The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)

[1410] Three krores or crores of dāms, at 40 to the rupee, would make this 750,000 rupees, or about £75,000 sterling (Erskine); a statement from the ancient history of the rupī!

[1411] This Hindustānī word in some districts signifies the head man of a trade, in others a landholder (Erskine).

[1412] In Mr. Erskine’s time this sum was reckoned to be nearly £20,000.

[1413] Here originally neither the Elph. MS. nor the Ḥai. MS. had a date; it has been added to the former.

[1414] This rain is too early for the s.w. monsoon; it was probably a severe fall of spring rain, which prevails at this season or rather earlier, and extends over all the west of Asia (Erskine).

[1415]az ghīna shor sū. Streams rising in the Salt-range become brackish on reaching its skirts (G. of I.).

[1416] Here this will be the fermented juice of rice or of the date-palm.

[1417]Rauḥ is sometimes the name of a musical note.

[1418] a platform, with or without a chamber above it, and supported on four posts.

[1419] so-written in the MSS. Cf. Raverty’s Notes and G. of I.

[1420] Anglicé, cousins on the father’s side.

[1421] The G. of I. describes it.

[1422] Elph. MS. f. 183b, manṣūb; Ḥai. MS. and 2nd W.-i-B. bīsūt. The holder might be Bābā-i-kābulī of f. 225.

[1423] The 1st Pers. trs. (I.O. 215 f. 188b) and Kehr’s MS. [Ilminsky p. 293] attribute Hātī’s last-recorded acts to Bābur himself. The two mistaken sources err together elsewhere. M. de Courteille corrects the defect (ii, 67).

[1424] night-guard. He is the old servant to whom Bābur sent a giant ashrafī of the spoils of India (Gul-badan’s H.N. s.n.).

[1425] The kīping or kīpik is a kind of mantle covered with wool (Erskine); the root of the word is kīp, dry.

[1426]aūlūgh chāsht, a term suggesting that Bābur knew the chota ḥāẓirī, little breakfast, of Anglo-India. It may be inferred, from several passages, that the big breakfast was taken after 9 a.m. and before 12 p.m. Just below men are said to put on their mail at chāsht in the same way as, passim, things other than prayer are said to be done at this or that Prayer; this, I think, always implies that they are done after the Prayer mentioned; a thing done shortly before a Prayer is done “close to” or “near” or when done over half-way to the following Prayer, the act is said to be done “nearer” to the second (as was noted on f. 221).

[1427]Juldū Dost Beg-nīng ātī-gha būldī.

[1428] The disarray of these names in the MSS. reveals confusion in their source. Similar verbal disarray occurs in the latter part of f. 229.

[1429] Manifestly a pun is made on the guide’s name and on the cap-à-pié robe of honour the offenders did not receive.

[1430]aūrdū-nīng aldī-gha, a novel phrase.

[1431] I understand that the servants had come to do their equivalent for “kissing hands” on an appointment viz. to kneel.

[1432] spikenard. Speede’s Indian Handbook on Gardening identifies saṃbhal with Valeriana jatmansi (Sir W. Jones & Roxburgh); “it is the real spikenard of the ancients, highly esteemed alike as a perfume and as a stimulant medicine; native practitioners esteeming it valuable in hysteria and epilepsy.” Bābur’s word dirakht is somewhat large for the plant.

[1433] It is not given, however.

[1434]i.e. through the Indus.

[1435] Perhaps this aīkī-sū-ārāsī (miyān-dū-āb) was the angle made by the Indus itself below Atak; perhaps one made by the Indus and an affluent.

[1436]ma’jūnī nāklīkī, presumably under the tranquillity induced by the drug.

[1437]massadus, the six sides of the world, i.e. all sides.

[1438] This is the name of one of the five champions defeated by Bābur in single combat in 914 AH. (Translator’s Note s.a. 914 AH.).

[1439] f. 145b.

[1440] Humāyūn was 12, Kāmrān younger; one surmises that Bābur would have walked under the same circumstances.

[1441]ṣabuḥī, the morning-draught. In 1623 AD. Pietro della Vallé took a ṣabuḥī with Mr. Thomas Rastel, the head of the merchants of Surat, which was of hot spiced wine and sipped in the mornings to comfort the stomach (Hakluyt ed. p. 20).

[1442] f. 128 and note.

[1443] Anglicé, in the night preceding Tuesday.

[1444] f. 106b.

[1445] This would be the under-corselet to which the four plates of mail were attached when mail was worn. Bābur in this adventure wore no mail, not even his helm; on his head was the under cap of the metal helm.

[1446] Index s.n. gharīcha.

[1447] The earlier account helps to make this one clearer (f. 106b).

[1448] f. 112 et seq.

[1449] Catamite, mistakenly read as khīz on f. 112b (Mémoires ii, 82).