The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)

[1823] As the Ḥai. MS. and also I.O. 216 f. 137 (Pers. trs.) write kalah (galah)-fish, this may be a large cray-fish. One called by a name approximating to galah-fish is found in Malāyan waters, viz. the galah-prawn (hūdang) (cf. Bengālī gūla-chingrī, gūla-prawn, Haughton). Galah and gūla may express lament made when the fish is caught (Haughton pp. 931, 933, 952); or if kalah be read, this may express scolding. Two good MSS. of the Wāqi‘āt-i-bāburī (Pers. trs.) write kaka; and their word cannot but have weight. Erskine reproduces kaka but offers no explanation of it, a failure betokening difficulty in his obtaining one. My husband suggests that kaka may represent a stuttering sound, doing so on the analogy of Vullers’ explanation of the word,—Vir ridiculus et facetus qui simul balbutiat; and also he inclines to take the fish to be a crab (kakra). Possibly kaka is a popular or vulgar name for a cray-fish or a crab. Whether the sound is lament, scolding, or stuttering the fisherman knows! Shaikh Zain enlarges Bābur’s notice of this fish; he says the bones are prolonged (bar āwarda) from the ears, that these it agitates at time of capture, making a noise like the word kaka by which it is known, that it is two wajab (18 in.) long, its flesh surprisingly tasty, and that it is very active, leaping a gaz (cir. a yard) out of the water when the fisherman’s net is set to take it. For information about the Malāyan fish, I am indebted to Mr. Cecil Wray.

[1824] T. qiyünlīghī, presumably referring to spines or difficult bones; T. qīn, however, means a scabbard [Shaw].

[1825] One of the common frogs is a small one which, when alarmed, jumps along the surface of the water (G. of I. i, 273).

[1826]Anb and anbah (pronounced aṃb and aṃbah) are now less commonly used names than ām. It is an interesting comment on Bābur’s words that Abū’l-faẓl spells anb, letter by letter, and says that the b is quiescent (Āyīn 28; for the origin of the word mango, vide Yule’s H.J. s.n.).

[1827] A corresponding diminutive would be fairling.

[1828] The variants, entered in parenthesis, are found in the Bib. Ind. ed. of the Āyīn-i-akbarī p. 75 and in a (bazar) copy of the Qurānu’s-sā‘dain in my husband’s possession. As Amīr Khusrau was a poet of Hindūstān, either khẉash (khẉesh) [our own] or mā [our] would suit his meaning. The couplet is, literally:—

Our fairling, [i.e. mango] beauty-maker of the garden,

Fairest fruit of Hindūstān.

[1829] Daulat Khān Yūsuf-khail Lūdī in 929 AH. sent Bābur a gift of mangoes preserved in honey (in loco p. 440).

[1830] I have learned nothing more definite about the word kārdī than that it is the name of a superior kind of peach (Ghiyās̤u’l-lughat).

[1831] The preceding sentence is out of place in the Turkī text; it may therefore be a marginal note, perhaps not made by Bābur.

[1832] This sentence suggests that Bābur, writing in Āgra or Fatḥpūr did not there see fine mango-trees.

[1833] See Yule’s H.J. on the plantain, the banana of the West.

[1834] This word is a descendant of Sanscrit mocha, and parent of musa the botanical name of the fruit (Yule).

[1835] Shaikh Effendī (Kunos), Zenker and de Courteille say of this only that it is the name of a tree. Shaw gives a name that approaches it, ārman, a grass, a weed; Scully explains this as Artemisia vulgaris, wormwood, but Roxburgh gives no Artemisia having a leaf resembling the plantain’s. Scully has arāmadān, unexplained, which, like amān-qarā, may refer to comfort in shade. Bābur’s comparison will be with something known in Transoxiana. Maize has general resemblance with the plantain. So too have the names of the plants, since mocha and mauz stand for the plantain and (Hindī) mukā’ī for maize. These incidental resemblances bear, however lightly, on the question considered in the Ency. Br. (art. maize) whether maize was early in Asia or not; some writers hold that it was; if Bābur’s amān-qarā were maize, maize will have been familiar in Transoxiana in his day.

[1836] Abū’l-faẓl mentions that the plantain-tree bears no second crop unless cut down to the stump.

[1837] Bābur was fortunate not to have met with a seed-bearing plantain.

[1838] The ripe “dates” are called P. tamar-i Hind, whence our tamarind, and Tamarindus Indica.

[1839]Sophora alopecuroides, a leguminous plant (Scully).

[1840] Abū’l-faẓl gives galaundā as the name of the “fruit” [mewa],—Forbes, as that of the fallen flower. Cf. Brandis p. 426 and Yule’s H.J. s.n. Mohwa.

[1841] Bābur seems to say that spirit is extracted from both the fresh and the dried flowers. The fresh ones are favourite food with deer and jackals; they have a sweet spirituous taste. Erskine notes that the spirit made from them was well-known in Bombay by the name of Moura, or of Parsi-brandy, and that the farm of it was a considerable article of revenue (p. 325 n.). Roxburgh describes it as strong and intoxicating (p. 411).

[1842] This is the name of a green, stoneless grape which when dried, results in a raisin resembling the sultanas of Europe (Jahāngīr’s Memoirs and Yule’s H.J. s.n.; Griffiths’ Journal of Travel pp. 359, 388).

[1843]Aūl, lit. the aūl of the flower. The Persian translation renders aūl by bū which may allow both words to be understood in their (root) sense of being, i.e. natural state. De Courteille translates by quand la fleur est fraîche (ii, 210); Erskine took bū to mean smell (Memoirs p. 325), but the aūl it translates, does not seem to have this meaning. For reading aūl as “the natural state”, there is circumstantial support in the flower’s being eaten raw (Roxburgh). The annotator of the Elphinstone MS. [whose defacement of that Codex has been often mentioned], has added points and tashdīd to the aūl-ī (i.e. its aūl), so as to produce awwalī (first, f. 235). Against this there are the obvious objections that the Persian translation does not reproduce, and that its bū does not render awwalī; also that aūl-ī is a noun with its enclitic genitive yā (i).

[1844] This word seems to be meant to draw attention to the various merits of the mahuwā tree.

[1845] Erskine notes that this is not to be confounded with E. jāmbū, the rose-apple (Memoirs p. 325 n.). Cf. Yule’s H.J. s.n. Jambu.

[1846] var. ghat-ālū, ghab-ālū, ghain-ālū, shafl-ālū. Scully enters ‘ain-ālū (true-plum?) unexplained. The kamrak fruit is 3 in. long (Brandis) and of the size of a lemon (Firminger); dimensions which make Bābur’s 4 aīlīk (hand’s-thickness) a slight excess only, and which thus allow aīlīk, with its Persion translation, angusht, to be approximately an inch.

[1847] Speede, giving the fruit its Sanscrit name kamarunga, says it is acid, rather pleasant, something like an insipid apple; also that its pretty pink blossoms grow on the trunk and main branches (i, 211).

[1848] Cf. Yule’s H.J. s.n. jack-fruit. In a Calcutta nurseryman’s catalogue of 1914 AD. three kinds of jack-tree are offered for sale, viz. “Crispy Or Khaja, Soft or Neo, Rose-scented” (Seth, Feronia Nursery).

[1849] The gīpa is a sheep’s stomach stuffed with rice, minced meat, and spices, and boiled as a pudding. The resemblance of the jack, as it hangs on the tree, to the haggis, is wonderfully complete (Erskine).

[1850] These when roasted have the taste of chestnuts.

[1851] Firminger (p. 186) describes an ingenious method of training.

[1852] For a note of Humāyūn’s on the jack-fruit see Appendix O.

[1853]aīd-ī-yamān aīmās. It is somewhat curious that Bābur makes no comment on the odour of the jack itself.

[1854]būsh, English bosh (Shaw). The Persian translation inserts no more about this fruit.

[1855] Steingass applies this name to the plantain.

[1856] Erskine notes that “this is the bullace-plum, small, not more than twice as large as the sloe and not so high-flavoured; it is generally yellow, sometimes red.” Like Bābur, Brandis enumerates several varieties and mentions the seasonal changes of the tree (p. 170).

[1857] This will be Kābul, probably, because Transoxiana is written of by Bābur usually, if not invariably, as “that country”, and because he mentions the chīkda (i.e. chīka?), under its Persian name sinjid, in his Description of Kābul (f. 129b).

[1858] P. mar manjān, which I take to refer to the rīwājlār of Kābul. (Cf. f. 129b, where, however, (note 5) are corrigenda of Masson’s rawash for rīwāj, and his third to second volume.) Kehr’s Codex contains an extra passage about the karaūn dā, viz. that from it is made a tasty fritter-like dish, resembling a rhubarb-fritter (Ilminsky, p. 369).

[1859] People call it (P.) pālasa also (Elph. MS. f. 236, marginal note).

[1860] Perhaps the red-apple of Kābul, where two sorts are common, both rosy, one very much so, but much inferior to the other (Griffith’s Journal of Travel p. 388).