The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)

[1743] āb-khẉura kishtī, water-drinker’s boat, in which name kishtī may be used with reference to shape as boat is in sauce-boat. Erskine notes that rhinoceros-horn is supposed to sweat on approach of poison.

[1744]aīlīk, Pers. trs. angusht, finger, each seemingly representing about one inch, a hand’s thickness, a finger’s breadth.

[1745] lit. hand (qūl) and leg (būt).

[1746] The anatomical details by which Bābur supports this statement are difficult to translate, but his grouping of the two animals is in agreement with the modern classification of them as two of the three Ungulata vera, the third being the tapir (Fauna of British India:—Mammals, Blanford 467 and, illustration, 468).

[1747] De Courteille (ii, 190) reads kūmūk, osseuse; Erskine reads gūmūk, marrow.

[1748] Index s.n. rhinoceros.

[1749]Bos bubalus.

[1750] “so as to grow into the flesh” (Erskine, p. 317).

[1751]sic in text. It may be noted that the name nīl-gāī, common in general European writings, is that of the cow; nīl-gāū, that of the bull (Blanford).

[1752]b:ḥ:rī qūt̤ās; see Appendix M.

[1753] The doe is brown (Blanford, p. 518). The word būghū (stag) is used alone just below and seems likely to represent the bull of the Asiatic wapiti (f. 4 n. on būghū-marāl.)

[1754]Axis porcinus (Jerdon, Cervus porcinus).

[1755]Saiga tartarica (Shaw). Turkī hūna is used, like English deer, for male, female, and both. Here it seems defined by aīrkākī to mean stag or buck.

[1756]Antelope cervicapra, black-buck, so called from the dark hue of its back (Yule’s H.J. s.n. Black-buck).

[1757]tūyūq, underlined in the Elph. MS. by kura, cannon-ball; Erskine, foot-ball, de Courteille, pierre plus grosse que la cheville (tūyāq).

[1758] This mode of catching antelopes is described in the Āyīn-i-akbarī, and is noted by Erskine as common in his day.

[1759]H. gainā. It is 3 feet high (Yule’s H.J. s.n. Gynee). Cf. A. A. Blochmann, p. 149. The ram with which it is compared may be that of Ovis ammon (Vigné’s Kashmīr etc. ii, 278).

[1760] Here the Pers. trs. adds:—They call this kind of monkey langūr (baboon, I.O. 217 f. 192).

[1761] Here the Pers. trs. adds what Erskine mistakenly attributes to Bābur:—People bring it from several islands.—They bring yet another kind from several islands, yellowish-grey in colour like a pūstīn tīn (leather coat of ?; Erskine, skin of the fig, tīn). Its head is broader and its body much larger than those of other monkeys. It is very fierce and destructive. It is singular quod penis ejus semper sit erectus, et nunquam non ad coitum idoneus [Erskine].

[1762] This name is explained on the margin of the Elph. MS. as “rāsū, which is the weasel of Tartary” (Erskine). Rāsū is an Indian name for the squirrel Sciurus indicus. The kīsh, with which Bābur’s nūl is compared, is explained by de C. as belette, weasel, and by Steingass as a fur-bearing animal; the fur-bearing weasel is (Mustelidae) putorius ermina, the ermine-weasel (Blanford, p. 165), which thus seems to be Bābur’s kīsh. The alternative name Bābur gives for his nūl, i.e. mūsh-i-khūrma, is, in India, that of Sciurus palmarum, the palm-squirrel (G. of I. i, 227); this then, it seems that Bābur’s nūl is. Erskine took nūl here to be the mongoose (Herpestes mūngūs) (p. 318); and Blanford, perhaps partly on Erskine’s warrant, gives mūsh-i-khūrma as a name of the lesser mungūs of Bengal. I gather that the name nawal is not exclusively confined even now to the (mungūs.)

[1763] If this be a tree-mouse and not a squirrel, it may be Vandeleuria oleracea (G. of I. i, 228).

[1764] The notes to this section are restricted to what serves to identify the birds Bābur mentions, though temptation is great to add something to this from the mass of interesting circumstance scattered in the many writings of observers and lovers of birds. I have thought it useful to indicate to what language a bird’s name belongs.

[1765] Persian, gul; English, eyes.

[1766]qūlāch (Zenker, p. 720); Pers. trs. (217 f. 192b) yak qad-i-adm; de Courteille, brasse (fathom). These three are expressions of the measure from finger-tip to finger-tip of a man’s extended arms, which should be his height, a fathom (6 feet).

[1767]qānāt, of which here “primaries” appears to be the correct rendering, since Jerdon says (ii, 506) of the bird that its “wings are striated black and white, primaries and tail deep chestnut”.

[1768] The qīrghāwal, which is of the pheasant species, when pursued, will take several flights immediately after each other, though none long; peacocks, it seems, soon get tired and take to running (Erskine).

[1769] Ar. barrāq, as on f. 278b last line where the Elph. MS. has barrāq, marked with the tashdīd.

[1770] This was, presumably, just when Bābur was writing the passage.

[1771] This sentence is in Arabic.

[1772] A Persian note, partially expunged from the text of the Elph. MS. is to the effect that 4 or 5 other kinds of parrot are heard of which the revered author did not see.

[1773] Erskine suggests that this may be the loory (Loriculus vernalis, Indian loriquet).

[1774] The birds Bābur classes under the name shārak seem to include what Oates and Blanford (whom I follow as they give the results of earlier workers) class under Sturnus, Eulabes and Calornis, starling, grackle and mīna, and tree-stare (Fauna of British India, Oates, vols. i and ii, Blanford, vols. iii and iv).

[1775] Turkī, qabā; Ilminsky, p. 361, tang (tund?).

[1776] E. D. Ross’s Polyglot List of Birds, p. 314, Chighīr-chīq, Northern swallow; Elph. MS. f. 230b interlined jil (Steingass lark). The description of the bird allows it to be Sturnus humii, the Himālayan starling (Oates, i, 520).

[1777] Elph. and Ḥai. MSS. (Sans. and Bengālī) p:ndūī; two good MSS. of the Pers. trs. (I.O. 217 and 218) p:ndāwalī; Ilminsky (p. 361) mīnā; Erskine (Mems. p. 319) pindāwelī, but without his customary translation of an Indian name. The three forms shewn above can all mean “having protuberance or lump” (pinḍā) and refer to the bird’s wattle. But the word of the presumably well-informed scribes of I.O. 217 and 218 can refer to the bird’s sagacity in speech and be panḍāwalī, possessed of wisdom. With the same spelling, the word can translate into the epithet religiosa, given to the wattled mīnā by Linnæus. This epithet Mr. Leonard Wray informs me has been explained to him as due to the frequenting of temples by the birds; and that in Malāya they are found living in cotes near Chinese temples.—An alternative name (one also connecting with religiosa) allowed by the form of the word is bīnḍā-walī. H. bīnḍā is a mark on the forehead, made as a preparative to devotion by Hindus, or in Sans. and Bengālī, is the spot of paint made on an elephant’s trunk; the meaning would thus be “having a mark”. Cf. Jerdon and Oates s.n. Eulabes religiosa.

[1778]Eulabes intermedia, the Indian grackle or hill-mīna. Here the Pers. trs. adds that people call it mīna.

[1779]Calornis chalybeius, the glossy starling or tree-stare, which never descends to the ground.

[1780]Sturnopastor contra, the pied mīna.

[1781] Part of the following passage about the lūja (var. lūkha, lūcha) is verbatim with part of that on f. 135; both were written about 934-5 AH. as is shewn by Shaikh Zain (Index s.n.) and by inference from references in the text (Index s.n. B.N. date of composition). See Appendix N.

[1782] Lit. mountain-partridge. There is ground for understanding that one of the birds known in the region as monals is meant. See Appendix N.