba_).)
[1678] Although the authority of the
_Tārīkh-i-salāṯīn-i-afaghāna_ is not weighty its reproduction
of Afghān opinion is worth consideration. It says that
astrologers foretold Ibrāhīm's defeat; that his men, though
greatly outnumbering Bābur's, were out-of-heart through his
ill-treatment of them, and his amīrs in displeasure against
him, but that never-the-less, the conflict at Pānī-pat was
more desperate than had ever been seen. It states that Ibrāhīm
fell where his tomb now is (_i.e._ in _circa_ 1002 AH.-1594
AD.); that Bābur went to the spot and, prompted by his tender
heart, lifted up the head of his dead adversary, and said,
"Honour to your courage!", ordered brocade and sweetmeats made
ready, enjoined Dilāwar Khān and Khalīfa to bathe the corpse
and to bury it where it lay (E. & D. v, 2). Naturally, part of
the reverence shewn to the dead would be the burial together
of head and trunk.
[1679] f. 209_b_ and App. H. section _c._ Bābā _chuhra_ would
be one of the corps of braves.
[1680] He was a brother of Muḥibb-i-`alī's mother.
[1681] To give Humāyūn the title Mīrzā may be a scribe's
lapse, but might also be a _nuance_ of Bābur's, made to shew,
with other _minutiae_, that Humāyūn was in chief command. The
other minute matters are that instead of Humāyūn's name being
the first of a simple series of commanders' names with the
enclitic accusative appended to the last one (here Walī), as
is usual, Humāyūn's name has its own enclitic _nī_; and,
again, the phrase is "_Humāyūn with_" such and such begs, a
turn of expression differentiating him from the rest. The same
unusual variations occur again, just below, perhaps with the
same intention of shewing chief command, there of Mahdī
Khwāja.
[1682] A small matter of wording attracts attention in the
preceding two sentences. Bābur, who does not always avoid
verbal repetition, here constructs two sentences which, except
for the place-names Dihlī and Āgra, convey information of
precisely the same action in entirely different words.
[1683] d. 1325 AD. The places Bābur visited near Dihlī are
described in the _Reports of the Indian Archaeological
Survey_, in Sayyid Aḥmad's _As̤ār Sanādīd_ pp. 74-85, in
Keene's _Hand-book to Dihlī_ and Murray's _Hand-book to Bengal
etc._ The last two quote much from the writings of Cunningham
and Fergusson.
[1684] and on the same side of the river.
[1685] d. 1235 AD. He was a native of Aūsh [Ush] in Farghāna.
[1686] d. 1286 AD. He was a Slave ruler of Dihlī.
[1687] `Alāu'u'd-dīn Muḥ. Shāh _Khiljī Turk_ d. 1316 AD. It is
curious that Bābur should specify visiting his Minār
(_minārī_, Pers. trs. I.O. 217 f. 185_b_, _minār-i-au_) and
not mention the Quṯb Minār. Possibly he confused the two. The
`Alāī Minār remains unfinished; the Quṯb is judged by
Cunningham to have been founded by Quṯbu'd-dīn Aībak _Turk_,
_circa_ 1200 AD. and to have been completed by Sl.
Shamsu'd-dīn Altamsh (Aīltimīsh?) _Turk_, _circa_ 1220 AD. Of
the two tanks Bābur visited, the Royal-tank (_ḥauẓ-i-khāẓ_)
was made by `Alāu'u'd-dīn in 1293 AD.
[1688] The familiar Turkī word Tūghlūq would reinforce much
else met with in Dihlī to strengthen Bābur's opinion that, as
a Turk, he had a right to rule there. Many, if not all, of the
Slave dynasty were Turks; these were followed by the Khiljī
Turks, these again by the Tūghlūqs. Moreover the Panj-āb he
had himself taken, and lands on both sides of the Indus
further south had been ruled by Ghaznawid Turks. His latest
conquests were "where the Turk had ruled" (f. 226_b_) long,
wide, and with interludes only of non-Turkī sway.
[1689] Perhaps this charity was the _Khams_ (Fifth) due from a
victor.
[1690] Bikramājīt was a Tūnūr Rājpūt. Bābur's unhesitating
statement of the Hindu's destination at death may be called a
fruit of conviction, rather than of what modern opinion calls
intolerance.
[1691] 120 years (Cunningham's _Report of the Archaeological
Survey_ ii, 330 _et seq._).