The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)

[2629] On f. 381 ‘Abdu’l-lāh’s starting-place is mentioned as Tīr-mūhānī.

[2630] The failure to join would be one of the evils predicted by the dilatory start of the ladies from Kābul (f. 360b).

[2631] The order for these operations is given on f. 355b.

[2632] f. 369. The former Nūḥānī chiefs are now restored to Bihār as tributaries of Bābur.

[2633] Erskine estimated the krūr at about £25,000, and the 50 laks at about £12,500.

[2634] The Mīrzā thus supersedes Junaid Barlās in Jūnpūr.—The form Jūnapūr used above and elsewhere by Bābur and his Persian translators, supports the Gazetteer of India xlv, 74 as to the origin of the name Jūnpūr.

[2635] a son of Naṣrat Shāh. No record of this earlier legation is with the Bābur-nāma manuscripts; probably it has been lost. The only article found specified is the one asking for the removal of the Kharīd army from a ferry-head Bābur wished to use; Naṣrat Shāh’s assent to this is an anti-climax to Bābur’s victory on the Ghogrā.

[2636] Chaupāra is at the Sāran end of the ferry, at the Sikandarpūr one is Chatur-mūk (Four-faces, an epithet of Brahma and Vishnu).

[2637] It may be inferred from the earlier use of the phrase Gogar (or Gagar) and Sarū (Sīrū or Sīrd), on f. 338-8b, that whereas the rebels were, earlier, for crossing Sarū only, i.e. the Ghogrā below its confluence with the Sarda, they had now changed for crossing above the confluence and further north. Such a change is explicable by desire to avoid encounter with Bābur’s following, here perhaps the army of Aūd, and the same desire is manifested by their abandonment of a fort captured (f. 377b) some days before the rumour reached Bābur of their crossing Sarū and Gogar.—Since translating the passage on f. 338, I have been led, by enforced attention to the movement of the confluence of Ghogrā with Ganges (Sarū with Gang) to see that that translation, eased in obedience to distances shewn in maps, may be wrong and that Bābur’s statement that he dismounted 2-3 kurohs (4-6 m.) above Aūd at the confluence of Gogar with Sarū, may have some geographical interest and indicate movement of the two affluents such e.g. as is indicated of the Ganges and Ghogrā by tradition and by the name Burh-ganga (cf. f. 370, p. 667, n. 2).

[2638] or L:knūr, perhaps Liknū or Liknūr. The capricious variation in the MSS. between L:knū and L:knūr makes the movements of the rebels difficult to follow. Comment on these variants, tending to identify the places behind the words, is grouped in Appendix T, On L:knū (Lakhnau) and L:knūr (Lakhnār).

[2639] Taking guẕr in the sense it has had hitherto in the Bābur-nāma of ferry or ford, the detachment may have been intended to block the river-crossings of “Sarū and Gogar”. If so, however, the time for this was past, the rebels having taken a fort west of those rivers on Ramẓān 13th. Nothing further is heard of the detachment.—That news of the rebel-crossing of the rivers did not reach Bābur before the 18th and news of their capture of L:knū or L:knūr before the 19th may indicate that they had crossed a good deal to the north of the confluence, and that the fort taken was one more remote than Lakhnau (Oude). Cf. Appendix T.

[2640] Anglicé, Wednesday after 6 p.m.

[2641] These are recited late in the night during Ramẓān.

[2642]kaghaẕ u ajzā', perhaps writing-paper and the various sections of the Bābur-nāma writings, viz. biographical notices, descriptions of places, detached lengths of diary, farmāns of Shaikh Zain. The lacunæ of 934 AH., 935 AH., and perhaps earlier ones also may be attributed reasonably to this storm. It is easy to understand the loss of e.g. the conclusion of the Farghāna section, and the diary one of 934 AH., if they lay partly under water. The accident would be better realized in its disastrous results to the writings, if one knew whether Bābur wrote in a bound or unbound volume. From the minor losses of 935 AH., one guesses that the current diary at least had not reached the stage of binding.

[2643] The tūnglūq is a flap in a tent-roof, allowing light and air to enter, or smoke to come out.

[2644]ajzā’ u kitāb.See last note but one. The kitāb (book) might well be Bābur’s composed narrative on which he was now working, as far as it had then gone towards its untimely end (Ḥai. MS. f. 216b).

[2645]saqarlāt̤ kut-zīlūcha, where saqarlāt̤ will mean warm and woollen.

[2646] Kharīd-town is some 4 m. s.e. of the town of Sikandarpūr.

[2647] or L:knū. Cf. Appendix T. It is now 14 days since ‘Abdu’l-lāh kitābdār had left Tīr-mūhānī (f. 380) for Saṃbhal; as he was in haste, there had been time for him to go beyond Aūd (where Bāqī was) and yet get the news to Bābur on the 19th.

[2648] In a way not usual with him, Bābur seems to apply three epithets to this follower, viz. mīng-begī, shaghāwal, Tāshkīndī (Index s.n.).

[2649] or Kandla; cf. Revenue list f. 293; is it now Sāran Khāṣ?

[2650] £18,000 (Erskine). For the total yield of Kundla (or Kandla) and Sarwār, see Revenue list (f. 293).

[2651] f. 375. P. 675 n. 2 and f. 381, p. 687 n. 3.

[2652] A little earlier Bābur has recorded his ease of mind about Bihār and Bengal, the fruit doubtless of his victory over Maḥmūd Lūdī and Naṣrat Shāh; he now does the same about Bihār and Sarwār, no doubt because he has replaced in Bihār, as his tributaries, the Nūḥānī chiefs and has settled other Afghāns, Jalwānīs and Farmūlīs in a Sarwār cleared of the Jalwānī (?) rebel Bīban and the Farmūlī opponents Bāyazīd and Ma‘rūf. The Farmūlī Shaikh-zādas, it may be recalled, belonged by descent to Bābur’s Kābul district of Farmūl.—The Wāqi‘āt-i-mushtāqī (E. & D.’s H. of I. iv, 548) details the position of the clan under Sikandar Lūdī.

[2653] The MSS. write Fatḥpūr but Natḥpūr suits the context, a pargana mentioned in the Āyīn-i-akbarī and now in the ‘Azamgarh district. There seems to be no Fatḥpūr within Bābur’s limit of distance. The D. G. of ‘Azamgarh mentions two now insignificant Fatḥpūrs, one as having a school, the other a market. The name G:l:r:h (K:l:r:h) I have not found.

[2654] The passage contained in this section seems to be a survival of the lost record of 934 AH. (f. 339). I have found it only in the Memoirs p. 420, and in Mr. Erskine’s own Codex of the Wāqi‘āt-i-bāburī (now B.M. Add. 26,200), f. 371 where however several circumstances isolate it from the context. It may be a Persian translation of an authentic Turkī fragment, found, perhaps with other such fragments, in the Royal Library. Its wording disassociates it from the ‘Abdu’r-raḥīm text. The Codex (No. 26,200) breaks off at the foot of a page (supra, Fatḥpūr) with a completed sentence. The supposedly-misplaced passage is entered on the next folio as a sort of ending of the Bābur-nāma writings; in a rough script, inferior to that of the Codex, and is followed by Tam, tam (Finis), and an incomplete date 98-, in words. Beneath this a line is drawn, on which is subtended the triangle frequent with scribes; within this is what seems to be a completion of the date to 980 AH. and a pious wish, scrawled in an even rougher hand than the rest.—Not only in diction and in script but in contents also the passage is a misfit where it now stands; it can hardly describe a village on the Sarū; Bābur in 935 AH. did not march for Ghāzīpūr but may have done so in 934 AH. (p. 656, n. 3); Ismā‘īl Jalwānī had had leave given already in 935 AH. (f. 377) under other conditions, ones bespeaking more trust and tried allegiance.—Possibly the place described as having fine buildings, gardens etc. is Aūd (Ajodhya) where Bābur spent some days in 934 AH. (cf. f. 363b, p. 655 n. 3).

[2655] “Here my Persian manuscript closes” (This is B.M. Add. 26,200). “The two additional fragments are given from Mr. Metcalfe’s manuscript alone” (now B.M. Add. 26,202) “and unluckily, it is extremely incorrect” (Erskine). This note will have been written perhaps a decade before 1826, in which year the Memoirs of Bābur was published, after long delay. Mr. Erskine’s own Codex (No. 26,200) was made good at a later date, perhaps when he was working on his History of India (pub. 1854), by a well-written supplement which carries the diary to its usual end s.a. 936 AH. and also gives Persian translations of Bābur’s letters to Humāyūn and Khwāja Kalān.

[2656] Here, as earlier, Natḥpūr suits the context better than Fatḥpūr. In the Natḥpūr pargana, at a distance from Chaupāra approximately suiting Bābur’s statement of distance, is the lake “Tal Ratoi”, formerly larger and deeper than now. There is a second further west and now larger than Tal Ratoi; through this the Ghogrā once flowed, and through it has tried within the last half-century to break back. These changes in Tal Ratoi and in the course of the Ghogrā dictate caution in attempting to locate places which were on it in Bābur’s day e.g. K:l:r:h (supra).

[2657] Appendix T.

[2658] This name has the following variants in the Ḥai. MS. and in Kehr’s:—Dalm-ū-ūū-ūr-ūd-ūt̤. The place was in Akbar’s sarkār of Mānikpūr and is now in the Rai Bareilly district.

[2659] Perhaps Chaksar, which was in Akbar’s sarkār of Jūnpūr, and is now in the ‘Azamgarh district.

[2660] Ḥai. MS. J:nāra khūnd tawābī sī bīla (perhaps tawābī‘sī but not so written). The obscurity of these words is indicated by their variation in the manuscripts. Most scribes have them as Chunār and Jūnpūr, guided presumably by the despatch of a force to Chunār on receipt of the news, but another force was sent to Dalmau at the same time. The rebels were defeated s.w. of Dalmau and thence went to Mahūba; it is not certain that they had crossed the Ganges at Dalmau; there are difficulties in supposing the fort they captured and abandoned was Lakhnau (Oude); they might have gone south to near Kālpī and Ādampūr, which are at no great distance from where they were defeated by Bāqī shaghāwal, if Lakhnūr (now Shahābād in Rāmpūr) were the fort. (Cf. Appendix T.)—To take up the interpretation of the words quoted above, at another point, that of the kinsfolk or fellow-Afghāns the rebels planned to join:—these kinsfolk may have been, of Bāyazīd, the Farmūlīs in Sarwār, and of Bīban, the Jalwānīs of the same place. The two may have trusted to relationship for harbourage during the Rains, disloyal though they were to their kinsmen’s accepted suzerain. Therefore if they were once across Ganges and Jumna, as they were in Mahūba, they may have thought of working eastwards south of the Ganges and of getting north into Sarwār through territory belonging to the Chunār and Jūnpūr governments. This however is not expressed by the words quoted above; perhaps Bābur’s record was hastily and incompletely written.—Another reading may be Chunār and Jaund (in Akbar’s sarkār of Rohtās).

[2661]yūlīinī tūshqāīlār. It may be observed concerning the despatch of Muḥammad-i-zamān M. and of Junaid Barlās that they went to their new appointments Jūnpūr and Chunār respectively; that their doing so was an orderly part of the winding-up of Bābur’s Eastern operations; that they remained as part of the Eastern garrison, on duty apart from that of blocking the road of Bīban and Bāyazīd.

[2662] This mode of fishing is still practised in India (Erskine).

[2663] Islāmicé, Saturday night; Anglicé, Friday after 6 p.m.

[2664] This Tūs, “Tousin, or Tons, is a branch from the Ghogrā coming off above Faizābād and joining the Sarju or Parsarū below ‘Azamgarh” (Erskine).

[2665] Kehr’s MS. p. 1132, Māng (or Mānk); Ḥai. MS. Tāīk; I.O. 218 f. 328 Bā:k; I.O. 217 f. 236b, Bīāk. Māīng in the Sult̤ānpūr district seems suitably located (D.G. of Sult̤ānpūr, p. 162).

[2666] This will be the night-guard (‘asas); the librarian (kitābdār) is in Saṃbhal. I.O. 218 f. 325 inserts kitābdār after ‘Abdu’l-lāh’s name where he is recorded as sent to Saṃbhal (f. 375).

[2667] He will have announced to Tāj Khān the transfer of the fort to Junaid Barlās.

[2668] £3750. Parsarūr was in Akbar’s ṣūbah of Lāhor; G. of I. xx, 23, Pasrūr.