The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)

[2437] No record survives of the arrival of this envoy or of why he was later in coming than his brother who was at Bābur’s entertainment. Cf. f. 361b.

[2438] Presumably this refers to the appliances mentioned on f. 350b.

[2439] f. 332, n. 3.

[2440]zarbaft m:l:k. Amongst gold stuffs imported into Hindūstān, Abū’l-faẓl mentions mīlak which may be Bābur’s cloth. It came from Turkistān (A.-i-A. Blochmann, p. 92 and n.).

[2441] A tang is a small silver coin of the value of about a penny (Erskine).

[2442]tānglāsī, lit. at its dawning. It is not always clear whether tānglāsī means, Anglicé, next dawn or day, which here would be Monday, or whether it stands for the dawn (daylight) of the Muḥammadan day which had begun at 6 p. m. on the previous evening, here Sunday. When Bābur records, e.g. a late audience, tānglāsī, following, will stand for the daylight of the day of audience. The point is of some importance as bearing on discrepancies of days, as these are stated in MSS., with European calendars; it is conspicuously so in Bābur’s diary sections.

[2443]risālat t̤arīqī bīla; their special mission may have been to work for peace (f. 359b, n. 1).

[2444] He may well be Kāmrān’s father-in-law Sl. ‘Alī Mīrzā T̤aghāī Begchīk.

[2445]nīmcha u takband. The tak-band is a silk or woollen girdle fastening with a “hook and eye” (Steingass), perhaps with a buckle.

[2446] This description is that of the contents of the “Rāmpūr Dīwān”; the tarjuma being the Wālidiyyah-risāla (f. 361 and n.). What is said here shows that four copies went to Kābul or further north. Cf. Appendix Q.

[2447]Sar-khat̤ may mean “copies” set for Kāmrān to imitate.

[2448]bīr pahr yāwūshūb aīdī; I.O. 215 f. 221, qarīb yak pās roz būd.

[2449]ākhar, a word which may reveal a bad start and uncertainty as to when and where to halt.

[2450] This, and not Chandwār (f. 331b), appears the correct form. Neither this place nor Ābāpūr is mentioned in the G. of I.’s Index or shewn in the I.S. Map of 1900 (cf. f. 331b n. 3). Chandawār lies s.w. of Fīrūzābād, and near a village called Ṣufīpūr.

[2451] Anglicé, Wednesday after 6 p.m.

[2452] or life-guardsman, body-guard.

[2453] This higher title for T̤ahmāsp, which first appears here in the B.N., may be an early slip in the Turkī text, since it occurs in many MSS. and also because “Shāh-zāda” reappears on f. 359.

[2454] Slash-face, balafré; perhaps Ibrāhīm Begchīk (Index s.n.), but it is long since he was mentioned by Bābur, at least by name. He may however have come, at this time of reunion in Āgra, with Mīrzā Beg T̤aghāī (his uncle or brother?), father-in-law of Kāmrān.

[2455] The army will have kept to the main road connecting the larger towns mentioned and avoiding the ravine district of the Jumna. What the boat-journey will have been between high banks and round remarkable bends can be learned from the G. of I. and Neave’s District Gazetteer of Mainpūrī. Rāprī is on the road from Fīrūzābād to the ferry for Bateswar, where a large fair is held annually. (It is misplaced further east in the I.S. Map of 1900.) There are two Fatḥpūrs, n. e. of Rāprī.

[2456]aūlūgh tūghāīnīng tūbī. Here it suits to take the Turkī word tūghāī to mean bend of a river, and as referring to the one shaped (on the map) like a soda-water bottle, its neck close to Rāprī. Bābur avoided it by taking boat below its mouth.—In neither Persian translation has tūghāī been read to mean a bend of a river; the first has az pāyān rūīa Rāprī, perhaps referring to the important ford (pāyān); the second has az zīr bulandī kalān Rāprī, perhaps referring to a height at the meeting of the bank of the ravine down which the road to the ford comes, with the high bank of the river. Three examples of tūghāī or tūqāī [a synonym given by Dictionaries], can be seen in Abū’l-ghāzī’s Shajrat-i-Turk, Fræhn’s imprint, pp. 106, 107, 119 (Désmaisons’ trs. pp. 204, 205, 230). In each instance Désmaisons renders it by coude, elbow, but one of the examples may need reconsideration, since the word has the further meanings of wood, dense forest by the side of a river (Vambéry), prairie (Zenker), and reedy plain (Shaw).

[2457] Blochmann describes the apparatus for marking lines to guide writing (A.-i-A. trs. p. 52 n. 5):—On a card of the size of the page to be written on, two vertical lines are drawn within an inch of the edges; along these lines small holes are pierced at regular intervals, and through these a string is laced backwards and forwards, care being taken that the horizontal strings are parallel. Over the lines of string the pages are placed and pressed down; the strings then mark the paper sufficiently to guide the writing.

[2458]tarkīb (nīng) khat̤ī bīla tarjuma bīlīr aūchūn. The Rāmpūr Dīwān may supply the explanation of the uncertain words tarkīb khat̤ī. The “translation” (tarjuma), mentioned in the passage quoted above, is the Wālidiyyah-risāla, the first item of the Dīwān, in which it is entered on crowded pages, specially insufficient for the larger hand of the chapter-headings. The number of lines per page is 13; Bābur now fashions a line-marker for 11. He has already despatched 4 copies of the translation (f. 357b); he will have judged them unsatisfactory; hence to give space for the mixture of hands (tarkīb khat̤ī), i.e. the smaller hand of the poem and the larger of the headings, he makes an 11 line marker.

[2459] Perhaps Aḥrārī’s in the Wālidiyyah-risāla, perhaps those of Muḥammad. A quatrain in the Rāmpūr Dīwān connects with this admonishment [Plate xiva, 2nd quatrain].

[2460] Jākhān (G. of Mainpūrī). The G. of Etāwa (Drake-Brockman) p. 213, gives this as some 18 m. n.w. of Etāwa and as lying amongst the ravines of the Jumna.

[2461] f. 359b allows some of the particulars to be known.

[2462] Mahdī may have come to invite Bābur to the luncheon he served shortly afterwards. The Ḥai. MS. gives him the honorific plural; either a second caller was with him or an early scribe has made a slip, since Bābur never so-honours Mahdī. This small point touches the larger one of how Bābur regarded him, and this in connection with the singular story Niz̤āmu’d-dīn Aḥmad tells in his T̤abaqāt-i-akbarī about Khalīfa’s wish to supplant Humāyūn by Mahdī Khwāja (Index s.nn.).

[2463]yīgītlārnī shokhlūqgha sāldūq, perhaps set them to make fun. Cf. f. 366, yīgītlār bīr pāra shokhlūq qīldīlār. Muḥ. Shīrāzī (p. 323 foot) makes the startling addition of dar āb (andākhtīm), i.e. he says that the royal party flung the braves into the river.

[2464] The Gazetteer of Etāwa (Drake-Brockman) p. 186, s.n. Bāburpūr, writes of two village sites [which from their position are Mūrī-and-Adūsa], as known by the name Sarāī Bāburpūr from having been Bābur’s halting-place. They are 24m. to the s.e. of Etāwa, on the old road for Kālpī. Near the name Bāburpūr in the Gazetteer Map there is Muhuri (Mūrī?); there is little or no doubt that Sarāī Bāburpūr represents the camping-ground Mūrī-and-Adūsa.

[2465] This connects with Kītīn-qarā’s complaints of the frontier-begs (f. 361), and with the talk of peace (f. 356b).

[2466] This injunction may connect with the desired peace; it will have been prompted by at least a doubt in Bābur’s mind as to Kāmrān’s behaviour perhaps e.g. in manifested dislike for a Shīa‘. Concerning the style Shāh-zāda see f. 358, p. 643, n. 1.

[2467] Kāmrān’s mother Gul-rukh Begchīk will have been of the party who will have tried in Kābul to forward her son’s interests.

[2468] f. 348, p. 624, n. 2.

[2469] Kābul and Tramontana.

[2470] Presumably that of Shamsu’d-dīn Muḥammad’s mission. One of Bābur’s couplets expresses longing for the fruits, and also for the “running waters”, of lands other than Hindūstān, with conceits recalling those of his English contemporaries in verse, as indeed do several others of his short poems (Rāmpūr Dīwān Plate xvii A.).

[2471] Ḥai. MS. nā marbūt̤līghī; so too the 2nd Pers. trs. but the 1st writes wairānī u karābī which suits the matter of defence.

[2472]qūrghān, walled-town; from the maẓbūt following, the defences are meant.

[2473]viz. Governor Khwāja Kalān, on whose want of dominance his sovereign makes good-natured reflection.

[2474]‘alūfa u qūnāl; cf. 364b.

[2475] Following aīlchī (envoys) there is in the Ḥai. MS. and in I.O. 217 a doubtful word, būmla, yūmla; I.O. 215 (which contains a Persian trs. of the letter) is obscure, Ilminsky changes the wording slightly; Erskine has a free translation. Perhaps it is yaumī, daily, misplaced (see above).

[2476] Perhaps, endow the Mosque so as to leave no right of property in its revenues to their donor, here Bābur. Cf. Hughes’ Dict. of Islām s.nn. sharī‘, masjid and waqf.