The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)
defacement of that Codex has been often mentioned], has added
points and _tashdīd_ to the _aūl-ī_ (_i.e._ its _aūl_), so as
to produce _awwalī_ (first, f. 235). Against this there are
the obvious objections that the Persian translation does not
reproduce, and that its _bū_ does not render _awwalī_; also
that _aūl-ī_ is a noun with its enclitic genitive _yā_ (_i_).
[1844] This word seems to be meant to draw attention to the
various merits of the _mahuwā_ tree.
[1845] Erskine notes that this is not to be confounded with E.
_jāmbū_, the rose-apple (_Memoirs_ p. 325 n.). Cf. Yule's H.J.
_s.n. Jambu_.
[1846] var. _ghat-ālū_, _ghab-ālū_, _ghain-ālū_, _shafl-ālū_.
Scully enters _`ain-ālū_ (true-plum?) unexplained. The
_kamrak_ fruit is 3 in. long (Brandis) and of the size of a
lemon (Firminger); dimensions which make Bābur's 4 _aīlīk_
(hand's-thickness) a slight excess only, and which thus allow
_aīlīk_, with its Persion translation, _angusht_, to be
approximately an inch.
[1847] Speede, giving the fruit its Sanscrit name _kamarunga_,
says it is acid, rather pleasant, something like an insipid
apple; also that its pretty pink blossoms grow on the trunk
and main branches (i, 211).
[1848] Cf. Yule's H.J. _s.n._ jack-fruit. In a Calcutta
nurseryman's catalogue of 1914 AD. three kinds of jack-tree
are offered for sale, viz. "Crispy or Khaja, Soft or Neo,
Rose-scented" (Seth, Feronia Nursery).
[1849] The _gīpa_ is a sheep's stomach stuffed with rice,
minced meat, and spices, and boiled as a pudding. The
resemblance of the jack, as it hangs on the tree, to the
haggis, is wonderfully complete (Erskine).
[1850] These when roasted have the taste of chestnuts.
[1851] Firminger (p. 186) describes an ingenious method of
training.
[1852] For a note of Humāyūn's on the jack-fruit _see_
Appendix O.
[1853] _aīd-ī-yamān aīmās._ It is somewhat curious that Bābur
makes no comment on the odour of the jack itself.
[1854] _būsh_, English bosh (Shaw). The Persian translation
inserts no more about this fruit.
[1855] Steingass applies this name to the plantain.
[1856] Erskine notes that "this is the bullace-plum, small,
not more than twice as large as the sloe and not so
high-flavoured; it is generally yellow, sometimes red." Like
Bābur, Brandis enumerates several varieties and mentions the
seasonal changes of the tree (p. 170).
[1857] This will be Kābul, probably, because Transoxiana is
written of by Bābur usually, if not invariably, as "that
country", and because he mentions the _chīkda_ (_i.e.
chīka?_), under its Persian name _sinjid_, in his _Description
of Kābul_ (f. 129_b_).
[1858] P. _mar manjān_, which I take to refer to the
_rīwājlār_ of Kābul. (Cf. f. 129_b_, where, however, (note 5)
are _corrigenda_ of Masson's _rawash_ for _rīwāj_, and his
third to second volume.) Kehr's Codex contains an extra
passage about the _karaūn dā_, _viz._ that from it is made a
tasty fritter-like dish, resembling a rhubarb-fritter
(Ilminsky, p. 369).
[1859] People call it (P.) _pālasa_ also (Elph. MS. f. 236,
marginal note).
[1860] Perhaps the red-apple of Kābul, where two sorts are
common, both rosy, one very much so, but much inferior to the
other (Griffith's _Journal of Travel_ p. 388).
[1861] Its downy fruit grows in bundles from the trunk and
large branches (Roxburgh).
[1862] The reference by "also" (_ham_) will be to the _kamrak_
(f. 283_b_), but both Roxburgh and Brandis say the _amla_ is
six striated.
[1863] The Sanscrit and Bengālī name for the chirūnjī-tree is
_pīyala_ (Roxburgh p. 363).
[1864] Cf. f. 250_b_.
[1865] The leaflet is rigid enough to serve as a runlet, but
soon wears out; for this reason, the usual practice is to use
one of split bamboo.
[1866] This is a famous hunting-ground between Bīāna and
Dhūlpūr, Rājpūtāna, visited in 933 AH. (f. 33O_b_). Bābur's
great-great-grandson Shāh-jahān built a hunting-lodge there
(G. of I.).
[1867] Ḥai. MS. _mu`arrab_, but the Elph. MS. _maghrib_,
[occidentalizing]. The Ḥai. MS. when writing of the orange
(_infra_) also has _maghrib_. A distinction of locality may be
drawn by _maghrib_.
[1868] Bābur's "Hindūstān people" (_aīl_) are those neither
Turks nor Afghāns.
[1869] This name, with its usual form _tāḍī_ (toddy), is used
for the fermented sap of the date, coco, and _mhār_ palms also
(cf. Yule's H.J. _s.n._ toddy).
[1870] Bābur writes of the long leaf-stalk as a branch
(_shākh_); he also seems to have taken each spike of the
fan-leaf to represent a separate leaf. [For two omissions from
my trs. _see_ Appendix O.]
[1871] Most of the fruits Bābur describes as orange-like are
named in the following classified list, taken from Watts'
_Economic Products of India_:—"+Citrus aurantium+, _narangi_,
_sangtara_, _amrit-phal_; +C. decumana+, _pumelo_, shaddock,
forbidden-fruit, _sada-phal_; +C. medica+ proper, _turunj_,
_limu_; +C. medica limonum+, _jambhira_, _karna-nebu_." Under
_C. aurantium_ Brandis enters both the sweet and the Seville
oranges (_nārangī_); this Bābur appears to do also.
[1872] _kīndīklīk_, explained in the Elph. Codex by _nāfwār_
(f. 238). This detail is omitted by the Persian translation.
Firminger's description (p. 221) of Aurangābād oranges
suggests that they also are navel-oranges. At the present time
one of the best oranges had in England is the navel one of
California.
[1873] Useful addition is made to earlier notes on the
variability of the _yīghāch_, a variability depending on time
taken to cover the ground, by the following passage from
Henderson and Hume's _Lahor to Yarkand_ (p. 120), which shews
that even in the last century the _farsang_ (the P. word used
in the Persian translation of the _Bābur-nāma_ for T.
_yīghāch_) was computed by time. "All the way from Kargallik
(Qārghalīq) to Yarkand, there were tall wooden mile-posts
along the roads, at intervals of about 5 miles, or rather one
hour's journey, apart. On a board at the top of each post, or
_farsang_ as it is called, the distances were very legibly
written in Turki."
[1874] _ma`rib_, Elph. MS. _magharrib_; (cf. f. 285_b_ note).
[1875] _i.e. nārang_ (Sans. _nārangā_) has been changed to
_nāranj_ in the `Arab mouth. What is probably one of Humāyūn's
notes preserved by the Elph. Codex (f. 238), appears to say—it
is mutilated—that _nārang_ has been corrupted into _nāranj_.
[1876] The Elph. Codex has a note—mutilated in early
binding—which is attested by its scribe as copied from
Humāyūn's hand-writing, and is to the effect that once on his
way from the Hot-bath, he saw people who had taken poison and
restored them by giving lime-juice.
Erskine here notes that the same antidotal quality is ascribed
to the citron by Virgil:—
Media fert tristes succos. tardumque saporem
Felicis mali, quo non praesentius ullum,
Pocula si quando saevae infecere novercae,
Miscueruntque herbas et non innoxia verba,
Auxilium venit, ac membris agit atra venena.
Georgics II. v. 126.
_Vide_ Heyne's note i, 438.
[1877] P. _turunj_, wrinkled, puckered; Sans. _vījāpūra_ and
H. _bijaurā_ (_Āyīn_ 28), seed-filled.
[1878] Bābur may have confused this with H. _bijaurā_; so too
appears to have done the writer (Humāyūn?) of a [now
mutilated] note in the Elph. Codex (f. 238), which seems to
say that the fruit or its name went from Bajaur to Hindūstān.
Is the country of Bajaur so-named from its indigenous orange
(_vījāpūra_, whence _bijaurā_)? The name occurs also north of
Kangra.
[1879] Of this name variants are numerous, _santra_,
_santhara_, _samtara_, etc. Watts classes it as a _C.
aurantium_; Erskine makes it the common sweet orange;
Firminger, quoting Ross (p. 221) writes that, as grown in the
Nagpur gardens it is one of the finest Indian oranges, with
rind thin, smooth and close. The Emperor Muḥammad Shāh is said
to have altered its name to _rang-tāra_ because of its fine
colour (_rang_) (Forbes). Speede (ii, 109) gives both names.
As to the meaning and origin of the name _santara_ or
_santra_, so suggestive of Cintra, the Portuguese home of a
similar orange, it may be said that it looks like a hill-name
used in N. E. India, for there is a village in the Bhutan
Hills, (Western Duars) known from its orange groves as
Santra-bārī, Abode of the orange. To this (mentioned already
as my husband's suggestion in Mr. Crooke's ed. of Yule's H.J.)
support is given by the item "Suntura, famous Nipal variety",
entered in Seth's Nursery-list of 1914 (Feronia Nurseries,
Calcutta). Light on the question of origin could be thrown, no
doubt, by those acquainted with the dialects of the hill-tract
concerned.
[1880] This refers, presumably, to the absence of the beak
characteristic of all citrons.
[1881] melter, from the Sans. root _gal_, which provides the
names of several lemons by reason of their solvent quality,
specified by Bābur (_infra_) of the _amal-bīd_. Erskine notes
that in his day the _gal-gal_ was known as _kilmek_
(_galmak_?).
[1882] Sans. _jambīrā_, H. _jambīr_, classed by Abū'l-faẓl as
one of the somewhat sour fruits and by Watts as _Citrus medica
limonum_.
[1883] Watts, _C. decumana_, the shaddock or pumelo; Firminger
(p. 223) has _C. decumana pyriformis_ suiting Bābur's
"pear-shaped". What Bābur compared it with will be the
Transoxanian pear and quince (_P. amrūd_ and _bihī_) and not
the Indian guava and Bengal quince (_P. amrūd_ and _H. bael_).
[1884] The Turkī text writes _amrd_. Watts classes the
_amrit-phal_ as a _C. aurantium_. This supports Erskine's
suggestion that it is the mandarin-orange. Humāyūn describes
it in a note which is written pell-mell in the text of the
Elph. Codex and contains also descriptions of the _kāmila_ and
_santara_ oranges; it can be seen translated in Appendix O.
[1885] So spelled in the Turkī text and also in two good MSS.
of the Pers. trs. I.O. 217 and 218, but by Abū'l-faẓl
_amal-bīt_. Both P. _bīd_ and P. _bīt_ mean willow and cane
(ratan), so that _amal-bīd_ (_bīt_) can mean acid-willow and
acid-cane. But as Bābur is writing of a fruit like an orange,
the cane that bears an acid fruit, _Calamus rotang_, can be
left aside in favour of _Citrus medica acidissima_. Of this
fruit the solvent property Bābur mentions, as well as the
commonly-known service in cleansing metal, link it, by these
uses, with the willow and suggest a ground for understanding,
as Erskine did, that _amal-bīd_ meant acid-willow; for
willow-wood is used to rub rust off metal.
[1886] This statement shows that Bābur was writing the
_Description of Hindūstān_ in 935 AH. (1528-9 AD.), which is
the date given for it by Shaikh Zain.
[1887] This story of the needle is believed in India of all
the citron kind, which are hence called _sūī-gal_
(needle-melter) in the Dakhin (Erskine). Cf. Forbes, p. 489
_s.n. sūī-gal_.
[1888] Erskine here quotes information from Abū'l-faẓl (_Āyīn_
28) about Akbar's encouragement of the cultivation of fruits.
[1889] Hindustani (Urdu) _gaṛhal_. Many varieties of Hibiscus
(syn. Althea) grow in India; some thrive in Surrey gardens;
the _jāsūn_ by name and colour can be taken as what is known
in Malayan, Tamil, etc., as the shoe-flower, from its use in