The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)

[1670] This wording will cover armour of man and horse.

[1671]ātlāndūk, Pers. trs. sūwār shudīm. Some later oriental writers locate Bābur’s battle at two or more miles from the town of Pānī-pat, and Bābur’s word ātlāndūk might imply that his cavalry rode forth and arrayed outside his defences, but his narrative allows of his delivering attack, through the wide sally-ports, after arraying behind the carts and mantelets which checked his adversary’s swift advance. The Mahrattas, who may have occupied the same ground as Bābur, fortified themselves more strongly than he did, as having powerful artillery against them. Aḥmad Shāh Abdālī’s defence against them was an ordinary ditch and abbattis, [Bābur’s ditch and branch,] mostly of dhāk trees (Butea frondosa), a local product Bābur also is likely to have used.

[1672] The preceding three words seem to distinguish this Shāh Ḥusain from several others of his name and may imply that he was the son of Yāragī Mughūl Ghānchī (Index and I.O. 217 f. 184b l. 7).

[1673] For Bābur’s terms vide f. 209b

[1674] This is Mīrzā Khān’s son, i.e. Wais Mīrān-shāhī’s.

[1675] A dispute for this right-hand post of honour is recorded on f. 100b, as also in accounts of Culloden.

[1676]tartīb u yāsāl, which may include, as Erskine took it to do, the carts and mantelets; of these however, Ibrāhīm can hardly have failed to hear before he rode out of camp.

[1677] f. 217b and note; Irvine’s Army of the Indian Mughuls p. 133. Here Erskine notes (Mems. p. 306) “The size of these artillery at this time is very uncertain. The word firingī is now (1826 AD.) used in the Deccan for a swivel. At the present day, zarb-zan in common usage is a small species of swivel. Both words in Bābur’s time appear to have been used for field-cannon.” (For an account of guns, intermediate in date between Bābur and Erskine, see the Āyīn-i-akbarī. Cf. f. 264 n. on the carts (arāba).)

[1678] Although the authority of the Tārīkh-i-salāt̤īn-i-afaghāna is not weighty its reproduction of Afghān opinion is worth consideration. It says that astrologers foretold Ibrāhīm’s defeat; that his men, though greatly outnumbering Bābur’s, were out-of-heart through his ill-treatment of them, and his amīrs in displeasure against him, but that never-the-less, the conflict at Pānī-pat was more desperate than had ever been seen. It states that Ibrāhīm fell where his tomb now is (i.e. in circa 1002 AH.-1594 AD.); that Bābur went to the spot and, prompted by his tender heart, lifted up the head of his dead adversary, and said, “Honour to your courage!”, ordered brocade and sweetmeats made ready, enjoined Dilāwar Khān and Khalīfa to bathe the corpse and to bury it where it lay (E. & D. v, 2). Naturally, part of the reverence shewn to the dead would be the burial together of head and trunk.

[1679] f. 209b and App. H. section c. Bābā chuhra would be one of the corps of braves.

[1680] He was a brother of Muḥibb-i-‘alī’s mother.

[1681] To give Humāyūn the title Mīrzā may be a scribe’s lapse, but might also be a nuance of Bābur’s, made to shew, with other minutiae, that Humāyūn was in chief command. The other minute matters are that instead of Humāyūn’s name being the first of a simple series of commanders’ names with the enclitic accusative appended to the last one (here Walī), as is usual, Humāyūn’s name has its own enclitic nī; and, again, the phrase is “Humāyūn with” such and such begs, a turn of expression differentiating him from the rest. The same unusual variations occur again, just below, perhaps with the same intention of shewing chief command, there of Mahdī Khwāja.

[1682] A small matter of wording attracts attention in the preceding two sentences. Bābur, who does not always avoid verbal repetition, here constructs two sentences which, except for the place-names Dihlī and Āgra, convey information of precisely the same action in entirely different words.

[1683] d. 1325 AD. The places Bābur visited near Dihlī are described in the Reports of the Indian Archæological Survey, in Sayyid Aḥmad’s As̤ār Sanādīd pp. 74-85, in Keene’s Hand-book to Dihlī and Murray’s Hand-book to Bengal etc. The last two quote much from the writings of Cunningham and Fergusson.

[1684] and on the same side of the river.

[1685] d. 1235 AD. He was a native of Aūsh [Ush] in Farghāna.

[1686] d. 1286 AD. He was a Slave ruler of Dihlī.

[1687] ‘Alāu’u’d-dīn Muḥ. Shāh Khiljī Turk d. 1316 AD. It is curious that Bābur should specify visiting his Minār (minārī, Pers. trs. I.O. 217 f. 185b, minār-i-au) and not mention the Qut̤b Minār. Possibly he confused the two. The ‘Alāī Minār remains unfinished; the Qut̤b is judged by Cunningham to have been founded by Qut̤bu’d-dīn Aībak Turk, circa 1200 AD. and to have been completed by Sl. Shamsu’d-dīn Altamsh (Aīltimīsh?) Turk, circa 1220 AD. Of the two tanks Bābur visited, the Royal-tank (ḥauẓ-i-khāẓ) was made by ‘Alāu’u’d-dīn in 1293 AD.

[1688] The familiar Turkī word Tūghlūq would reinforce much else met with in Dihlī to strengthen Bābur’s opinion that, as a Turk, he had a right to rule there. Many, if not all, of the Slave dynasty were Turks; these were followed by the Khiljī Turks, these again by the Tūghlūqs. Moreover the Panj-āb he had himself taken, and lands on both sides of the Indus further south had been ruled by Ghaznawid Turks. His latest conquests were “where the Turk had ruled” (f. 226b) long, wide, and with interludes only of non-Turkī sway.

[1689] Perhaps this charity was the Khams (Fifth) due from a victor.

[1690] Bikramājīt was a Tūnūr Rājpūt. Bābur’s unhesitating statement of the Hindu’s destination at death may be called a fruit of conviction, rather than of what modern opinion calls intolerance.

[1691] 120 years (Cunningham’s Report of the Archæological Survey ii, 330 et seq.).

[1692] The Tārīkh-i-sher-shāhī tells a good deal about the man who bore this title, and also about others who found themselves now in difficulty between Ibrāhīm’s tyranny and Bābur’s advance (E. & D. iv, 301).

[1693] Gūālīār was taken from Bikramājīt in 1518 AD.

[1694]i.e. from the Deccan of which ‘Alāu’u’d-dīn is said to have been the first Muḥammadan invader. An account of this diamond, identified as the Koh-i-nūr, is given in Hobson Jobson but its full history is not told by Yule or by Streeter’s Great Diamonds of the World, neither mentioning the presentation of the diamond by Humāyūn to Taḥmāsp of which Abū’l-faẓl writes, dwelling on its overplus of payment for all that Humāyūn in exile received from his Persian host (Akbar-nāma trs. i, 349 and note; Asiatic Quarterly Review, April 1899 H. Beveridge’s art. Bābur’s diamond; was it the Koh-i-nūr?).

[1695] 320 ratīs (Erskine). The ratī is 2.171 Troy grains, or in picturesque primitive equivalents, is 8 grains of rice, or 64 mustard seeds, or 512 poppy-seeds,—uncertain weights which Akbar fixed in cat’s-eye stones.

[1696] Bābur’s plurals allow the supposition that the three men’s lives were spared. Malik Dād served him thenceforth.

[1697] Erskine estimated these as dams and worth about £1750, but this may be an underestimate (H. of I. i, App. E.).

[1698] “These begs of his” (or hers) may be the three written of above.

[1699] These will include cousins and his half-brothers Jahāngīr and Nāṣir as opposing before he took action in 925 AH. (1519 AD.). The time between 910 AH. and 925 AH. at which he would most desire Hindūstān is after 920 AH. in which year he returned defeated from Transoxiana.

[1700]kīchīk karīm, which here seems to make contrast between the ruling birth of members of his own family and the lower birth of even great begs still with him. Where the phrase occurs on f. 295, Erskine renders it by “down to the dregs”, and de Courteille (ii, 235) by “de toutes les bouches” but neither translation appears to me to suit Bābur’s uses of the term, inasmuch as both seem to go too low (cf. f. 270b).

[1701]aīūrūshūb, Pers. trs. chaspīda, stuck to.

[1702] The first expedition is fixed by the preceding passage as in 925 AH. which was indeed the first time a passage of the Indus is recorded. Three others are found recorded, those of 926, 930 and 932 AH. Perhaps the fifth was not led by Bābur in person, and may be that of his troops accompanying ‘Ālam Khān in 931 AH. But he may count into the set of five, the one made in 910 AH. which he himself meant to cross the Indus. Various opinions are found expressed by European writers as to the dates of the five.

[1703] Muḥammad died 632 AD. (11 AH.).

[1704] Tramontana, n. of Hindū-kush. For particulars about the dynasties mentioned by Bābur see Stanley Lane-Poole’s Muḥammadan Dynasties.

[1705] Maḥmūd of Ghaznī, a Turk by race, d. 1030 AD. (421 AH.).