The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)

[1893] Roxburgh gives a full and interesting account of this tree.

[1894] 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.

[1895]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).

[1896] 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.

[1897]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).

[1898] Here, “outside India” will be meant, where Hindū rules do not prevail.

[1899]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?

[1900] 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.

[1901] 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.

[1902] 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.)

[1903] The Ḥai. MS. writes garī and garīāl. The word now stands for the hour of 60 minutes.

[1904]i.e. gong-men. The name is applied also to an alligator Lacertus gangeticus (Forbes).

[1905] 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.

[1906] 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.

[1907] The table is:—60 bipals = 1 pal; 60 pals = 1 g’harī (24 m.); 60 g’harī or 8 pahr = one dīn-rāt (nycthemeron).

[1908] Qorān, cap. CXII, which is a declaration of God’s unity.

[1909] 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.).

[1910] 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).

[1911] Presumably these are caste-names.

[1912] 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.

[1913] 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.

[1914] 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.

[1915] 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.

[1916] Here the Turkī text resumes in the Ḥai. MS.

[1917] 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.

[1918] 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.

[1919] 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.)

[1920] These will be his daughters. Gul-badan gives precise details of the gifts to the family circle (Humāyūn-nāma f. 10).

[1921] Some of these slaves were Sl. Ibrāhīm’s dancing-girls (Gul-badan, ib.).

[1922] 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.

[1923]circa 10d. or 11d. Bābur left himself stripped so bare by his far-flung largess that he was nick-named Qalandar (Firishta).

[1924] 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.

[1925] This is his family name.

[1926]i.e. not acting with Ḥasan Mīwātī.

[1927] 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.

[1928] in Patiāla, about 25 miles s.w. of Aṃbāla.

[1929] 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).

[1930] 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.

[1931] 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,