The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)

[1861] Its downy fruit grows in bundles from the trunk and large branches (Roxburgh).

[1862] The reference by “also” (ham) will be to the kamrak (f. 283b), but both Roxburgh and Brandis say the amla is six striated.

[1863] The Sanscrit and Bengālī name for the chirūnjī-tree is pīyala (Roxburgh p. 363).

[1864] Cf. f. 250b.

[1865] The leaflet is rigid enough to serve as a runlet, but soon wears out; for this reason, the usual practice is to use one of split bamboo.

[1866] This is a famous hunting-ground between Bīāna and Dhūlpūr, Rājpūtāna, visited in 933 AH. (f. 33Ob). Bābur’s great-great-grandson Shāh-jahān built a hunting-lodge there (G. of I.).

[1867] Ḥai. MS. mu‘arrab, but the Elph. MS. maghrib, [occidentalizing]. The Ḥai. MS. when writing of the orange (infra) also has maghrib. A distinction of locality may be drawn by maghrib.

[1868] Bābur’s “Hindūstān people” (aīl) are those neither Turks nor Afghāns.

[1869] This name, with its usual form tāḍī (toddy), is used for the fermented sap of the date, coco, and mhār palms also (cf. Yule’s H.J. s.n. toddy).

[1870] Bābur writes of the long leaf-stalk as a branch (shākh); he also seems to have taken each spike of the fan-leaf to represent a separate leaf. [For two omissions from my trs. see Appendix O.]

[1871] Most of the fruits Bābur describes as orange-like are named in the following classified list, taken from Watts’ Economic Products of India:—“Citrus aurantium, narangi, sangtara, amrit-phal; C. decumana, pumelo, shaddock, forbidden-fruit, sada-phal; C. medica proper, turunj, limu; C. medica limonum, jambhira, karna-nebu.” Under C. aurantium Brandis enters both the sweet and the Seville oranges (nārangī); this Bābur appears to do also.

[1872]kīndīklīk, explained in the Elph. Codex by nāfwār (f. 238). This detail is omitted by the Persian translation. Firminger’s description (p. 221) of Aurangābād oranges suggests that they also are navel-oranges. At the present time one of the best oranges had in England is the navel one of California.

[1873] Useful addition is made to earlier notes on the variability of the yīghāch, a variability depending on time taken to cover the ground, by the following passage from Henderson and Hume’s Lahor to Yarkand (p. 120), which shews that even in the last century the farsang (the P. word used in the Persian translation of the Bābur-nāma for T. yīghāch) was computed by time. “All the way from Kargallik (Qārghalīq) to Yarkand, there were tall wooden mile-posts along the roads, at intervals of about 5 miles, or rather one hour’s journey, apart. On a board at the top of each post, or farsang as it is called, the distances were very legibly written in Turki.”

[1874]ma‘rib, Elph. MS. magharrib; (cf. f. 285b note).

[1875]i.e. nārang (Sans. nārangā) has been changed to nāranj in the ‘Arab mouth. What is probably one of Humāyūn’s notes preserved by the Elph. Codex (f. 238), appears to say—it is mutilated—that nārang has been corrupted into nāranj.

[1876] The Elph. Codex has a note—mutilated in early binding—which is attested by its scribe as copied from Humāyūn’s hand-writing, and is to the effect that once on his way from the Hot-bath, he saw people who had taken poison and restored them by giving lime-juice.

Erskine here notes that the same antidotal quality is ascribed to the citron by Virgil:—

Media fert tristes succos. tardumque saporem

Felicis mali, quo non praesentius ullum,

Pocula si quando saevae infecere novercae,

Miscueruntque herbas et non innoxia verba,

Auxilium venit, ac membris agit atra venena.

Georgics II. v. 126.

Vide Heyne’s note i, 438.

[1877] P. turunj, wrinkled, puckered; Sans. vījāpūra and H. bijaurā (Āyīn 28), seed-filled.

[1878] Bābur may have confused this with H. bijaurā; so too appears to have done the writer (Humāyūn?) of a [now mutilated] note in the Elph. Codex (f. 238), which seems to say that the fruit or its name went from Bajaur to Hindūstān. Is the country of Bajaur so-named from its indigenous orange (vījāpūra, whence bijaurā)? The name occurs also north of Kangra.

[1879] Of this name variants are numerous, santra, santhara, samtara, etc. Watts classes it as a C. aurantium; Erskine makes it the common sweet orange; Firminger, quoting Ross (p. 221) writes that, as grown in the Nagpur gardens it is one of the finest Indian oranges, with rind thin, smooth and close. The Emperor Muḥammad Shāh is said to have altered its name to rang-tāra because of its fine colour (rang) (Forbes). Speede (ii, 109) gives both names. As to the meaning and origin of the name santara or santra, so suggestive of Cintra, the Portuguese home of a similar orange, it may be said that it looks like a hill-name used in N. E. India, for there is a village in the Bhutan Hills, (Western Duars) known from its orange groves as Santra-bārī, Abode of the orange. To this (mentioned already as my husband’s suggestion in Mr. Crooke’s ed. of Yule’s H.J.) support is given by the item “Suntura, famous Nipal variety”, entered in Seth’s Nursery-list of 1914 (Feronia Nurseries, Calcutta). Light on the question of origin could be thrown, no doubt, by those acquainted with the dialects of the hill-tract concerned.

[1880] This refers, presumably, to the absence of the beak characteristic of all citrons.

[1881] melter, from the Sans. root gal, which provides the names of several lemons by reason of their solvent quality, specified by Bābur (infra) of the amal-bīd. Erskine notes that in his day the gal-gal was known as kilmek (galmak?).

[1882] Sans. jambīrā, H. jambīr, classed by Abū’l-faẓl as one of the somewhat sour fruits and by Watts as Citrus medica limonum.

[1883] Watts, C. decumana, the shaddock or pumelo; Firminger (p. 223) has C. decumana pyriformis suiting Bābur’s “pear-shaped”. What Bābur compared it with will be the Transoxanian pear and quince (P. amrūd and bihī) and not the Indian guava and Bengal quince (P. amrūd and H. bael).

[1884] The Turkī text writes amrd. Watts classes the amrit-phal as a C. aurantium. This supports Erskine’s suggestion that it is the mandarin-orange. Humāyūn describes it in a note which is written pell-mell in the text of the Elph. Codex and contains also descriptions of the kāmila and santara oranges; it can be seen translated in Appendix O.

[1885] So spelled in the Turkī text and also in two good MSS. of the Pers. trs. I.O. 217 and 218, but by Abū’l-faẓl amal-bīt. Both P. bīd and P. bīt mean willow and cane (ratan), so that amal-bīd (bīt) can mean acid-willow and acid-cane. But as Bābur is writing of a fruit like an orange, the cane that bears an acid fruit, Calamus rotang, can be left aside in favour of Citrus medica acidissima. Of this fruit the solvent property Bābur mentions, as well as the commonly-known service in cleansing metal, link it, by these uses, with the willow and suggest a ground for understanding, as Erskine did, that amal-bīd meant acid-willow; for willow-wood is used to rub rust off metal.

[1886] This statement shows that Bābur was writing the Description of Hindūstān in 935 AH. (1528-9 AD.), which is the date given for it by Shaikh Zain.

[1887] This story of the needle is believed in India of all the citron kind, which are hence called sūī-gal (needle-melter) in the Dakhin (Erskine). Cf. Forbes, p. 489 s.n. sūī-gal.

[1888] Erskine here quotes information from Abū’l-faẓl (Āyīn 28) about Akbar’s encouragement of the cultivation of fruits.

[1889] Hindustani (Urdu) gaṛhal. Many varieties of Hibiscus (syn. Althea) grow in India; some thrive in Surrey gardens; the jāsūn by name and colour can be taken as what is known in Malayan, Tamil, etc., as the shoe-flower, from its use in darkening leather (Yule’s H.J.).

[1890] I surmise that what I have placed between asterisks here belongs to the next-following plant, the oleander. For though the branches of the jāsūn grow vertically, the bush is a dense mass upon one stout trunk, or stout short stem. The words placed in parenthesis above are not with the Ḥaidarabad but are with the Elphinstone Codex. There would seem to have been a scribe’s skip from one “rose” to the other. As has been shewn repeatedly, this part of the Bābur-nāma has been much annotated; in the Elph. Codex, where only most of the notes are preserved, some are entered by the scribe pell-mell into Bābur’s text. The present instance may be a case of a marginal note, added to the text in a wrong place.

[1891] The peduncle supporting the plume of medial petals is clearly seen only when the flower opens first. The plumed Hibiscus is found in florists’ catalogues described as “double”.

[1892] This Anglo-Indians call also rose-bay. A Persian name appears to be zahr-giyāh, poison-grass, which makes it the more probable that the doubtful passage in the previous description of the jāsūn belongs to the rod-like oleander, known as the poison-grass. The oleander is common in river-beds over much country known to Bābur, outside India.