The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)

[1530] This passage will be the basis of the account on f. 143b of the winter-supply of fish in Lamghān.

[1531] This word or name is puzzling. Avoiding extreme detail as to variants, I suggest that it is Dāūr-bīn for Dūr-namā’ī if a place-name; or, if not, dūr-bīn, foresight (in either case the preposition requires to be supplied), and it may refer to foreseen need of and curiosity about Kāfir wines.

[1532]chīūrtika or chīūr-i-tika, whether sauterelle as M. de Courteille understood, or jānwār-i-ranga and chīkūr, partridge as the 1st Persian trs. and as Mr. Erskine (explaining chūr-i-tīka) thought, must be left open. Two points arise however, (1) the time is January, the place the deadly Bād-i-pīch pass; would these suit locusts? (2) If Bābur’s account of a splendid bird (f. 135) were based on this experience, this would be one of several occurrences in which what is entered in the Description of Kābul of 910 AH. is found as an experience in the diary of 925-6 AH.

[1533] Ḥai. MS. maḥali-da maẕkūr būlghūsīdūr, but W.-i-B. I.O. 215 f. 176 for maḥali-da, in its place, has dar majlis [in the collection], which may point to an intended collection of Bābur’s musical compositions. Either reading indicates intention to write what we now have not.

[1534] Perhaps an equivalent for farẓ-waqt, the time of the first obligatory prayer. Much seems to happen before the sun got up high!

[1535] Koh-i-nūr, Rocky-mountains (?). See Appendix F, On the name Dara-i-nūr.

[1536] Steingass gives būza as made of rice, millet, or barley.

[1537] Is this connected with Arabic kīmiyā', alchemy, chemistry?

[1538] Turkī, a whirlpool; but perhaps the name of an office from aīgar, a saddle.

[1539] The river on which the rafts were used was the Kūnār, from Chītrāl.

[1540] 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.

[1541]panāhī, the word used for the hiding-places of bird-catchers on f. 140.

[1542] 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.

[1543]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).

[1544] 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.

[1545] Jan. 2nd 1520 to Nov. 17th 1525 AD. (Ṣafar 926 to Ṣafar 1st 932 AH.).

[1546] Index s.nn. Bāgh-i-ṣafā and B.N. lacunæ.

[1547] 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.).

[1548]Tārīkh-i-sind, Malet’s trs. p. 77 and in loco, p. 365.

[1549] 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.)

[1550] 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.

[1551] 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?

[1552] 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!

[1553] “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).

[1554]infra and Appendix J.

[1555] E. & D.’s History of India, i. 312.

[1556] 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).

[1557] 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.

[1558] “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).

[1559] The translation only has been available (E. & D.’s H. of I., vol. 1).

[1560] The marriage is said to have been Kāmrān’s (E. & D.’s trs.).

[1561] Erskine calculated that ‘Ālam Khān was now well over 70 years of age (H. of I. i, 421 n.).

[1562] A. N. trs. H. Beveridge, i, 239.

[1563] 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.”

[1564] Cf. s.a. 928 AH. for discussion of the year of death.

[1565] 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.