N.—NOTES ON A FEW BIRDS.
Project Gutenberg EPUB3 edition
Babur, Emperor of Hindustan and Beveridge, Annette Susannah
In attempting to identify some of the birds of Bābur’s lists difficulty arises from the variety of names provided by the different tongues of the region concerned, and also in some cases by the application of one name to differing birds. The following random gleanings enlarge and, in part, revise some earlier notes and translations of Mr. Erskine’s and my own. They are offered as material for the use of those better acquainted with bird-lore and with Himālayan dialects.
a.Concerning the lūkha, lūja, lūcha, kūja (f.135 and f.278b).
The nearest word I have found to lūkha and its similars is likkh, a florican (Jerdon, ii, 615), but the florican has not the chameleon colours of the lūkha (var.). As Bābur when writing in Hindūstān, uses such “book-words” as Ar. baḥrī (qūt̤ās) and Ar. bū-qalamūn (chameleon), it would not be strange if his name for the “lūkha” bird represented Ar. awja, very beautiful, or connected with Ar. loḥ, shining splendour.
The form kūja is found in Ilminsky’s imprint p.361 (Mémoires ii, 198, koudjeh).
What is confusing to translators is that (as it now seems to me) Bābur appears to use the name kabg-i-darī in both passages (f.135 and f.278b) to represent two birds; (1) he compares the lūkha as to size with the kabg-i-darī of the Kābul region, and (2) for size and colour with that of Hindūstān. But the bird, of the Western Himālayas known by the name kabg-i-darī is the Himālayan snow-cock, Tetraogallus himālayensis, Turkī, aūlār and in the Kābul region, chīūrtika (f.249, Jerdon, ii, 549-50); while the kabg-i-darī (syn. chikor) of Hindūstān, whether of hill or plain, is one or more of much smaller birds.
The snow-cock being 28 inches in length, the lūkha bird must be of this size. Such birds as to size and plumage of changing colour are the Lophophori and Trapagons, varieties of which are found in places suiting Bābur’s account of the lūkha.
It may be noted that the Himālayan snow-cock is still called kabg-i-darī in Afghānistān (Jerdon, ii, 550) and in Kashmīr (Vigne’s Travels in Kashmīr ii, 18). As its range is up to 18,000 feet, its Persian name describes it correctly whether read as “of the mountains” (dari), or as “royal” (darī) through its splendour.
I add here the following notes of Mr. Erskine’s, which I have not quoted already where they occur (cf. f. 135 and f. 278b):—
On f. 135, “lokheh” is said to mean hill-chikor.
On f. 278b,
to “lūjeh”, “The Persian has lūkheh.”
to “kepki durrī”, “The kepkī deri, or durri is much larger than the common kepk of Persia and is peculiar to Khorāsān. It is said to be a beautiful bird. The common kepk of Persia and Khorāsān is the hill-chikor of India.”
to “higher up”, “The lujeh may be the chikor of the plains which Hunter calls bartavelle or Greek partridge.”
The following corrections are needed about my own notes:—(1) on f. 135 (p. 213) n. 7 is wrongly referred; it belongs to the first word, viz. kabg-i-darī, of p. 214; (2) on f. 279 (p. 496) n. 2 should refer to the second kabg-i-darī.
b. Birds called mūnāl (var. monāl and moonaul).
Yule writing in Hobson Jobson (p. 580) of the “moonaul” which he identifies as Lophophorus Impeyanus, queries whether, on grounds he gives, the word moonaul is connected etymologically with Sanscrit muni, an “eremite”. In continuation of his topic, I give here the names of other birds called mūnāl, which I have noticed in various ornithological works while turning their pages for other information.
Besides L. Impeyanus and Trapagon Ceriornis satyra which Yule mentions as called “moonaul”, there are L. refulgens, mūnāl and Ghūr (mountain)-mūnāl; Trapagon Ceriornis satyra, called mūnāl in Nipāl; T. C. melanocephalus, called sing (horned)-mūnāl in the N.W. Himālayas; T. himālayensis, the jer- or cher-mūnāl of the same region, known also as chikor; and Lerwa nevicola, the snow-partridge known in Garhwal as Quoir- or Qūr-mūnāl. Do all these birds behave in such a way as to suggest that mūnāl may imply the individual isolation related by Jerdon of L. Impeyanus, “In the autumnal and winter months numbers are generally collected in the same quarter of the forest, though often so widely scattered that each bird appears to be alone?” My own search amongst vocabularies of hill-dialects for the meaning of the word has been unsuccessful, spite of the long range mūnāls in the Himālayas.
c. Concerning the word chīūrtika, chourtka.
Jerdon’s entry (ii, 549, 554) of the name chourtka as a synonym of Tetraogallus himālayensis enables me to fill a gap I have left on f. 249 (p. 491 and n. 6),2810 with the name Himālayan snow-cock, and to allow Bābur’s statement to be that he, in January 1520 AD. when coming down from the Bād-i-pīch pass, saw many snow-cocks. The Memoirs (p.282) has “chikors”, which in India is a synonym for kabg-i-darī; the Mémoires (ii, 122) has sauterelles, but this meaning of chīūrtika does not suit wintry January. That month would suit for the descent from higher altitudes of snow-cocks. Griffith, a botanist who travelled in Afghānistān cir. 1838 AD., saw myriads of cicadæ between Qilat-i-ghilzai and Ghazni, but the month was July.
d.On the qūt̤ān (f. 142, p. 224; Memoirs, p. 153; Mémoires ii, 313).
Mr. Erskine for qūt̤ān enters khawāṣil [gold-finch] which he will have seen interlined in the Elphinstone Codex (f. 109b) in explanation of qūt̤ān.
Shaikh Effendi (Kunos’ ed., p. 139) explains qūt̤ān to be the gold-finch, Steiglitz.
Ilminsky’s qūtān (p. 175) is translated by M. de Courteille as pélicane and certainly some copies of the 2nd Persian translation [Muḥ. Shīrāzi’s p. 90] have ḥawāṣil, pelican.
The pelican would class better than the small finch with the herons and egrets of Bābur’s trio; it also would appear a more likely bird to be caught “with the cord”.
That Bābur’s qūt̤ān (ḥawāṣil) migrated in great numbers is however against supposing it to be Pelicanus onocrotatus which is seen in India during the winter, because it appears there in moderate numbers only, and Blanford with other ornithologists states that no western pelican migrates largely into India.
Perhaps the qūt̤ān was Linnæus’ Pelicanus carbo of which one synonym is Carbo comoranus, the cormorant, a bird seen in India in large numbers of both the large and small varieties. As cormorants are not known to breed in that country, they will have migrated in the masses Bābur mentions.
A translation matter falls to mention here:—After saying that the aūqār (grey heron), qarqara (egret), and qūtān (cormorant) are taken with the cord, Bābur says that this method of bird-catching is unique (bū nūḥ qūsh tūtmāq ghair muqarrar dūr) and describes it. The Persian text omits to translate the tūtmāq (by P. giriftan); hence Erskine (Mems. p. 153) writes, “The last mentioned fowl” (i.e. the qūt̤ān) “is rare,” notwithstanding Bābur’s statement that all three of the birds he names are caught in masses. De Courteille (p. 313) writes, as though only of the qūtān, “ces derniers toutefois ne se prennent qu’accidentelment,” perhaps led to do so by knowledge of the circumstance that Pelicanus onocrotatus is rare in India.