The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)

[2549] He started from Chaparghatta (f. 361b, p. 650 n. 1).

[2550]yīl-tūrgī yūrt.

[2551] “This must have been the Eclipse of the 10th of May 1528 AD.; a fast is enjoined on the day of an eclipse” (Erskine).

[2552] Karmā-nāśā means loss of the merit acquired by good works.

[2553] The I.S. Map marks a main road leading to the mouth of the Karmā-nāśā and no other leading to the river for a considerable distance up-stream.

[2554] Perhaps “Thora-nadee” (I.S. Map).

[2555] Anglicé, Sunday after 6 p.m.

[2556]aūtkān yīl.

[2557] Perhaps the dū-āba between the Ganges and “Thora-nadee”.

[2558]yīl-tūr ... Gang-sūī-dīn mīn dastak bīla aūtūb, ba‘ẓī āt, ba‘ẓī tīwah mīnīb, kīlīb, sair qīlīlīb aīdī. Some uncertainty as to the meaning of the phrase dastak bīla aūtūb is caused by finding that while here de Courteille agrees with Erskine in taking it to mean swimming, he varies later (f. 373b) to appuyés sur une pièce de bois. Taking the Persian translations of three passages about crossing water into consideration (p. 655 after f. 363b, f. 366b (here), f. 373b), and also the circumstances that E. and de C. are once in agreement and that Erskine worked with the help of Oriental munshīs, I incline to think that dastak bīla does express swimming.—The question of its precise meaning bears on one concerning Bābur’s first swim across the Ganges (p. 655, n. 3).—Perhaps I should say, however, that if the sentence quoted at the head of this note stood alone, without the extraneous circumstances supporting the reading of dastak bīla to mean swimming, I should incline to read it as stating that Bābur went on foot through the water, feeling his footing with a pole (dastak), and that his followers rode through the ford after him. Nothing in the quoted passage suggests that the horses and camels swam. But whether the Ganges was fordable at Baksara in Bābur’s time, is beyond surmise.

[2559]faṣl soz, which, manifestly, were to be laid before the envoy’s master. The articles are nowhere specified; one is summarized merely on f. 365. The incomplete sentence of the Turkī text (supra) needs their specification at this place, and an explicit statement of them would have made clearer the political relations of Bābur with Naṣrat Shāh.—A folio may have been lost from Bābur’s manuscript; it might have specified the articles, and also have said something leading to the next topic of the diary, now needing preliminaries, viz. that of the Mīrzā’s discontent with his new appointment, a matter not mentioned earlier.

[2560] This suits Bābur’s series, but Gladwin and Wüstenfeld have 10th.

[2561] The first is near, the second on the direct road from Buxar for Ārrah.

[2562] The Ḥai. MS. makes an elephant be posted as the sole scout; others post a sardār, or post braves; none post man and beast.

[2563] This should be 5th; perhaps the statement is confused through the gifts being given late, Anglicé, on Tuesday 4th, Islamicé on Wednesday night.

[2564] The Mīrzā’s Tīmūrid birth and a desire in Bābur to give high status to a representative he will have wished to leave in Bihār when he himself went to his western dominions, sufficiently explain the bestowal of this sign of sovereignty.

[2565]jīrgā. This instance of its use shews that Bābur had in mind not a completed circle, but a line, or in sporting parlance, not a hunting-circle but a beaters'-line. [Cf. f. 251, f. 364b and infra of the crocodile.] The word is used also for a governing-circle, a tribal-council.

[2566]aūlūgh (kīma). Does aūlūgh (aūlūq, ūlūq) connect with the “bulky Oolak or baggage-boat of Bengal”? (Hobson-Jobson s.n. Woolock, oolock).

[2567] De Courteille’s reading of Ilminsky’s “Bāburī” (p. 476) as Bāīrī, old servant, hardly suits the age of the boat.

[2568] Bābur anticipated the custom followed e.g. by the White Star and Cunard lines, when he gave his boats names having the same terminal syllable; his is āīsh; on it he makes the quip of the har āīsh of the Farmāīsh.

[2569] As Vullers makes Ar. ghurfat a synonym of chaukandī, the Farmāīsh seems likely to have had a cabin, open at the sides. De Courteille understood it to have a rounded stern. [Cf. E. & D.’s History of India v, 347, 503 n.; and Gul-badan’s H. N. trs. p. 98, n. 2.]

[2570]mīndīn rukhṣat āldī; phrasing which bespeaks admitted equality, that of Tīmūrid birth.

[2571]i.e. subjects of the Afghān ruler of Bengal; many will have been Bihārīs and Pūrbiyas. Makhdūm-i-‘ālam was Naṣrat Shāh’s Governor in Ḥājīpūr.

[2572] This might imply that the Afghāns had been prevented from joining Maḥmūd Khān Lūdī near the Son.

[2573] Sl. Muḥammad Shāh Nūḥānī Afghān, the former ruler of Bihār, dead within a year. He had trained Farīd Khān Sūr in the management of government affairs; had given him, for gallant encounter with a tiger, the title Sher Khān by which, or its higher form Sher Shāh, history knows him, and had made him his young son’s “deputy”, an office Sher Khān held after the father’s death in conjunction with the boy’s mother Dūdū Bībī (Tārīkh-i-sher-shāhī, E. & D.’s History of India iv, 325 et seq.).

[2574]gūz bāghī yūsūnlūq; by which I understand they were held fast from departure, as e.g. a mouse by the fascination of a snake.

[2575] f. 365 mentions a letter which may have announced their intention.

[2576] Ganges; they thus evaded the restriction made good on other Afghāns.

[2577] Anglicé, Saturday 8th after 6 p.m.

[2578] The D. G. of Shāhābād (pp. 20 and 127) mentions that “it is said Bābur marched to Ārrah after his victory over Maḥmūd Lūdī”, and that “local tradition still points to a place near the Judge’s Court as that on which he pitched his camp”.

[2579] Kharīd which is now a pargana of the Ballia district, lay formerly on both sides of the Ghogrā. When the army of Kharīd opposed Bābur’s progress, it acted for Naṣrat Shāh, but this Bābur diplomatically ignored in assuming that there was peace between Bengal and himself.—At this time Naṣrat Shāh held the riverain on the left bank of the Ghogrā but had lost Kharīd of the right bank, which had been taken from him by Jūnaid Barlās. A record of his occupation still survives in Kharīd-town, an inscription dated by his deputy as for 1529 AD. (District Gazetteer of Ballia H. R. Nevill), and D. G. of Sāran (L. L. S. O’Malley), Historical Chapters.

[2580] Bābur’s opinion of Naṣrat Shāh’s hostility is more clearly shewn here than in the verbal message of f. 369.

[2581] This will be an unceremonious summary of a word-of-mouth message.

[2582] Cf. f. 366b, p. 661 n. 2.

[2583] This shews that Bābur did not recognize the Sāran riverain down to the Ganges as belonging to Kharīd. His offered escort of Turks would safe-guard the Kharīdīs if they returned to the right bank of the Ghogrā which was in Turk possession.

[2584] The Ḥai. MS. has wālī, clearly written; which, as a word representing Māhīm would suit the sentence best, may make playful reference to her royal commands (f. 361b), by styling her the Governor (wālī). Erskine read the word as a place-name Dipālī, which I have not found; De Courteille omits Ilminsky’s w:ras (p. 478). The MSS. vary and are uncertain.

[2585] This is the “Kadjar” of Réclus’ L’Asie antérieure and is the name of the Turkmān tribe to which the present ruling house of Persia belongs. “Turkmān” might be taken as applied to Shāh T̤aḥmāsp by Dīv Sult̤ān’s servant on f. 354.

[2586]Nelumbium speciosum, a water-bean of great beauty.

[2587] Shaikh Yaḥyā had been the head of the Chishtī Order. His son (d. 782 AH.-1380-1 AD.) was the author of works named by Abū’l-faẓl as read aloud to Akbar, a discursive detail which pleads in my excuse that those who know Bābur well cannot but see in his grandson’s character and success the fruition of his mental characteristics and of his labours in Hindūstān. (For Sharafu’d-dīn Munīrī, cf. Khazīnatu’l-asfiyā ii, 390-92; and Āyīn-i-akbarī s.n.)

[2588] Kostenko’s Turkistān Region describes a regimen for horses which Bābur will have seen in practice in his native land, one which prevented the defect that hindered his at Munīr from accomplishing more than some 30 miles before mid-day.