The Bābur-nāma

1530

Is this connected with Arabic kīmiyā', alchemy, chemistry?

1531

Turkī, a whirlpool; but perhaps the name of an office from aīgar, a saddle.

1532

The river on which the rafts were used was the Kūnār, from Chītrāl.

1533

An uncertain name. I have an impression that these waters are medicinal, but I cannot trace where I found the information. The visit paid to them, and the arrangement made for bathing set them apart. The name of the place may convey this speciality.

1534

panāhī, the word used for the hiding-places of bird-catchers on f. 140.

1535

This will be the basis of the details about fishing given on f. 143 and f. 143b. The statement that particulars have been given allows the inference that the diary was annotated after the Description of Kābul, in which the particulars are, was written.

1536

qānlīqlār. This right of private revenge which forms part of the law of most rude nations, exists in a mitigated form under the Muhammadan law. The criminal is condemned by the judge, but is delivered up to the relations of the person murdered, to be ransomed or put to death as they think fit (Erskine).

1537

Here the text breaks off and a lacuna separates the diary of 11 months length which ends the Kābul section of the Bābur-nāma writings, from the annals of 932 AH. which begin the Hindūstān section. There seems no reason why the diary should have been discontinued.

1538

Jan. 2nd 1520 to Nov. 17th 1525 AD. (Ṣafar 926 to Ṣafar 1st 932 AH.).

1539

Index s. nn. Bāgh-i-ṣafā and B.N. lacunæ.

1540

Nominally Balkh seems to have been a Ṣafawī possession; but it is made to seem closely dependent on Bābur by his receipt from Muḥammad-i-zamān in it of taṣadduq (money for alms), and by his action connected with it (q. v.).

1541

Tārīkh-i-sind, Malet’s trs. p. 77 and in loco, p. 365.

1542

A chronogram given by Badāyūnī decides the vexed question of the date of Sikandar Lūdī’s death —Jannātu’l-firdūs nazlā = 923 (Bib. Ind. ed. i, 322, Ranking trs. p. 425 n. 6). Erskine supported 924 AH. (i, 407), partly relying on an entry in Bābur’s diary (f. 226b) s. d. Rabī‘u’l-awwal 1st 925 AH. (March 3rd 1519 AD.) which states that on that day Mullā Murshid was sent to Ibrāhīm whose father Sikandar had died five or six months before.

Against this is the circumstance that the entry about Mullā Murshid is, perhaps entirely, certainly partly, of later entry than what precedes and what follows it in the diary. This can be seen on examination; it is a passage such as the diary section shews in other places, added to the daily record and giving this the character of a draft waiting for revision and rewriting (fol. 216b n.).

(To save difficulty to those who may refer to the L. & E. Memoirs on the point, I mention that the whole passage about Mullā Murshid is displaced in that book and that the date March 3rd is omitted.)

1543

Shāl (the local name of English Quetta) was taken by Ẕū’l-nūn in 884 AH. (1479 AD.); Sīwīstān Shāh Beg took, in second capture, about 917 AH. (1511 AD.), from a colony of Barlās Turks under Pīr Walī Barlās.

1544

Was the attack made in reprisal for Shāh Beg’s further aggression on the Barlās lands and Bābur’s hereditary subjects? Had these appealed to the head of their tribe?

1545

Le Messurier writes (l. c. p. 224) that at Old Qandahār “many stone balls lay about, some with a diameter of 18 inches, others of 4 or 5, chiselled out of limestone. These were said to have been used in sieges in the times of the Arabs and propelled from a machine called manjanic a sort of balista or catapult.” Meantime perhaps they served Bābur!

1546

“Just then came a letter from badakhshān saying, ‘Mīrzā Khān is dead; Mīrzā Sulaimān (his son) is young; the Aūzbegs are near; take thought for this kingdom lest (which God forbid) Badakhshān should be lost.’ Mīrzā Sulaimān’s mother (Sult̤ān-nigār Khānīm) had brought him to Kābul” (Gul-badan’s H. N. f. 8).

1547

infra and Appendix J.

1548

E. & D.’s History of India, i. 312.

1549

For accounts of the Mubīn, Akbar-nāma Bib. Ind. ed. i. 118, trs. H. Beveridge i. 278 note, Badāyūnī ib. i, 343, trs. Ranking p. 450, Sprenger ZDMG. 1862, Teufel ib. 1883. The Akbar-nāma account appears in Turkī in the “Fragments” associated with Kehr’s transcript of the B.N. (JRAS. 1908, p. 76, A. S. B.’s art. Bābur-nāma). Bābur mentions the Mubīn (f. 252b, f. 351b).

1550

JRAS. 1901, Persian MSS. in Indian Libraries (description of the Rāmpūr Dīwān); AQR. 1911, Bābur’s Dīwān (i. e. the Rāmpūr Dīwān); and Some verses of the Emperor Bābur (the Abūshqa quotations).

For Dr. E. D. Ross’ Reproduction and account of the Rāmpūr Dīwān, JASB. 1910.

1551

“After him (Ibrāhīm) was Bābur King of Dihlī, who owed his place to the Pathāns,” writes the Afghān poet Khūsh-ḥāl Khattak (Afghān Poets of the XVII century, C. E. Biddulph, p. 58).

1552

The translation only has been available (E. & D.’s H. of I., vol. 1).

1553

The marriage is said to have been Kāmrān’s (E. & D.’s trs.).

1554

Erskine calculated that ‘Ālam Khān was now well over 70 years of age (H. of I. i, 421 n.).

1555

A. N. trs. H. Beveridge, i, 239.

1556

The following old English reference to Isma‘il’s appearance may be quoted as found in a corner somewhat out-of-the-way from Oriental matters. In his essay on beauty Lord Bacon writes when arguing against the theory that beauty is usually not associated with highmindedness, “But this holds not always; for Augustus Cæsar, Titus Vespasianus, Philip le Bel of France, Edward the Fourth of England, Alcibiades of Athens, Isma‘il the Sophy (Ṣafawī) of Persia, were all high and great spirits, and yet the most beautiful men of their times.”

1557

Cf. s. a. 928 AH. for discussion of the year of death.

1558

Elph. MS. f. 205b; W. – i-B. I.O. 215 f. 199b omits the year’s events on the ground that Shaikh Zain has translated them; I.O. 217 f. 174; Mems. p. 290; Kehr’s Codex p. 1084.

A considerable amount of reliable textual material for revising the Hindūstān section of the English translation of the Bābur-nāma is wanting through loss of pages from the Elphinstone Codex; in one instance no less than an equivalent of 36 folios of the Ḥaidarābād Codex are missing (f. 356 et seq.), but to set against this loss there is the valuable per contra that Kehr’s manuscript throughout the section becomes of substantial value, losing its Persified character and approximating closely to the true text of the Elphinstone and Ḥaidarābād Codices. Collateral help in revision is given by the works specified (in loco p. 428) as serving to fill the gap existing in Bābur’s narrative previous to 932 AH. and this notably by those described by Elliot and Dowson. Of these last, special help in supplementary details is given for 932 AH. and part of 933 AH. by Shaikh Zain [Khawāfi]’s T̤abaqāt-i-bāburī, which is a highly rhetorical paraphrase of Bābur’s narrative, requiring familiarity with ornate Persian to understand. For all my references to it, I am indebted to my husband. It may be mentioned as an interesting circumstance that the B.M. possesses in Or. 1999 a copy of this work which was transcribed in 998 AH. by one of Khwānd-amīr’s grandsons and, judging from its date, presumably for Abū’l-faẓl’s use in the Akbar-nāma.

Like part of the Kābul section, the Hindūstān one is in diary-form, but it is still more heavily surcharged with matter entered at a date later than the diary. It departs from the style of the preceding diary by an occasional lapse into courtly phrase and by exchange of some Turkī words for Arabic and Persian ones, doubtless found current in Hind, e. g. fauj, dīra, manzil, khail-khāna.

1559

This is the Logar affluent of the Bārān-water (Kābul-river). Masson describes this haltingplace (iii, 174).

1560

muḥaqqar saughāt u bīlāk or tīlāk. A small verbal point arises about bīlāk (or tīlāk). Bīlāk is said by Quatremère to mean a gift (N. et E. xiv, 119 n.) but here muḥaqqar saughāt expresses gift. Another meaning can be assigned to bīlāk here, [one had also by tīlāk,] viz. that of word-of-mouth news or communication, sometimes supplementing written communication, possibly secret instructions, possibly small domestic details. In bīlāk, a gift, the root may be bīl, the act of knowing, in tīlāk it is tīl, the act of speaking [whence tīl, the tongue, and tīl tūtmāk, to get news]. In the sentence noted, either word would suit for a verbal communication. Returning to bīlāk as a gift, it may express the nuance of English token, the maker-known of friendship, affection and so-on. This differentiates bīlāk from saughāt, used in its frequent sense of ceremonial and diplomatic presents of value and importance.

1561

With Sa‘īd at this time were two Khānīms Sult̤ān-nigār and Daulat-sult̤ān who were Bābur’s maternal-aunts. Erskine suggested Khūb-nigār, but she had died in 907 AH. (f. 96).

1562

Humāyūn’s non-arrival would be the main cause of delay. Apparently he should have joined before the Kābul force left that town.

1563

The halt would be at Būt-khāk, the last station before the Adīnapūr road takes to the hills.

1564

Discussing the value of coins mentioned by Bābur, Erskine says in his History of India (vol. i, Appendix E.) which was published in 1854 AD. that he had come to think his estimates of the value of the coins was set too low in the Memoirs (published in 1826 AD.). This sum of 20,000 shāhrukhīs he put at £1000. Cf. E. Thomas’ Pathan Kings of Dihli and Resources of the Mughal Empire.

1565

One of Masson’s interesting details seems to fit the next stage of Bābur’s march (iii, 179). It is that after leaving Būt-khāk, the road passes what in the thirties of the 19th Century, was locally known as Bābur Pādshāh’s Stone-heap (cairn) and believed piled in obedience to Bābur’s order that each man in his army should drop a stone on it in passing. No time for raising such a monument could be fitter than that of the fifth expedition into Hindūstān when a climax of opportunity allowed hope of success.

1566

rezāndalīk. This Erskine translates, both here and on ff. 253, 254, by defluxion, but de Courteille by rhume de cerveau. Shaikh Zain supports de Courteille by writing, not rezāndalīk, but nuzla, catarrh. De Courteille, in illustration of his reading of the word, quotes Burnes’ account of an affection common in the Panj-āb and there called nuzla, which is a running at the nostrils, that wastes the brain and stamina of the body and ends fatally (Travels in Bukhara ed. 1839, ii, 41).

1567

Tramontana, north of Hindū-kush.

1568

Shaikh Zain says that the drinking days were Saturday, Sunday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

1569

The Elph. Codex (f. 208b) contains the following note of Humāyūn’s about his delay; it has been expunged from the text but is still fairly legible: – “The time fixed was after ‘Āshūrā (10th Muḥarram, a voluntary fast); although we arrived after the next-following 10th (‘āshūr, i. e. of Ṣafar), the delay had been necessary. The purpose of the letters (Bābur’s) was to get information; (in reply) it was represented that the equipment of the army of Badakhshān caused delay. If this slave (Humāyūn), trusting to his [father’s] kindness, caused further delay, he has been sorry.”

Bābur’s march from the Bāgh-i-wafā was delayed about a month; Humāyūn started late from Badakhshān; his force may have needed some stay in Kābul for completion of equipment; his personal share of blame for which he counted on his father’s forgiveness, is likely to have been connected with his mother’s presence in Kābul.

Humāyūn’s note is quoted in Turkī by one MS. of the Persian text (B.M. W. – i-B. 16,623 f. 128); and from certain indications in Muḥammad Shīrāzī’s lithograph (p. 163), appears to be in his archetype the Udaipūr Codex; but it is not with all MSS. of the Persian text e. g. not with I.O. 217 and 218. A portion of it is in Kehr’s MS. (p. 1086).

1570

Bird’s-dome [f. 145b, n.] or The pair (qūsh) of domes.

1571

gūn khūd kīch būlūb aīdī; a little joke perhaps at the lateness both of the day and the army.

1572

Shaikh Zain’s maternal-uncle.

1573

Shaikh Zain’s useful detail that this man’s pen-name was Sharaf distinguishes him from Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ the author of the Shaibānī-nāma.

1574

gosha, angle (cf. gosha-i-kār, limits of work). Parodies were to be made, having the same metre, rhyme, and refrain as the model couplet.

1575

I am unable to attach sense to Bābur’s second line; what is wanted is an illustration of two incompatible things. Bābur’s reflections [infra] condemned his verse. Shaikh Zain describes the whole episode of the verse-making on the raft, and goes on with, “He (Bābur) excised this choice couplet from the pages of his Acts (Wāqi‘āt) with the knife of censure, and scratched it out from the tablets of his noble heart with the finger-nails of repentance. I shall now give an account of this spiritual matter” (i. e. the repentance), “by presenting the recantations of his Solomon-like Majesty in his very own words, which are weightier than any from the lips of Aesop.” Shaikh Zain next quotes the Turkī passage here translated in b. Mention of the Mubīn.

1576

The Mubīn (q. v. Index) is mentioned again and quoted on f. 351b. In both places its name escaped the notice of Erskine and de Courteille, who here took it for mīn, I, and on f. 351b omitted it, matters of which the obvious cause is that both translators were less familiar with the poem than it is now easy to be. There is amplest textual warrant for reading Mubīn in both the places indicated above; its reinstatement gives to the English and French translations what they have needed, namely, the clinch of a definite stimulus and date of repentance, which was the influence of the Mubīn in 928 AH. (1521-2 AD.). The whole passage about the peccant verse and its fruit of contrition should be read with others that express the same regret for broken law and may all have been added to the diary at the same time, probably in 935 AH. (1529 AD.). They will be found grouped in the Index s. n. Bābur.

1577

mūndīn būrūn, by which I understand, as the grammatical construction will warrant, before writing the Mubīn. To read the words as referring to the peccant verse, is to take the clinch off the whole passage.

1578

i. e. of the Qorān on which the Mubīn is based.

1579

Dropping down-stream, with wine and good company, he entirely forgot his good resolutions.

1580

This appears to refer to the good thoughts embodied in the Mubīn.

1581

This appears to contrast with the “sublime realities” of the Qorān.

1582

In view of the interest of the passage, and because this verse is not in the Rāmpūr Dīwān, as are many contained in the Hindūstān section, the Turkī original is quoted. My translation differs from those of Mr. Erskine and M. de Courteille; all three are tentative of a somewhat difficult verse.

Nī qīlā mīn sīnīng bīla āī tīl?Jihatīng dīn mīnīng aīchīm qān dūr.Nīcha yakhshī dīsāng bū hazl aīla shi‘rBīrī-sī faḥash ū bīrī yālghān dūr.Gar dīsāng kūīmā mīn, bū jazm bīlaJalāu’īngnī bū ‘arṣa dīn yān dūr.

1583

The Qorān puts these sayings into the mouths of Adam and Eve.

1584

Ḥai. MS. tīndūrūb; Ilminsky, p. 327, yāndūrūb; W. – i-B. I.O. 217, f. 175, sard sākhta.

1585

Of ‘Alī-masjid the Second Afghān War (official account) has a picture which might be taken from Bābur’s camp.

1586

Shaikh Zain’s list of the drinking-days (f. 252 note) explains why sometimes Bābur says he preferred ma‘jūn. In the instances I have noticed, he does this on a drinking-day; the preference will be therefore for a confection over wine. December 9th was a Saturday and drinking-day; on it he mentions the preference; Tuesday Nov. 21st was a drinking day, and he states that he ate ma‘jūn.

1587

presumably the karg-khāna of f. 222b, rhinoceros-home in both places. A similar name applies to a tract in the Rawalpindi District, – Bābur-khāna, Tiger-home, which is linked to the tradition of Buddha’s self-sacrifice to appease the hunger of seven tiger-cubs. [In this Bābur-khāna is the town Kacha-kot from which Bābur always names the river Hārū.]

1588

This is the first time on an outward march that Bābur has crossed the Indus by boat; hitherto he has used the ford above Attock, once however specifying that men on foot were put over on rafts.

1589

f. 253.

1590

In my Translator’s Note (p. 428), attention was drawn to the circumstance that Bābur always writes Daulat Khān Yūsuf-khail, and not Daulat Khān Lūdī. In doing this, he uses the family- or clan-name instead of the tribal one, Lūdī.

1591

i. e. day by day.

1592

daryā, which Bābur’s precise use of words e. g. of daryā, rūd, and sū, allows to apply here to the Indus only.

1593

Presumably this was near Parhāla, which stands, where the Sūhān river quits the hills, at the eastern entrance of a wild and rocky gorge a mile in length. It will have been up this gorge that Bābur approached Parhāla in 925 AH. (Rawalpindi Gazetteer p. 11).

1594

i. e. here, bed of a mountain-stream.

1595

The Elphinstone Codex here preserves the following note, the authorship of which is attested by the scribe’s remark that it is copied from the handwriting of Humāyūn Pādshāh: – As my honoured father writes, we did not know until we occupied Hindūstān (932 AH.), but afterwards did know, that ice does form here and there if there come a colder year. This was markedly so in the year I conquered Gujrāt (942 AH. -1535 AD.) when it was so cold for two or three days between Bhūlpūr and Guālīār that the waters were frozen over a hand’s thickness.

1596

This is a Kakar (Gakkhar) clan, known also as Baragowah, of which the location in Jahāngīr Pādshāh’s time was from Rohtās to Hātya, i. e. about where Bābur encamped (Memoirs of Jahāngīr, Rogers and Beveridge, p. 97; E. and D. vi, 309; Provincial Gazetteers of Rawalpindi and Jihlam, p. 64 and p. 97 respectively).

1597

āndīn aūtūb, a reference perhaps to going out beyond the corn-lands, perhaps to attempt for more than provisions.

1598

qūsh-āt, a led horse to ride in change.

1599

According to Shaikh Zain it was in this year that Bābur made Buhlūlpūr a royal domain (B.M. Add. 26,202 f. 16), but this does not agree with Bābur’s explanation that he visited the place because it was khalṣa. Its name suggests that it had belonged to Buhlūl Lūdī; Bābur may have taken it in 930 AH. when he captured Sīālkot. It never received the population of Sīālkot, as Bābur had planned it should do because pond-water was drunk in the latter town and was a source of disease. The words in which Bābur describes its situation are those he uses of Akhsī (f. 4b); not improbably a resemblance inclined his liking towards Buhlūlpūr. (It may be noted that this Buhlūlpūr is mentioned in the Āyīn-i-akbarī and marked on large maps, but is not found in the G. of I. 1907.)

1600

Both names are thus spelled in the Bābur-nāma. In view of the inclination of Turkī to long vowels, Bābur’s short one in Jat may be worth consideration since modern usage of Jat and Jāt varies. Mr. Crooke writes the full vowel, and mentions that Jāts are Hindūs, Sikhs, and Muḥammadans (Tribes and Castes of the North-western Provinces and Oude, iii, 38). On this point and on the orthography of the name, Erskine’s note (Memoirs p. 294) is as follows: “The Jets or Jats are the Muḥammadan peasantry of the Panj-āb, the bank of the Indus, Sīwīstān etc. and must not be confounded with the Jāts, a powerful Hindū tribe to the west of the Jamna, about Agra etc. and which occupies a subordinate position in the country of the Rājpūts.”

1601

The following section contains a later addition to the diary summarizing the action of ‘Ālam Khān before and after Bābur heard of the defeat from the trader he mentions. It refutes an opinion found here and there in European writings that Bābur used and threw over ‘Ālam Khān. It and Bābur’s further narrative shew that ‘Ālam Khān had little valid backing in Hindūstān, that he contributed nothing to Bābur’s success, and that no abstention by Bābur from attack on Ibrāhīm would have set ‘Ālam Khān on the throne of Dihlī. It and other records, Bābur’s and those of Afghān chroniclers, allow it to be said that if ‘Ālam Khān had been strong enough to accomplish his share of the compact that he should take and should rule Dihlī, Bābur would have kept to his share, namely, would have maintained supremacy in the Panj-āb. He advanced against Ibrāhīm only when ‘Ālam Khān had totally failed in arms and in securing adherence.

1602

This objurgation on over-rapid marching looks like the echo of complaint made to Bābur by men of his own whom he had given to ‘Ālam Khān in Kābul.