The Bābur-nāma

1865

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.

1866

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.”

1867

ma‘rib, Elph. MS. magharrib; (cf. f. 285b note).

1868

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.

1869

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 saporemFelicis 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.

1870

P. turunj, wrinkled, puckered; Sans. vījāpūra and H. bijaurā (Āyīn 28), seed-filled.

1871

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.

1872

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.

1873

This refers, presumably, to the absence of the beak characteristic of all citrons.

1874

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?).

1875

Sans. jambīrā, H. jambīr, classed by Abū’l-faẓl as one of the somewhat sour fruits and by Watts as Citrus medica limonum.

1876

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).

1877

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.

1878

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.

1879

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.

1880

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.

1881

Erskine here quotes information from Abū’l-faẓl (Āyīn 28) about Akbar’s encouragement of the cultivation of fruits.

1882

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 darkening leather (Yule’s H.J.).

1883

I surmise that what I have placed between asterisks here belongs to the next-following plant, the oleander. For though the branches of the jāsūn grow vertically, the bush is a dense mass upon one stout trunk, or stout short stem. The words placed in parenthesis above are not with the Ḥaidarabad but are with the Elphinstone Codex. There would seem to have been a scribe’s skip from one “rose” to the other. As has been shewn repeatedly, this part of the Bābur-nāma has been much annotated; in the Elph. Codex, where only most of the notes are preserved, some are entered by the scribe pell-mell into Bābur’s text. The present instance may be a case of a marginal note, added to the text in a wrong place.

1884

The peduncle supporting the plume of medial petals is clearly seen only when the flower opens first. The plumed Hibiscus is found in florists’ catalogues described as “double”.

1885

This Anglo-Indians call also rose-bay. A Persian name appears to be zahr-giyāh, poison-grass, which makes it the more probable that the doubtful passage in the previous description of the jāsūn belongs to the rod-like oleander, known as the poison-grass. The oleander is common in river-beds over much country known to Bābur, outside India.

1886

Roxburgh gives a full and interesting account of this tree.

1887

Here the Elph. Codex, only, has the (seeming) note, “An ‘Arab calls it kāẕī” (or kāwī). This fills out Steingass’ part-explanation of kāwī, “the blossom of the fragrant palm-tree, armāt̤” (p. 1010), and of armāt̤, “a kind of date-tree with a fragrant blossom” (p. 39), by making armāt̤ and kāwī seem to be the Pandanus and its flower.

1888

Calamus scriptorius (Vullers ii, 607. H. B.). Abū’l-faẓl compares the leaves to jawārī, the great millet (Forbes); Blochmann (A. A. p. 83) translates jawārī by maize (juwārā, Forbes).

1889

T. aīrkāk-qūmūsh, a name Scully enters unexplained. Under qūmūsh (reed) he enters Arundo madagascarensis; Bābur’s comparison will be with some Transoxanian Arundo or Calamus, presumably.

1890

Champa seems to have been Bābur’s word (Elph. and Ḥai. MSS.), but is the (B.) name for Michelia champaka; the Pers. translation corrects it by (B.) chambelī, (yāsman, jasmine).

1891

Here, “outside India” will be meant, where Hindū rules do not prevail.

1892

Hind aīlārī-nīng ibtidā-sī hilāl aīlār-nīng istiqbāl-dīn dūr. The use here of istiqbāl, welcome, attracts attention; does it allude to the universal welcome of lighter nights? or is it reminiscent of Muḥammadan welcome to the Moon’s crescent in Shawwāl?

1893

For an exact statement of the intercalary months vide Cunningham’s Indian Eras, p. 91. In my next sentence (supra) the parenthesis-marks indicate blanks left on the page of the Ḥai. MS. as though waiting for information. These and other similar blanks make for the opinion that the Ḥai. Codex is a direct copy of Bābur’s draft manuscript.

1894

The sextuple division (r̤itu) of the year is referred to on f. 284, where the Signs Crab and Lion are called the season of the true Rains.

1895

Bābur appears not to have entered either the Hindī or the Persian names of the week: – the Ḥai. MS. has a blank space; the Elph. MS. had the Persian names only, and Hindī ones have been written in above these; Kehr has the Persian ones only; Ilminsky has added the Hindī ones. (The spelling of the Hindī names, in my translation, is copied from Forbes’ Dictionary.)

1896

The Ḥai. MS. writes garī and garīāl. The word now stands for the hour of 60 minutes.

1897

i. e. gong-men. The name is applied also to an alligator Lacertus gangeticus (Forbes).

1898

There is some confusion in the text here, the Ḥai. MS. reading birinj-dīn tīshī(?) nīma qūīūbtūrlār– the Elph. MS. (f. 240b) biring-dīn bīr yāssī nīma qūīūbtūrlār. The Persian translation, being based on the text of the Elphinstone Codex reads az biring yak chīz pahnī rekhta and. The word tīshī of the Ḥai. MS. may represent tasht plate or yāssī, broad; against the latter however there is the sentence that follows and gives the size.

1899

Here again the wording of the Ḥai. MS. is not clear; the sense however is obvious. Concerning the clepsydra vide A. A. Jarrett, ii, 15 and notes; Smith’s Dictionary of Antiquities; Yule’s H.J. s. n. Ghurry.

1900

The table is: – 60 bipals = 1 pal; 60 pals = 1 g’harī (24 m.); 60 g’harī or 8 pahr = one dīn-rāt (nycthemeron).

1901

Qorān, cap. CXII, which is a declaration of God’s unity.

1902

The (S.) ratī = 8 rice-grains (Eng. 8 barley-corns); the (S.) māsha is a kidney-bean; the (P.) tānk is about 2 oz.; the (Ar.) miṣqāl is equal to 40 ratīs; the (S.) tūla is about 145 oz.; the (S.) ser is of various values (Wilson’s Glossary and Yule’s H. J.).

1903

There being 40 Bengāl sers to the man, Bābur’s word mānbān seems to be another name for the man or maund. I have not found mānbān or mīnāsā. At first sight mānbān might be taken, in the Ḥai. MS. for (T.) bātmān, a weight of 13 or 15 lbs., but this does not suit. Cf. f. 167 note to bātmān and f. 173b (where, however, in the note f. 157 requires correction to f. 167). For Bābur’s table of measures the Pers. trs. has 40 sers = 1 man; 12 mans = 1 mānī; 100 mānī they call mīnāsa (217, f. 201b, l. 8).

1904

Presumably these are caste-names.

1905

The words in parenthesis appear to be omitted from the text; to add them brings Bābur’s remark into agreement with others on what he several times makes note of, viz. the absence not only of irrigation-channels but of those which convey “running-waters” to houses and gardens. Such he writes of in Farghāna; such are a well-known charm e. g. in Madeira, where the swift current of clear water flowing through the streets, turns into private precincts by side-runlets.

1906

The Ḥai. MS. writes lungūtā-dīk, like a lungūtā, which better agrees with Bābur’s usual phrasing. Lung is Persian for a cloth passed between the loins, is an equivalent of S. dhoti. Bābur’s use of it (infra) for the woman’s (P.) chaddar or (S.) sārī does not suit the Dictionary definition of its meaning.

1907

When Erskine published the Memoirs in 1826 AD. he estimated this sum at 1-1/2 millions Sterling, but when he published his History of India in 1854, he had made further research into the problem of Indian money values, and judged then that Bābur’s revenue was £4,212,000.

1908

Erskine here notes that the promised details had not been preserved, but in 1854 AD. he had found them in a “paraphrase of part of Bābur”, manifestly in Shaikh Zain’s work. He entered and discussed them and some matters of money-values in Appendices D. and E. of his History of India, vol. I. Ilminsky found them in Kehr’s Codex (C. ii, 230). The scribe of the Elph. MS. has entered the revenues of three sarkārs only, with his usual quotation marks indicating something extraneous or doubtful. The Ḥai. MS. has them in contents precisely as I have entered them above, but with a scattered mode of setting down. They are in Persian, presumably as they were rendered to Bābur by some Indian official. This official statement will have been with Bābur’s own papers; it will have been copied by Shaikh Zain into his own paraphrase. It differs slightly in Erskine’s and again, in de Courteille’s versions. I regret that I am incompetent to throw any light upon the question of its values and that I must leave some uncertain names to those more expert than myself. Cf. Erskine’s Appendices l. c. and Thomas’ Revenue resources of the Mughal Empire. For a few comments see App. P.

1909

Here the Turkī text resumes in the Ḥai. MS.

1910

Elph. MS. f. 243b; W. i. B. I.O. 215 has not the events of this year (as to which omission vide note at the beginning of 932 AH. f. 251b) and 217 f. 203; Mems. p. 334; Ilminsky’s imprint p. 380; Méms. ii, 232.

1911

This should be 30th if Saturday was the day of the week (Gladwin, Cunningham and Bābur’s narrative of f. 269). Saturday appears likely to be right; Bābur entered Āgra on Thursday 28th; Friday would be used for the Congregational Prayer and preliminaries inevitable before the distribution of the treasure. The last day of Bābur’s narrative 932 AH. is Thursday Rajab 28th; he would not be likely to mistake between Friday, the day of his first Congregational prayer in Āgra, and Saturday. It must be kept in mind that the Description of Hindūstān is an interpolation here, and that it was written in 935 AH., three years later than the incidents here recorded. The date Rajab 29th may not be Bābur’s own entry; or if it be, may have been made after the interpolation of the dividing mass of the Description and made wrongly.

1912

Erskine estimated these sums as “probably £56,700 to Humāyūn; and the smaller ones as £8,100, £6,480, £5,670 and £4,860 respectively; very large sums for the age”. (History of India, i. 440 n. and App. E.)

1913

These will be his daughters. Gul-badan gives precise details of the gifts to the family circle (Humāyūn-nāma f. 10).

1914

Some of these slaves were Sl. Ibrāhīm’s dancing-girls (Gul-badan, ib.).

1915

Ar. ṣada. Perhaps it was a station of a hundred men. Varsak is in Badakhshān, on the water flowing to T̤āliqān from the Khwāja Muḥammad range. Erskine read (p. 335) ṣada Varsak as ṣadūr rashk, incentive to emulation; de C. (ii, 233) translates ṣada conjecturally by circonscription. Shaikh Zain has Varsak and to the recipients of the gifts adds the “Khwāstīs, people noted for their piety” (A. N. trs. H. B. i, 248 n.). The gift to Varsak may well have been made in gratitude for hospitality received by Bābur in the time of adversity after his loss of Samarkand and before his return to Kābul in 920 AH.

1916

circa 10d. or 11d. Bābur left himself stripped so bare by his far-flung largess that he was nick-named Qalandar (Firishta).

1917

Badāyūnī says of him (Bib. Ind. ed. i, 340) that he was kāfir kalīma-gū, a pagan making the Muḥammadan Confession of Faith, and that he had heard of him, in Akbar’s time from Bairām Khān-i-khānan, as kingly in appearance and poetic in temperament. He was killed fighting for Rānā Sangā at Kānwaha.

1918

This is his family name.

1919

i. e. not acting with Ḥasan Mīwātī.

1920

Gul-badan says that the Khwāja several times asked leave on the ground that his constitution was not fitted for the climate of Hindūstān; that His Majesty was not at all, at all, willing for him to go, but gave way at length to his importunity.

1921

in Patiāla, about 25 miles s.w. of Aṃbāla.

1922

Shaikh Zain, Gul-badan and Erskine write Nau-kār. It was now that Khwāja Kalān conveyed money for the repair of the great dam at Ghaznī (f. 139).

1923

The friends did not meet again; that their friendship weathered this storm is shewn by Bābur’s letter of f. 359. The Abūshqa says the couplet was inscribed on a marble tablet near the Ḥauẓ-i-khāṣ at the time the Khwāja was in Dihlī after bidding Bābur farewell in Āgra.

1924

This quatrain is in the Rāmpūr Dīwān (q. v. index). The Abūshqa quotes the following as Khwāja Kalān’s reply, but without mentioning where the original was found. Cf. de Courteille, Dict. s. n. taskarī. An English version is given in my husband’s article Some verses by the Emperor Bābur (A. Q. R. January, 1911).

You shew your gaiety and your wit,In each word there lie acres of charm.Were not all things of Hind upside-down,How could you in the heat be so pleasant on cold?

It is an old remark of travellers that everything in India is the opposite of what one sees elsewhere. Tīmūr is said to have remarked it and to have told his soldiers not to be afraid of the elephants of India, “For,” said he, “Their trunks are empty sleeves, and they carry their tails in front; in Hindustan everything is reversed” (H. Beveridge ibid.). Cf. App. Q.

1925

Badāyūnī i, 337 speaks of him as unrivalled in music.

1926

f. 267b.

1927

aūrūq, which here no doubt represents the women of the family.

1928

‘ain parganalār.

1929

Bābur’s advance, presumably.

1930

The full amounts here given are not in all MSS., some scribes contenting themselves with the largest item of each gift (Memoirs p. 337).

1931

The ‘Id of Shawwāl, it will be remembered, is celebrated at the conclusion of the Ramẓān fast, on seeing the first new moon of Shawwāl. In A.H. 932 it must have fallen about July 11th 1526 (Erskine).

1932

A square shawl, or napkin, of cloth of gold, bestowed as a mark of rank and distinction (Memoirs p. 338 n.); une tunique enrichie de broderies (Mémoires, ii, 240 n.).

1933

kamar-shamshīr. This Steingass explains as sword-belt, Erskine by “sword with a belt”. The summary following shews that many weapons were given and not belts alone. There is a good deal of variation in the MSS. The Ḥai. MS. has not a complete list. The most all the lists show is that gifts were many.

1934

f. 263b.

1935

over the Ganges, a little above Anūp-shahr in the Buland-shahr district.

1936

A seeming omission in the text is made good in my translation by Shaikh Zain’s help, who says Qāsim was sent to Court.

1937

This quatrain is in the Rāmpūr Dīwān. It appears to pun on Bīāna and bī(y)ān.

1938

Kandār is in Rājpūtāna; Abū’l-faẓl writes Kuhan-dār, old habitation.

1939

This is the first time Bābur’s begs are called amīrs in his book; it may be by a scribe’s slip.

1940

Chandwār is on the Jumna, between Āgra and Etāwah.

1941

Here āqār-sūlār will stand for the waters which flow – sometimes in marble channels – to nourish plants and charm the eye, such for example as beautify the Tāj-maḥal pleasaunce.

1942

Index s. n. The tālār is raised on pillars and open in front; it serves often for an Audience-hall (Erskine).

1943

tāsh ‘imārat, which may refer to the extra-mural location of the house, or contrast it with the inner khilwat-khāna, the women’s quarters, of the next sentence. The point is noted as one concerning the use of the word tāsh (Index s. n.). I have found no instance in which it is certain that Bābur uses tāsh, a stone or rock, as an adjective. On f. 301 he writes tāshdīn ‘imārat, house-of-stone, which the Persian text renders by ‘imārat-i-sangīn. Wherever tāsh can be translated as meaning outer, this accords with Bābur’s usual diction.