The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)

[2361]Bostān, cap. Advice of Noshirwān to Hurmuz (H.B.).

[2362] A little joke at the expense of the mystifying letter.

[2363] For yā, Mr. Erskine writes be. What the mistake was is an open question; I have guessed an exchange of ī for ū, because such an exchange is not infrequent amongst Turkī long vowels.

[2364] That of reconquering Tīmūrid lands.

[2365] of Kūlāb; he was the father of Ḥaram Begīm, one of Gul-badan’s personages.

[2366]aūn altī gūnlūk m:ljār bīla, as on f. 354b, and with exchange of T. m:ljār for P. mī‘ād, f. 355b.

[2367] Probably into Rājpūt lands, notably into those of Ṣalāḥu’d-dīn.

[2368]tukhmalīq chakmānlār; as tukhma means both button and gold-embroidery, it may be right, especially of Hindūstān articles, to translate sometimes in the second sense.

[2369] These statements of date are consistent with Bābur’s earlier explicit entries and with Erskine’s equivalents of the Christian Era, but at variance with Gladwin’s and with Wüstenfeldt’s calculation that Rabī‘ II. 1st was Dec. 13th. Yet Gladwin (Revenue Accounts, ed. 1790 AD. p. 22) gives Rabī‘ I. 30 days. Without in the smallest degree questioning the two European calculations, I follow Bābur, because in his day there may have been allowed variation which finds no entry in methodical calendars. Erskine followed Bābur’s statements; he is likely nevertheless to have seen Gladwin’s book.

[2370] Erskine estimated this at £500, but later cast doubts on such estimates as being too low (History of India, vol. i, App. D.).

[2371] The bearer of the stamp (t̤amghā) who by impressing it gave quittance for the payment of tolls and other dues.

[2372] Either 24ft. or 36ft. according to whether the short or long qārī be meant (infra). These towers would provide resting-place, and some protection against ill-doers. They recall the two mīl-i-rādagān of Persia (f. 347 n. 9), the purpose of which is uncertain. Bābur’s towers were not “kos mīnārs”, nor is it said that he ordered each kuroh to be marked on the road. Some of the kos mīnārs on the “old Mughal roads” were over 30ft. high; a considerable number are entered and depicted in the Annual Progress Report of the Archæological Survey for 1914 (Northern Circle, p. 45 and Plates 44, 45). Some at least have a lower chamber.

[2373] Four-doored, open-on-all-sides. We have not found the word with this meaning in Dictionaries. It may translate H. chaukandī.

[2374] Erskine makes 9 kos (kurohs) to be 13-14 miles, perhaps on the basis of the smaller gaz of 24 inches.

[2375]altī yām-ātī bāghlāghāīlār which, says one of Erskine’s manuscripts, is called a dāk-choki.

[2376] Neither Erskine (Mems. p. 394), nor de Courteille (Méms. ii, 370) recognized the word Mubīn here, although each mentions the poem later (p. 431 and ii, 461), deriving his information about it from the Akbar-nāma, Erskine direct, de Courteille by way of the Turkī translation of the same Akbar-nāma passage, which Ilminsky found in Kehr’s volume and which is one of the much discussed “Fragments”, at first taken to be extra writings of Bābur’s (cf. Index in loco s.n. Fragments). Ilminsky (p. 455) prints the word clearly, as one who knows it; he may have seen that part of the poem itself which is included in Berésine’s Chrestomathie Turque (p. 226 to p. 272), under the title Fragment d’un poème inconnu de Bābour, and have observed that Bābur himself shews his title to be Mubīn, in the lines of his colophon (p. 271),

(Since in it I have made exposition of Laws, what wonder if I named it Mubīn (exposition)?) Cf. Translator’s Note, p. 437. [Berésine says (Ch. T.) that he prints half of his “unique manuscrit” of the poem.]

[2377] The passage Bābur quotes comes from the Mubīn section on tayammum masā’la (purification with sand), where he tells his son sand may be used, Sū yurāq būlsā sīndīn aīr bīr mīl (if from thee water be one mīl distant), and then interjects the above explanation of what the mīl is. Two lines of his original are not with the Bābur-nāma.

[2378] The t̤anāb was thus 120 ft. long. Cf. A.-i-A. Jarrett i, 414; Wilson’s Glossary of Indian Terms and Gladwin’s Revenue Accounts, p. 14.

[2379] Bābur’s customary method of writing allows the inference that he recorded, in due place, the coming and reception of the somewhat surprising group of guests now mentioned as at this entertainment. That preliminary record will have been lost in one or more of the small gaps in his diary of 935 AH. The envoys from the Samarkand Aūzbegs and from the Persian Court may have come in acknowledgment of the Fātḥ-nāma which announced victory over Rānā Sangā; the guests from Farghāna will have accepted the invitation sent, says Gul-badan, “in all directions,” after Bābur’s defeat of Sl. Ibrāhīm Lūdī, to urge hereditary servants and Tīmūrid and Chīngīz-khānid kinsfolk to come and see prosperity with him now when “the Most High has bestowed sovereignty” (f. 293a; Gul-badan’s H.N. f. 11).

[2380] Hindū here will represent Rājpūt. D’Herbélot’s explanation of the name Qīzīl-bāsh (Red-head) comes in usefully here:—“Kezel basch or Kizil basch. Mot Turc qui signifie Tête rouge. Les Turcs appellent les Persans de ce nom, depuis qu’Ismaël Sofi, fondateur de la Dynastie des princes qui regnent aujourd’hui en Perse, commanda à ses soldats de porter un bonnet rouge autour duquel il y a une écharpe ou Turban à douze plis, en mémoire et à l’honneur des 12 Imams, successeurs d’Ali, desquels il prétendoit descendre. Ce bonnet s’appelle en Persan, Tāj, et fut institué l’an 9O7^e de l’Hég.” T̤ahmāsp himself uses the name Qīzīl-bāsh; Bābur does so too. Other explanations of it are found (Steingass), but the one quoted above suits its use without contempt. (Cf. f. 354 n. 3).

[2381]cir. 140-150ft. or more if the 36in. qārī be the unit.

[2382]Andropogon muricatus, the scented grass of which the roots are fitted into window spaces and moistened to mitigate dry, hot winds. Cf. Hobson-Jobsons.n.Cuscuss.

[2383] A nephew and a grandson of Aḥrāri’s second son Yahya (f. 347b) who had stood staunch to Bābur till murdered in 906 AH.-1500 AD. (80b). They are likely to be those to whom went a copy of the Mubīn under cover of a letter addressed to lawyers of Mā warā’u’n-nahr (f. 351 n. 1). The Khwājas were in Āgra three weeks after Bābur finished his metrical version of their ancestor’s Wālidiyyah-risāla; whether their coming (which must have been announced some time before their arrival), had part in directing his attention to the tract can only be surmised (f. 346).

[2384] He was an Aūzbeg (f. 371) and from his association here with a Bāī-qarā, and, later with Qāsim-i-ḥusain who was half Bāī-qarā, half Aūzbeg, seems likely to be of the latter’s family (Index s.nn.).

[2385]sāchāq kīūrdī (kīltūrdī?) No record survives to tell the motive for this feast; perhaps the gifts made to Bābur were congratulatory on the birth of a grandson, the marriage of a son, and on the generally-prosperous state of his affairs.

[2386] Gold, silver and copper coins.

[2387] Made so by bhang or other exciting drug.

[2388]ārāl, presumably one left by the winter-fall of the Jumna; or, a peninsula.

[2389] Scribes and translators have been puzzled here. My guess at the Turkī clause is aūrang aīralīk kīsh jabbah. In reading muslin, I follow Erskine who worked in India and could take local opinion; moreover gifts made in Āgra probably would be Indian.

[2390] For one Ḥāfiz̤ of Samarkand see f.237b.

[2391] Kūchūm was Khāqān of the Aūzbegs and had his seat in Samarkand. One of his sons, Abū-sa‘īd, mentioned below, had sent envoys. With Abū-sa‘īd is named Mihr-bān who was one of Kūchūm’s wives; Pulād was their son. Mihr-bān was, I think, a half-sister of Bābur, a daughter of ‘Umar Shaikh and Umīd of Andijān (f. 9), and a full-sister of Nāṣir. No doubt she had been captured on one of the occasions when Bābur lost to the Aūzbegs. In 925 AH.-1519 AD. (f. 237b) when he sent his earlier Dīwān to Pulād Sl. (Translator’s Note, p. 438) he wrote a verse on its back which looks to be addressed to his half-sister through her son.

[2392] T̤ahmāsp’s envoy; the title Chalabī shews high birth.

[2393] This statement seems to imply that the weight made of silver and the weight made of gold were of the same size and that the differing specific gravity of the two metals,—that of silver being cir. 10 and that of gold cir. 20—gave their equivalents the proportion Bābur states. Persian Dictionaries give sang (tāsh), a weight, but without further information. We have not found mention of the tāsh as a recognized Turkī weight; perhaps the word tāsh stands for an ingot of unworked metal of standard size. (Cf. inter alios libros, A.-i-A. Blochmann p. 36, Codrington’s Musalman Numismatics p. 117, concerning the miṣqāl, dīnār, etc.)

[2394]tarkāsh bīla. These words are clear in the Ḥai. MS. but uncertain in some others. E. and de C. have no equivalent of them. Perhaps the coins were given by the quiverful; that a quiver of arrows was given is not expressed.

[2395] Bābur’s half-nephew; he seems from his name Keepsake-of-nāṣir to have been posthumous.

[2396] 934 AH.-1528 AD. (f. 336).

[2397] Or, gold-embroidered.