The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)

[787] This practice Bābur viewed with disgust, the hog being an impure animal according to Muḥammadan Law (Erskine).

[788] The Khazīnatu’l-asfiyā (ii, 293) explains how it came about that this saint, one honoured in Kashmīr, was buried in Khutlān. He died in Hazāra (Paklī) and there the Paklī Sult̤ān wished to have him buried, but his disciples, for some unspecified reason, wished to bury him in Khutlān. In order to decide the matter they invited the Sultān to remove the bier with the corpse upon it. It could not be stirred from its place. When, however, a single one of the disciples tried to move it, he alone was able to lift it, and to bear it away on his head. Hence the burial in Khutlān. The death occurred in 786 AH. (1384 AD.). A point of interest in this legend is that, like the one to follow, concerning dead women, it shews belief in the living activities of the dead.

[789] The MSS. vary between 920 and 925 AH.—neither date seems correct. As the annals of 925 AH. begin in Muḥarram, with Bābur to the east of Bājaur, we surmise that the Chaghān-sarāī affair may have occurred on his way thither, and at the end of 924 AH.

[790]karanj, coriandrum sativum.

[791] Some 20-24 m. north of Jalālābād. The name Multa-kundī may refer to the Rām-kundī range, or mean Lower district, or mean Below Kundī. See Biddulph’s Khowārī Dialect s.n under; R.’s Notes p. 108 and Dict. s.n. kund; Masson, i, 209.

[792]i.e. treat her corpse as that of an infidel (Erskine).

[793] It would suit the position of this village if its name were found to link to the Turkī verb chaqmāq, to go out, because it lies in the mouth of a defile (Dahānah-i-koh, Mountain-mouth) through which the road for Kāfiristān goes out past the village. A not-infrequent explanation of the name to mean White-house, Āq-sarāī, may well be questioned. Chaghān, white, is Mughūlī and it would be less probable for a Mughūlī than for a Turkī name to establish itself. Another explanation may lie in the tribe name Chugānī. The two forms chaghān and chaghār may well be due to the common local interchange in speech of n with r. (For Dahānah-i-koh see [some] maps and Raverty’s Bājaur routes.)

[794] Nīmchas, presumably,—half-bred in custom, perhaps in blood—; and not improbably, converted Kāfirs. It is useful to remember that Kāfiristān was once bounded, west and south, by the Bārān-water.

[795] Kāfir wine is mostly poor, thin and, even so, usually diluted with water. When kept two or three years, however, it becomes clear and sometimes strong. Sir G. S. Robertson never saw a Kāfir drunk (Kāfirs of the Hindū-kush, p. 591).

[796] Kāma might have classed better under Nīngnahār of which it was a dependency.

[797]i.e. water-of-Nijr; so too, Badr-aū and Tag-aū. Nijr-aū has seven-valleys (JASB 1838 p. 329 and Burnes’ Report X). Sayyid Ghulām-i-muḥammad mentions that Bābur established a frontier-post between Nijr-aū and Kāfiristān which in his own day was still maintained. He was an envoy of Warren Hastings to Tīmūr Shāh Sadozī (R.’s Notes p. 36 and p. 142).

[798]Kāfirwash; they were Kāfirs converted to Muḥammadanism.

[799]Archa, if not inclusive, meaning conifer, may represent juniperus excelsa, this being the common local conifer. The other trees of the list are pinus Gerardiana (Brandis, p. 690), quercus bīlūt, the holm-oak, and pistacia mutica or khanjak, a tree yielding mastic.

[800]rūba-i-parwān, pteromys inornatus, the large, red flying-squirrel (Blandford’s Fauna of British India, Mammalia, p. 363).

[801] The giz is a short-flight arrow used for shooting small birds etc. Descending flights of squirrels have been ascertained as 60 yards, one, a record, of 80 (Blandford).

[802] Apparently tetrogallus himalayensis, the Himalayan snow-cock (Blandford, iv, 143).Burnes (Cabool p. 163) describes the kabg-i-darī as the rara avis of the Kābul Kohistān, somewhat less than a turkey, and of the chikor (partridge) species. It was procured for him first in Ghūr-bund, but, when snow has fallen, it could be had nearer Kābul. Bābur’s bū-qalamūn may have come into his vocabulary, either as a survival direct from Greek occupation of Kābul and Panj-āb, or through Arabic writings. PRGS 1879 p. 251, Kaye’s art. and JASB 1838 p. 863, Hodgson’s art.

[803] Bartavelle’s Greek-partridge, tetrao- or perdrix-rufus [f. 279 and Mems. p. 320 n.].

[804] A similar story is told of some fields near Whitby:—“These wild geese, which in winter fly in great flocks to the lakes and rivers unfrozen in the southern parts, to the great amazement of every-one, fall suddenly down upon the ground when they are in flight over certain neighbouring fields thereabouts; a relation I should not have made, if I had not received it from several credible men.” See Notes to Marmion p. xlvi (Erskine); Scott’s Poems, Black’s ed. 1880, vii, 104.

[805] Are we to infer from this that the musk-rat (Crocidura cœrulea, Lydekker, p. 626) was not so common in Hindūstān in the age of Bābur as it has now become? He was not a careless observer (Erskine).