The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)

[1597] In my Translator’s Note (p. 428), attention was drawn to the circumstance that Bābur always writes Daulat Khān Yūsuf-khail, and not Daulat Khān Lūdī. In doing this, he uses the family- or clan-name instead of the tribal one, Lūdī.

[1598]i.e. day by day.

[1599]daryā, which Bābur’s precise use of words e.g. of daryā, rūd, and sū, allows to apply here to the Indus only.

[1600] Presumably this was near Parhāla, which stands, where the Sūhān river quits the hills, at the eastern entrance of a wild and rocky gorge a mile in length. It will have been up this gorge that Bābur approached Parhāla in 925 AH. (Rawalpindi Gazetteer p. 11).

[1601]i.e. here, bed of a mountain-stream.

[1602] The Elphinstone Codex here preserves the following note, the authorship of which is attested by the scribe’s remark that it is copied from the handwriting of Humāyūn Pādshāh:—As my honoured father writes, we did not know until we occupied Hindūstān (932 AH.), but afterwards did know, that ice does form here and there if there come a colder year. This was markedly so in the year I conquered Gujrāt (942 AH.-1535 AD.) when it was so cold for two or three days between Bhūlpūr and Guālīār that the waters were frozen over a hand’s thickness.

[1603] This is a Kakar (Gakkhar) clan, known also as Baragowah, of which the location in Jahāngīr Pādshāh’s time was from Rohtās to Hātya, i.e. about where Bābur encamped (Memoirs of Jahāngīr, Rogers and Beveridge, p. 97; E. and D. vi, 309; Provincial Gazetteers of Rawalpindi and Jihlam, p. 64 and p. 97 respectively).

[1604]āndīn aūtūb, a reference perhaps to going out beyond the corn-lands, perhaps to attempt for more than provisions.

[1605]qūsh-āt, a led horse to ride in change.

[1606] According to Shaikh Zain it was in this year that Bābur made Buhlūlpūr a royal domain (B.M. Add. 26,202 f. 16), but this does not agree with Bābur’s explanation that he visited the place because it was khalṣa. Its name suggests that it had belonged to Buhlūl Lūdī; Bābur may have taken it in 930 AH. when he captured Sīālkot. It never received the population of Sīālkot, as Bābur had planned it should do because pond-water was drunk in the latter town and was a source of disease. The words in which Bābur describes its situation are those he uses of Akhsī (f. 4b); not improbably a resemblance inclined his liking towards Buhlūlpūr. (It may be noted that this Buhlūlpūr is mentioned in the Āyīn-i-akbarī and marked on large maps, but is not found in the G. of I. 1907.)

[1607] Both names are thus spelled in the Bābur-nāma. In view of the inclination of Turkī to long vowels, Bābur’s short one in Jat may be worth consideration since modern usage of Jat and Jāt varies. Mr. Crooke writes the full vowel, and mentions that Jāts are Hindūs, Sikhs, and Muḥammadans (Tribes and Castes of the North-western Provinces and Oude, iii, 38). On this point and on the orthography of the name, Erskine’s note (Memoirs p. 294) is as follows: “The Jets or Jats are the Muḥammadan peasantry of the Panj-āb, the bank of the Indus, Sīwīstān etc. and must not be confounded with the Jāts, a powerful Hindū tribe to the west of the Jamna, about Agra etc. and which occupies a subordinate position in the country of the Rājpūts.”

[1608] The following section contains a later addition to the diary summarizing the action of ‘Ālam Khān before and after Bābur heard of the defeat from the trader he mentions. It refutes an opinion found here and there in European writings that Bābur used and threw over ‘Ālam Khān. It and Bābur’s further narrative shew that ‘Ālam Khān had little valid backing in Hindūstān, that he contributed nothing to Bābur’s success, and that no abstention by Bābur from attack on Ibrāhīm would have set ‘Ālam Khān on the throne of Dihlī. It and other records, Bābur’s and those of Afghān chroniclers, allow it to be said that if ‘Ālam Khān had been strong enough to accomplish his share of the compact that he should take and should rule Dihlī, Bābur would have kept to his share, namely, would have maintained supremacy in the Panj-āb. He advanced against Ibrāhīm only when ‘Ālam Khān had totally failed in arms and in securing adherence.

[1609] This objurgation on over-rapid marching looks like the echo of complaint made to Bābur by men of his own whom he had given to ‘Ālam Khān in Kābul.

[1610] Maḥmūd himself may have inherited his father’s title Khān-i-jahān but a little further on he is specifically mentioned as the son of Khān-i-jahān, presumably because his father had been a more notable man than he was. Of his tribe it may be noted that the Ḥaidarābād MS. uniformly writes Nuḥānī and not Luḥānī as is usual in European writings, and that it does so even when, as on f. 149b, the word is applied to a trader. Concerning the tribe, family, or caste vide G. of I. s.n. Lohānas and Crooke l.c. s.n. Pathān, para. 21.

[1611]i.e. west of Dihlī territory, the Panj-āb.

[1612] He was of the Farmul family of which Bābur says (f. 139b) that it was in high favour in Hindūstān under the Afghāns and of which the author of the Wāqi‘āt-i-mushtāqī says that it held half the lands of Dihlī in jāgīr (E. and D. iv, 547).

[1613] Presumably he could not cut off supplies.

[1614] The only word similar to this that I have found is one “Jaghat” said to mean serpent and to be the name of a Hindū sub-caste of Nats (Crooke, iv, 72 & 73). The word here might be a nick-name. Bābur writes it as two words.

[1615]khaṣa-khail, presumably members of the Sāhū-khail (family) of the Lūdī tribe of the Afghān race.

[1616] Erskine suggested that this man was a rich banker, but he might well be the Farmulī Shaikh-zāda of f. 256b, in view of the exchange Afghān historians make of the Farmulī title Shaikh for Mīān (Tārīkh-i-sher-shāhī, E. & D. iv, 347 and Tārīkh-i-daudī ib. 457).

[1617] This Biban, or Bīban, as Bābur always calls him without title, is Malik Biban Jilwānī. He was associated with Shaikh Bāyazīd Farmulī or, as Afghān writers style him, Mīān Bāyazīd Farmulī. (Another of his names was Mīān Biban, son of Mīān Āṭā Sāhū-khail (E. & D. iv, 347).)

[1618] This name occurs so frequently in and about the Panj-āb as to suggest that it means a fort (Ar. maluẕat?). This one in the Siwāliks was founded by Tātār Khān Yūsuf-khail (Lūdī) in the time of Buhlūl Lūdī (E. and D. iv, 415).

[1619] In the Beth Jalandhar dū-āb.

[1620]i.e. on the Siwāliks, here locally known as Katār Dhār.

[1621] Presumably they were from the Hazāra district east of the Indus. The T̤abaqāt-i-akbarī mentions that this detachment was acting under Khalīfa apart from Bābur and marching through the skirt-hills (lith. ed. p. 182).

[1622]dūn, f. 260 and note.

[1623] These were both refugees from Harāt.

[1624] Sarkār of Baṭāla, in the Bārī dū-āb (A.-i-A. Jarrett, p. 110).

[1625]kūrūshūr waqt (Index s.n. kūrūsh).

[1626] Bābur’s phrasing suggests beggary.

[1627] This might refer to the time when Ibrāhīm’s commander Bihār (Bahādur) Khān Nūḥānī took Lāhor (Translator’s Note in loco p. 441).

[1628] They were his father’s. Erskine estimated the 3 krors at £75,000.

[1629]shiqq, what hangs on either side, perhaps a satirical reference to the ass’ burden.

[1630] As illustrating Bābur’s claim to rule as a Tīmūrid in Hindūstān, it may be noted that in 814 AH. (1411 AD.), Khiẓr Khān who is allowed by the date to have been a Sayyid ruler in Dihlī, sent an embassy to Shāhrukh Mīrzā the then Tīmūrid ruler of Samarkand to acknowledge his suzerainty (Mat̤la‘u’s-sa‘dain, Quatremère, N. et Ex. xiv, 196).

[1631] Firishta says that Bābur mounted for the purpose of preserving the honour of the Afghāns and by so doing enabled the families in the fort to get out of it safely (lith. ed. p. 204).

[1632]chuhra; they will have been of the Corps of braves (yīgīt; Appendix H. section c.).

[1633]kīm kullī gharẓ aul aīdī; Pers. trs. ka gharẓ-i-kullī-i-au būd.

[1634] Persice, the eves of Sunday and Monday; Anglice, Saturday and Sunday nights.

[1635] Ghāzī Khān was learned and a poet (Firishta ii, 42).

[1636]mullayāna khūd, perhaps books of learned topic but not in choice copies.