The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)

[1706] known as Muḥ. Ghūrī, d. 1206 AD. (602 AH.).

[1707]sūrūbtūrlār, lit. drove them like sheep (cf. f. 154b).

[1708]khūd, itself, not Bābur’s only Hibernianism.

[1709] “This is an excellent history of the Musalmān world down to the time of Sl. Nāṣir of Dihlī A.D. 1252. It was written by Abū ‘Umar Minḥāj al Jūrjānī. See Stewart’s catalogue of Tipoo’s Library, p. 7” (Erskine). It has been translated by Raverty.

[1710]bargustwān-wār; Erskine, cataphract horse.

[1711] The numerous instances of the word pādshāh in this part of the Bābur-nāma imply no such distinction as attaches to the title Emperor by which it is frequently translated (Index s.n. pādshāh).

[1712] d. 1500 AD. (905 AH.).

[1713] d. 1388 AD. (790 AH.).

[1714] The ancestor mentioned appears to be Naṣrat Shāh, a grandson of Fīrūz Shāh Tūghlūq (S. L. Poole p. 300 and Beale, 298).

[1715] His family belonged to the Rājpūt sept of Tānk, and had become Muḥammadan in the person of Sadharān the first ruler of Gujrāt (Crooke’s Tribes and Castes; Mirāt-i-sikandarī, Bayley p. 67 and n.).

[1716] S. L.-Poole p. 316-7.

[1717] Mandāū (Mandū) was the capital of Malwā.

[1718] Stanley Lane-Poole shews (p. 311) a dynasty of three Ghūrīs interposed between the death of Fīrūz Shāh in 790 AH. and the accession in 839 AH. of the first Khiljī ruler of Gujrāt Maḥmūd Shāh.

[1719] He reigned from 1518 to 1532 AD. (925 to 939 AH. S.L.-P. p. 308) and had to wife a daughter of Ibrāhīm Lūdī (Riyaẓu’s-salāt̤īn). His dynasty was known as the Ḥusain-shāhī, after his father.

[1720] “Strange as this custom may seem, a similar one prevailed down to a very late period in Malabar. There was a jubilee every 12 years in the Samorin’s country, and any-one who succeeded in forcing his way through the Samorin’s guards and slew him, reigned in his stead. ‘A jubilee is proclaimed throughout his dominions at the end of 12 years, and a tent is pitched for him in a spacious plain, and a great feast is celebrated for 10 or 12 days with mirth and jollity, guns firing night and day, so, at the end of the feast, any four of the guests that have a mind to gain a throne by a desperate action in fighting their way through 30 or 40,000 of his guards, and kill the Samorin in his tent, he that kills him, succeeds him in his empire.’ See Hamilton’s New Account of the East Indies vol. i. p. 309. The attempt was made in 1695, and again a very few years ago, but without success” (Erskine p. 311).

The custom Bābur writes of—it is one dealt with at length in Frazer’s Golden Bough—would appear from Blochmann’s Geography and History of Bengal (JASB 1873 p. 286) to have been practised by the Habshī rulers of Bengal of whom he quotes Faria y Souza as saying, “They observe no rule of inheritance from father to son, but even slaves sometimes obtain it by killing their master, and whoever holds it three days, they look upon as established by divine providence. Thus it fell out that in 40 years space they had 13 kings successively.”

[1721] No doubt this represents Vijāyanagar in the Deccan.

[1722] This date places the composition of the Description of Hindustan in agreement with Shaikh Zain’s statement that it was in writing in 935 AH.

[1723] Are they the Khas of Nepal and Sikkim? (G. of I.).

[1724] Here Erskine notes that the Persian (trs.) adds, “mīr signifying a hill, and kas being the name of the natives of the hill-country.” This may not support the name kas as correct but may be merely an explanation of Bābur’s meaning. It is not in I.O. 217 f. 189 or in Muḥ. Shīrāzī’s lithographed Wāqi‘āt-i-bāburī p. 190.

[1725] Either yak or the tassels of the yak. See Appendix M.

[1726] My husband tells me that Bābur’s authority for this interpretation of Sawālak may be the Z̤afar-nāma (Bib. Ind. ed. ii, 149).

[1727]i.e. the countries of Hindūstān.

[1728] so pointed, carefully, in the Ḥai. MS. Mr. Erskine notes of these rivers that they are the Indus, Hydaspes, Ascesines, Hydraotes, Hesudrus and Hyphasis.

[1729]Āyīn-i-akbarī, Jarrett 279.

[1730]pārcha pārcha, kīchīkrāk kīchīkrāk, āndā mūndā, tāshlīq tāqghīna. The Gazetteer of India (1907 i, 1) puts into scientific words, what Bābur here describes, the ruin of a great former range.

[1731] Here āqār-sūlār might safely be replaced by “irrigation channels” (Index s.n.).

[1732] The verb here is tāshmāq; it also expresses to carry like ants (f. 220), presumably from each person’s carrying a pitcher or a stone at a time, and repeatedly.

[1733] “This” notes Erskine (p. 315) “is the wulsa or walsa, so well described by Colonel Wilks in his Historical Sketches vol. i. p. 309, note ‘On the approach of an hostile army, the unfortunate inhabitants of India bury under ground their most cumbrous effects, and each individual, man, woman, and child above six years of age (the infant children being carried by their mothers), with a load of grain proportioned to their strength, issue from their beloved homes, and take the direction of a country (if such can be found,) exempt from the miseries of war; sometimes of a strong fortress, but more generally of the most unfrequented hills and woods, where they prolong a miserable existence until the departure of the enemy, and if this should be protracted beyond the time for which they have provided food, a large portion necessarily dies of hunger.’ See the note itself. The Historical Sketches should be read by every-one who desires to have an accurate idea of the South of India. It is to be regretted that we do not possess the history of any other part of India, written with the same knowledge or research.”

“The word wulsa or walsa is Dravidian. Telugu has valasa, ‘emigration, flight, or removing from home for fear of a hostile army.’ Kanarese has valasĕ, ŏlasĕ, and ŏlisĕ, ‘flight, a removing from home for fear of a hostile army.’ Tamil has valasei, ‘flying for fear, removing hastily.’ The word is an interesting one. I feel pretty sure it is not Aryan, but Dravidian; and yet it stands alone in Dravidian, with nothing that I can find in the way of a root or affinities to explain its etymology. Possibly it may be a borrowed word in Dravidian. Malayalam has no corresponding word. Can it have been borrowed from Kolarian or other primitive Indian speech?” (Letter to H. Beveridge from Mr. F. E. Pargiter, 8th August, 1914.)

Wulsa seems to be a derivative from Sanscrit ūlvash, and to answer to Persian wairānī and Turkī būzūghlūghī.

[1734]lalmī, which in Afghānī (Pushtū) signifies grown without irrigation.

[1735] “The improvement of Hindūstān since Bābur’s time must be prodigious. The wild elephant is now confined to the forests under Hemāla, and to the Ghats of Malabar. A wild elephant near Karrah, Mānikpūr, or Kālpī, is a thing, at the present day (1826 AD.), totally unknown. May not their familiar existence in these countries down to Bābur’s days, be considered rather hostile to the accounts given of the superabundant population of Hindūstān in remote times?” (Erskine).

[1736]dīwān. I.O. 217 f. 190b, dar dīwān fīl jawāb mīgūīnd; Mems. p. 316. They account to the government for the elephants they take; Méms. ii, 188, Les habitants payent l’impôt avec le produit de leur chasse. Though de Courteille’s reading probably states the fact, Erskine’s includes de C.’s and more, inasmuch as it covers all captures and these might reach to a surplusage over the imposts.

[1737] Pers. trs. gaz=24 inches. Il est bon de rappeler que le mot turk qārī, que la version persane rend par gaz, désigne proprement l’espace compris entre le haut de l'épaule jusqu’au bout des doigts (de Courteille, ii, 189 note). The qārī like one of its equivalents, the ell (Zenker), is a variable measure; it seems to approach more nearly to a yard than to a gaz of 24 inches. See Memoirs of Jahāngīr (R. & B. pp. 18, 141 and notes) for the heights of elephants, and for discussion of some measures.

[1738]khūd, itself.

[1739]i.e. pelt; as Erskine notes, its skin is scattered with small hairs. Details such as this one stir the question, for whom was Bābur writing? Not for Hindūstān where what he writes is patent; hardly for Kābul; perhaps for Transoxiana.

[1740] Shaikh Zain’s wording shows this reference to be to a special piece of artillery, perhaps that of f. 302.

[1741] A string of camels contains from five to seven, or, in poetry, even more (Vullers, ii, 728, sermone poetico series decem camelorum). The item of food compared is corn only (būghūz) and takes no account therefore of the elephant’s green food.

[1742] The Ency. Br. states that the horn seldom exceeds a foot in length; there is one in the B.M. measuring 18 inches.