The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)

[1783] Sans. chakora; Ar. durrāj; P. kabg; T. kīklīk.

[1784] Here, probably, southern Afghānistān.

[1785]Caccabis chukūr (Scully, Shaw’s Vocabulary) or C. pallescens (Hume, quoted under No. 126 E. D. Ross’ Polyglot List).

[1786] “In some parts of the country (i.e. India before 1841 AD.), tippets used to be made of the beautiful black, white-spotted feathers of the lower plumage (of the durrāj), and were in much request, but they are rarely procurable now” (Bengal Sporting Magazine for 1841, quoted by Jerdon, ii, 561).

[1787] A broad collar of red passes round the whole neck (Jerdon, ii, 558).

[1788] Ar. durrāj means one who repeats what he hears, a tell-tale.

[1789] Various translations have been made of this passage, “I have milk and sugar” (Erskine), “J’ai du lait, un peu de sucre” (de Courteille), but with short sh:r, it might be read in more than one way ignoring milk and sugar. See Jerdon, ii, 558 and Hobson Jobson s.n. Black-partridge.

[1790] Flower-faced, Trapogon melanocephala, the horned (sing)-monal. It is described by Jahāngīr (Memoirs, R. and B., ii, 220) under the names [H. and P.] phūl-paikār and Kashmīrī, sonlū.

[1791]Gallus sonneratii, the grey jungle-fowl.

[1792] Perhaps Bambusicola fytchii, the western bambu-partridge. For chīl see E. D. Ross, l.c. No. 127.

[1793] Jahāngīr (l.c.) describes, under the Kashmīrī name pūt̤, what may be this bird. It seems to be Gallus ferrugineus, the red jungle-fowl (Blanford, iv, 75).

[1794] Jahāngīr helps to identify the bird by mentioning its elongated tail-feathers,—seasonal only.

[1795] The migrant quail will be Coturnix communis, the grey quail, 8 inches long; what it is compared with seems likely to be the bush-quail, which is non-migrant and shorter.

[1796] Perhaps Perdicula argunda, the rock bush-quail, which flies in small coveys.

[1797] Perhaps Coturnix coromandelica, the black-breasted or rain quail, 7 inches long.

[1798] Perhaps Motacilla citreola, a yellow wag-tail which summers in Central Asia (Oates, ii, 298). If so, its Kābul name may refer to its flashing colour. Cf. E. D. Ross, l.c. No. 301; de Courteille’s Dictionary which gives qārcha, wag-tail, and Zenker’s which fixes the colour.

[1799]Eupodotis edwardsii; Turkī, tūghdār or tūghdīrī.

[1800] Erskine noting (Mems. p. 321), that the bustard is common in the Dakkan where it is bigger than a turkey, says it is called tūghdār and suggests that this is a corruption of tūghdāq. The uses of both words are shewn by Bābur, here, and in the next following, account of the charz. Cf. G. of I. i, 260 and E. D. Ross l.c. Nos. 36, 40.

[1801]Sypheotis bengalensis and S. aurita, which are both smaller than Otis houbara (tūghdīrī). In Hindustan S. aurita is known as līkh which name is the nearest approach I have found to Bābur’s [lūja] lūkha.

[1802] Jerdon mentions (ii, 615) that this bird is common in Afghānistān and there called dugdaor (tūghdār, tūghdīrī).

[1803]Cf. Appendix B, since I wrote which, further information has made it fairly safe to say that the Hindūstān bāghrī-qarā is Pterocles exustus, the common sand-grouse and that the one of f. 49b is Pterocles arenarius, the larger or black-bellied sand-grouse. P. exustus is said by Yule (H. J. s.n. Rock-pigeon) to have been miscalled rock-pigeon by Anglo-Indians, perhaps because its flight resembles the pigeon’s. This accounts for Erskine’s rendering (p. 321) bāghrī-qarā here by rock-pigeon.

[1804]Leptoptilus dubius, Hind. hargīlā. Hindūstānīs call it pīr-i-dīng (Erskine) and peda dhauk (Blanford), both names referring, perhaps, to its pouch. It is the adjutant of Anglo-India. Cf. f. 235.

[1805] only when young (Blanford, ii, 188).

[1806] Elph. MS. mank:sā or mankīā; Ḥai. MS. m:nk. Haughton’s Bengali Dictionary gives two forms of the name mānek-jur and mānak-yoī. It is Dissura episcopus, the white-necked stork (Blanford iv, 370, who gives manik-jor amongst its Indian names). Jerdon classes it (ii, 737) as Ciconia leucocephala. It is the beefsteak bird of Anglo-India.

[1807]Ciconia nigra (Blanford, iv, 369).

[1808] Under the Hindūstānī form, būza, of Persian buzak the birds Bābur mentions as buzak can be identified. The large one is Inocotis papillosus, būza, kāla būza, black curlew, king-curlew. The bird it equals in size is a buzzard, Turkī sār (not Persian sār, starling). The king-curlew has a large white patch on the inner lesser and marginal coverts of its wings (Blanford, iv, 303). This agrees with Bābur’s statement about the wings of the large buzak. Its length is 27 inches, while the starling’s is 9-1/2 inches.

[1809]Ibis melanocephala, the white ibis, Pers. safed buzak, Bengali sabut būza. It is 30 inches long.

[1810] Perhaps, Plegadis falcinellus, the glossy ibis, which in most parts of India is a winter visitor. Its length is 25 inches.

[1811] Erskine suggests that this is Platalea leucorodia, the chamach-būza, spoon-bill. It is 33 inches long.

[1812]Anas poecilorhyncha. The Ḥai. MS. writes gharm-pāī, and this is the Indian name given by Blanford (iv, 437).

[1813]Anas boschas. Dr. Ross notes (No. 147), from the Sanglākh, that sūna is the drake, būrchīn, the duck and that it is common in China to call a certain variety of bird by the combined sex-names. Something like this is shewn by the uses of būghā and marāl q.v. Index.

[1814]Centropus rufipennis, the common coucal (Yule’s H.J. s.n. Crow-pheasant); H. makokhā, Cuculus castaneus (Buchanan, quoted by Forbes).

[1815]Pteropus edwardsii, the flying-fox. The inclusion of the bat here amongst birds, may be a clerical accident, since on f. 136 a flying-fox is not written of as a bird.

[1816] Bābur here uses what is both the Kābul and Andijān name for the magpie, Ar. ‘aqqa (Oates, i, 31 and Scully’s Voc), instead of T. sāghizghān or P. dam-sīcha (tail-wagger).

[1817] The Pers. trs. writes sāndūlāch mamūlā, mamūlā being Arabic for wag-tail. De Courteille’s Dictionary describes the sāndūlāch as small and having a long tail, the cock-bird green, the hen, yellow. The wag-tail suiting this in colouring is Motacilla borealis (Oates, ii, 294; syn. Budytes viridis, the green wag-tail); this, as a migrant, serves to compare with the Indian “little bird”, which seems likely to be a red-start.

[1818] This word may represent Scully’s kirich and be the Turkī name for a swift, perhaps Cypselus affinis.

[1819] This name is taken from its cry during the breeding season (Yule’s H.J. s.n. Koel).

[1820] Bābur’s distinction between the three crocodiles he mentions seems to be that of names he heard, shīr-ābī, siyāh-sār, and ghaṛīāl.

[1821] In this passage my husband finds the explanation of two somewhat vague statements of later date, one made by Abū’l-faẓl (A. A. Blochmann, p. 65) that Akbar called the kīlās (cherry) the shāh-ālū (king-plum), the other by Jahāngīr that this change was made because kīlās means lizard (Jahāngīr’s Memoirs, R. & B. i, 116). What Akbar did is shewn by Bābur; it was to reject the Persian name kīlās, cherry, because it closely resembled Turkī gīlās, lizard. There is a lizard Stellio Lehmanni of Transoxiana with which Bābur may well have compared the crocodile’s appearance (Schuyler’s Turkistān, i, 383). Akbar in Hindūstān may have had Varanus salvator (6 ft. long) in mind, if indeed he had not the great lizard, al lagarto, the alligator itself in his thought. The name kīlās evidently was banished only from the Court circle, since it is still current in Kashmīr (Blochmann l.c. p. 616); and Speede (p. 201) gives keeras, cherry, as used in India.

[1822] This name as now used, is that of the purely fish-eating crocodile. [In the Turkī text Bābur’s account of the ghaṛīāl follows that of the porpoise; but it is grouped here with those of the two other crocodiles.]