The Bābur-nāma

This will be the ford on the direct road from Mardān for the eastward (Elphin-stone’s Caubul ii, 416).

1389

The position of Sawātī is represented by the Suābī of the G. of I. map (1909 AD.). Writing in about 1813 AD. Mr. Erskine notes as worthy of record that the rhinoceros was at that date no longer found west of the Indus.

1390

Elph. MS. ghura, the 1st, but this is corrected to 16th by a marginal note. The Ḥai. MS. here, as in some other places, has the context for a number, but omits the figures. So does also the Elph. MS. in a good many places.

1391

This is the Harru. Mr. Erskine observes that Bābur appears to have turned sharp south after crossing it, since he ascended a pass so soon after leaving the Indus and reached the Sūhān so soon.

1392

i. e. the Salt-range.

1393

Mr. Erskine notes that (in his day) a shāhrukhī may be taken at a shilling or eleven pence sterling.

1394

It is somewhat difficult not to forget that a man who, like Bābur, records so many observations of geographical position, had no guidance from Surveys, Gazetteers and Books of Travel. Most of his records are those of personal observation.

1395

In this sentence Mr. Erskine read a reference to the Musalmān Ararat, the Koh-i-jūd on the left bank of the Tigris. What I have set down translates the Turkī words but, taking account of Bābur’s eye for the double use of a word, and Erskine’s careful work, done too in India, the Turkī may imply reference to the Ararat-like summit of Sakeswar.

1396

Here Dr. Leyden’s version finally ends (Erskine).

1397

Bhīra, as has been noted, is on the Jehlam; Khūsh-āb is 40 m. lower down the same river; Chīnīūt (Chīnī-wat?) is 50 miles south of Bhīra; Chīn-āb (China-water?) seems the name of a tract only and not of a residential centre; it will be in the Bar of Kipling’s border-thief. Concerning Chīnīūt see D. G. Barkley’s letter, JRAS 1899 p. 132.

1398

t̤aur yīrī waqī‘ būlūb tūr. As on f. 160 of the valley of Khwesh, I have taken t̤aur to be Turkī, complete, shut in.

1399

chashma (f. 218b and note).

1400

The promised description is not found; there follows a mere mention only of the garden [f. 369]. This entry can be taken therefore as shewing an intention to write what is still wanting from Ṣafar 926 AH. to Ṣafar 932 AH.

1401

Mīr Muḥ. may have been a kinsman or follower of Mahdī Khwāja. The entry on the scene, unannounced by introduction as to parentage, of the Khwāja who played a part later in Bābur’s family affairs is due, no doubt, to the last gap of annals. He is mentioned in the Translator’s Note, s. a. 923 AH. (See Gul-badan’s H.N. Biographical Appendix s. n.)

1402

or Sihrind, mod. Sirhind or Sar-i-hind (Head of Hind). It may be noted here, for what it may be found worth, that Kh(w)āfī Khān [i, 402] calls Sar-i-hind the old name, says that the place was once held by the Ghaznī dynasty and was its Indian frontier, and that Shāh-jahān changed it to Sahrind. The W. – i-B. I.O. 217 f. 155 writes Shahrind.

1403

Three krores or crores of dāms, at 40 to the rupee, would make this 750,000 rupees, or about £75,000 sterling (Erskine); a statement from the ancient history of the rupī!

1404

This Hindustānī word in some districts signifies the head man of a trade, in others a landholder (Erskine).

1405

In Mr. Erskine’s time this sum was reckoned to be nearly £20,000.

1406

Here originally neither the Elph. MS. nor the Ḥai. MS. had a date; it has been added to the former.

1407

This rain is too early for the s.w. monsoon; it was probably a severe fall of spring rain, which prevails at this season or rather earlier, and extends over all the west of Asia (Erskine).

1408

az ghīna shor sū. Streams rising in the Salt-range become brackish on reaching its skirts (G. of I.).

1409

Here this will be the fermented juice of rice or of the date-palm.

1410

Rauḥ is sometimes the name of a musical note.

1411

a platform, with or without a chamber above it, and supported on four posts.

1412

so-written in the MSS. Cf. Raverty’s Notes and G. of I.

1413

Anglicé, cousins on the father’s side.

1414

The G. of I. describes it.

1415

Elph. MS. f. 183b, manṣūb; Ḥai. MS. and 2nd W. – i-B. bīsūt. The holder might be Bābā-i-kābulī of f. 225.

1416

The 1st Pers. trs. (I.O. 215 f. 188b) and Kehr’s MS. [Ilminsky p. 293] attribute Hātī’s last-recorded acts to Bābur himself. The two mistaken sources err together elsewhere. M. de Courteille corrects the defect (ii, 67).

1417

night-guard. He is the old servant to whom Bābur sent a giant ashrafī of the spoils of India (Gul-badan’s H.N. s. n.).

1418

The kīping or kīpik is a kind of mantle covered with wool (Erskine); the root of the word is kīp, dry.

1419

aūlūgh chāsht, a term suggesting that Bābur knew the chota ḥāẓirī, little breakfast, of Anglo-India. It may be inferred, from several passages, that the big breakfast was taken after 9 a.m. and before 12 p.m. Just below men are said to put on their mail at chāsht in the same way as, passim, things other than prayer are said to be done at this or that Prayer; this, I think, always implies that they are done after the Prayer mentioned; a thing done shortly before a Prayer is done “close to” or “near” or when done over half-way to the following Prayer, the act is said to be done “nearer” to the second (as was noted on f. 221).

1420

Juldū Dost Beg-nīng ātī-gha būldī.

1421

The disarray of these names in the MSS. reveals confusion in their source. Similar verbal disarray occurs in the latter part of f. 229.

1422

Manifestly a pun is made on the guide’s name and on the cap-à-pié robe of honour the offenders did not receive.

1423

aūrdū-nīng aldī-gha, a novel phrase.

1424

I understand that the servants had come to do their equivalent for “kissing hands” on an appointment viz. to kneel.

1425

spikenard. Speede’s Indian Handbook on Gardening identifies saṃbhal with Valeriana jatmansi (Sir W. Jones & Roxburgh); “it is the real spikenard of the ancients, highly esteemed alike as a perfume and as a stimulant medicine; native practitioners esteeming it valuable in hysteria and epilepsy.” Bābur’s word dirakht is somewhat large for the plant.

1426

It is not given, however.

1427

i. e. through the Indus.

1428

Perhaps this aīkī-sū-ārāsī (miyān-dū-āb) was the angle made by the Indus itself below Atak; perhaps one made by the Indus and an affluent.

1429

ma’jūnī nāklīkī, presumably under the tranquillity induced by the drug.

1430

massadus, the six sides of the world, i. e. all sides.

1431

This is the name of one of the five champions defeated by Bābur in single combat in 914 AH. (Translator’s Note s. a. 914 AH.).

1432

f. 145b.

1433

Humāyūn was 12, Kāmrān younger; one surmises that Bābur would have walked under the same circumstances.

1434

ṣabuḥī, the morning-draught. In 1623 AD. Pietro della Vallé took a ṣabuḥī with Mr. Thomas Rastel, the head of the merchants of Surat, which was of hot spiced wine and sipped in the mornings to comfort the stomach (Hakluyt ed. p. 20).

1435

f. 128 and note.

1436

Anglicé, in the night preceding Tuesday.

1437

f. 106b.

1438

This would be the under-corselet to which the four plates of mail were attached when mail was worn. Bābur in this adventure wore no mail, not even his helm; on his head was the under cap of the metal helm.

1439

Index s.n. gharīcha.

1440

The earlier account helps to make this one clearer (f. 106b).

1441

f. 112 et seq.

1442

Catamite, mistakenly read as khīz on f. 112b (Mémoires ii, 82).

1443

He was acting for Bābur (Translator’s Note s. a.; Ḥ.S. iii, 318; T.R. pp. 260, 270).

1444

“Honoured,” in this sentence, represents Bābur’s honorific plural.

1445

in 921 AH. (Translator’s Note s. a.; T.R. p. 356).

1446

i. e. Mīr Muḥammad son of Nāṣir.

1447

i. e. after the dethronement of the Bāī-qarā family by Shaibānī.

1448

He had been one of rebels of 921 AH. (Translator’s Note s. a.; T.R. p. 356).

1449

f. 137.

1450

This is the Adjutant-bird, Pīr-i-dang and Hargila (Bone-swallower) of Hindūstān, a migrant through Kābul. The fowlers who brought it would be the Multänīs of f. 142b.

1451

f. 280.

1452

Memoirs, p. 267, sycamore; Mémoires ii, 84, saules; f. 137.

1453

Perhaps with his long coat out-spread.

1454

The fortnight’s gap of record, here ended, will be due to illness.

1455

f. 203b and n. to Khams, the Fifth. Taṣadduq occurs also on f. 238 denoting money sent to Bābur. Was it sent to him as Pādshāh, as the Qorān commands the Khams to be sent to the Imām, for the poor, the traveller and the orphan?

1456

Rose-water, sherbet, a purgative; English, jalap, julep.

1457

Mr. Erskine understood Bābur to say that he never had sat sober while others drank; but this does not agree with the account of Harāt entertainments [912 AH.], or with the tenses of the passage here. My impression is that he said in effect “Every-one here shall not be deprived of their wine”.

1458

This verse, a difficult one to translate, may refer to the unease removed from his attendants by Bābur’s permission to drink; the pun in it might also refer to well and not well.

1459

Presumably to aid his recovery.

1460

aūtkān yīl, perhaps in the last and unchronicled year; perhaps in earlier ones. There are several references in the B.N. to the enforced migrations and emigrations of tribes into Kābul.

1461

Pūlād (Steel) was a son of Kūchūm, the then Khāqān of the Aūzbegs, and Mihr-bānū who may be Bābur’s half-sister. [Index s. n.]

1462

This may be written for Mihr-bānū, Pūlād’s mother and Bābur’s half-sister (?) and a jest made on her heart as Pūlād’s and as steel to her brother. She had not left husband and son when Bābur got the upper hand, as his half-sister Yādgār-sult̤ān did and other wives of capture e. g. Ḥaidar’s sister Ḥabība. Bābur’s rhymes in this verse are not of his later standard, āī ṣubāḥ, kūnkūīkā, kūnkūlī-kā.

1463

Taṣadduq sent to Bābur would seem an acknowledgment of his suzerainty in Balkh [Index s. n.].

1464

This is the Gīrdīz-pass [Raverty’s Notes, Route 101].

1465

Raverty (p. 677) suggests that Pātakh stands for bātqāq, a quagmire (f. 16 and n.).

1466

the dark, or cloudy spring.

1467

yāqīsh-līq qūl, an unusual phrase.

1468

var. Karmān, Kurmāh, Karmās. M. de C. read Kīr-mās, the impenetrable. The forms would give Garm-ās, hot embers.

1469

balafré; marked on the face; of a horse, starred.

1470

Raverty’s Notes (p. 457) give a full account of this valley; in it are the head-waters of the Tochī and the Zurmut stream; and in it R. locates Rustam’s ancient Zābul.

1471

It is on the Kābul side of the Gīrdīz-pass and stands on the Luhugūr-water (Logar).

1472

f. 143.

1473

At this point of the text there occurs in the Elph. MS. (f. 195b) a note, manifestly copied from one marginal in an archetype, which states that what follows is copied from Bābur’s own MS. The note (and others) can be seen in JRAS 1905 p. 754 et seq.

1474

Masson, iii, 145.

1475

A qūlāch is from finger-tip to finger-tip of the outstretched arms (Zenker p. 720 and Méms. ii, 98).

1476

Neither interne is said to have died!

1477

f. 143.

1478

or Atūn’s-village, one granted to Bābur’s mother’s old governess (f. 96); Gul-badan’s guest-list has also an Atūn Māmā.

1479

f. 235b and note.

1480

miswāk; On les tire principalement de l’arbuste épineux appelé capparis-sodata (de C. ii, 101 n.).

1481

Gul-badan’s H.N. Index s.n.

1482

This being Ramẓān, Bābur did not break his fast till sun-set. In like manner, during Ramẓān they eat in the morning before sun-rise (Erskine).

1483

A result, doubtless, of the order mentioned on f. 240b.

1484

Bābur’s wife Gul-rukh appears to have been his sister or niece; he was a Begchīk. Cf. Gul-badan’s H.N. trs. p. 233, p. 234; T.R. p. 264-5.

1485

This remark bears on the question of whether we now have all Bābur wrote of Autobiography. It refers to a date falling within the previous gap, because the man went to Kāshghar while Bābur was ruling in Samarkand (T.R. p. 265). The last time Bābur came from Khwāst to Kābul was probably in 920 AH.; if later, it was still in the gap. But an alternative explanation is that looking over and annotating the diary section, Bābur made this reference to what he fully meant to write but died before being able to do so.

1486

Anglicé, the right thumb, on which the archer’s ring (zih-gīr) is worn.

1487

a daughter of Yūnas Khān, Ḥaidar’s account of whom is worth seeing.

1488

i. e. the water of Luhugūr (Logar). Tradition says that Būt-khāk (Idol-dust) was so named because there Sl. Maḥmūd of Ghaznī had idols, brought by him out of Hindūstān, pounded to dust. Raverty says the place is probably the site of an ancient temple (vahāra).

1489

Qāsim Beg’s son, come, no doubt, in obedience to the order of f. 240b.

1490

The ‘Īd-i-fitr is the festival at the conclusion of the feast of Ramẓān, celebrated on seeing the new moon of Shawwāl (Erskine).

1491

f. 133b and Appendix G, On the names of the wines of Nūr-valley.

1492

i. e. of the new moon of Shawwāl. The new moon having been seen the evening before, which to Musalmāns was Monday evening, they had celebrated the ‘Īd-i-fitr on Monday eve (Erskine).

1493

Dīwān of Hāfiz̤ lith. ed. p. 22. The couplet seems to be another message to a woman (f. 238); here it might be to Bībī Mubāraka, still under Khwāja Kalān’s charge in Bajaur (f. 221).

1494

Here and under date Sep. 30th the wording allows a ford.

1495

This may be what Masson writes of (i, 149) “We reached a spot where the water supplying the rivulet (of ‘Alī-masjid) gushes in a large volume from the rocks to the left. I slaked my thirst in the living spring and drank to repletion of the delightfully cool and transparent water.”

1496

Mr. Erskine here notes, “This appears to be a mistake or oversight of Bābur. The eve of ‘Arafa” (9th of Ẕū’l-ḥijja) “was not till the evening of Dec. 2nd 1519. He probably meant to say the ‘Id-i-fitr which had occurred only five days before, on Sep. 26th.”

1497

This was an affair of frontiers (T.R. p. 354).

1498

Manucci gives an account of the place (Irvine iv, 439 and ii, 447).

1499

Sep. 8th to Oct. 9th.

1500

khūsh rang-i khizān. Sometimes Bābur’s praise of autumn allows the word khizān to mean the harvest-crops themselves, sometimes the autumnal colouring.

1501

This I have taken to mean the Kābul tūmān. The Ḥai. MS. writes wilāyatlār (plural) thus suggesting that aūl (those) may be omitted, and those countries (Transoxiana) be meant; but the second Pers. trs. (I.O. 217 f. 169) supports wilāyat, Kābul.

1502

joyous, happy.

1503

y: lk: rān. This word has proved a difficulty to all translators. I suggest that it stands for aīlīkarān, what came to hand (aīlīk see de C.’s Dict.); also that it contains puns referring to the sheep taken from the road (yūlkarān) and to the wine of the year’s yield (yīlkarān). The way-side meal was of what came to hand, mutton and wine, probably local.

1504

f. 141b.

1505

f. 217 and n.

1506

I think Bābur means that the customary announcement of an envoy or guest must have reached Kābul in his absence.

1507

He is in the T.R. list of the tribe (p. 307); to it belonged Sl. Aḥmad Taṃbal (ib. p. 316).

1508

Qābil-nīng kūrī-nīng qāshī-ka, lit. to the presence of the tomb of Qābil, i. e. Cain the eponymous hero of Kābul. The Elph. MS. has been altered to “Qābil Beg”!

1509

Mr. Erskine surmised that the line was from some religious poem of mystical meaning and that its profane application gave offence.

1510

His sobriquet khāksār, one who sits in the dust, suits the excavator of a kārez. Bābur’s route can be followed in Masson’s (iii, 110), apparently to the very kārez.

1511

In Masson’s time this place was celebrated for vinegar. To reach it and return must have occupied several hours.

1512

Kunos, āq tūīgūn, white falcon; ‘Amal-i-ṣāliḥ (I.O. MS. No. 857, f. 45b), taus tūīghūn.

1513

f. 246.

1514

Nawā’ī himself arranged them according to the periods of his life (Rieu’s Pers. Cat. p. 294).

1515

Elph. MS. f. 202b; W. – i-B. I.O. 215 f. 175 (misplaced) and 217 f. 172; Mems. p. 281.

1516

pushta aūstīda; the Jūī-khwūsh of f. 137.

1517

The Ḥai. MS. omits a passage here; the Elph. MS. reads Qāsim Bulbulī nīng awī, thus making “nightingale” a sobriquet of Qāsim’s own. Erskine (p. 281) has “Bulbulī-hall”; Ilminsky’s words translate as, the house of Sayyid Qāsim’s nightingale (p. 321).

1518

or Dūr-namā’ī, seen from afar.

1519

narm-dīk, the opposite of a qātīq yāī, a stiff bow. Some MSS. write lāzim-dīk which might be read to mean such a bow as his disablement allowed to be used.

1520

Mr. Erskine, writing early in the 19th century, notes that this seems an easy tribute, about 400 rupīs i. e. £40.

1521

This is one of the three routes into Lamghān of f. 133.

1522

f. 251b and Appendix F, On the name Dara-i-nūr.

1523

This passage will be the basis of the account on f. 143b of the winter-supply of fish in Lamghān.

1524

This word or name is puzzling. Avoiding extreme detail as to variants, I suggest that it is Dāūr-bīn for Dūr-namā’ī if a place-name; or, if not, dūr-bīn, foresight (in either case the preposition requires to be supplied), and it may refer to foreseen need of and curiosity about Kāfir wines.

1525

chīūrtika or chīūr-i-tika, whether sauterelle as M. de Courteille understood, or jānwār-i-ranga and chīkūr, partridge as the 1st Persian trs. and as Mr. Erskine (explaining chūr-i-tīka) thought, must be left open. Two points arise however, (1) the time is January, the place the deadly Bād-i-pīch pass; would these suit locusts? (2) If Bābur’s account of a splendid bird (f. 135) were based on this experience, this would be one of several occurrences in which what is entered in the Description of Kābul of 910 AH. is found as an experience in the diary of 925-6 AH.

1526

Ḥai. MS. maḥali-da maẕkūr būlghūsīdūr, but W. – i-B. I.O. 215 f. 176 for maḥali-da, in its place, has dar majlis [in the collection], which may point to an intended collection of Bābur’s musical compositions. Either reading indicates intention to write what we now have not.

1527

Perhaps an equivalent for farẓ-waqt, the time of the first obligatory prayer. Much seems to happen before the sun got up high!

1528

Koh-i-nūr, Rocky-mountains (?). See Appendix F, On the name Dara-i-nūr.

1529

Steingass gives būza as made of rice, millet, or barley.