The Bābur-nāma in English (Memoirs of Bābur)

[1637] f. 257. It stands in 31° 50’ N. and 76° E. (G. of I.).

[1638] This is on the Salt-range, in 32° 42’ N. and 72° 50’ E. (Āyīn-i-akbarī trs. Jarrett, i, 325; Provincial Gazetteer, Jīhlam District).

[1639] He died therefore in the town he himself built. Kitta Beg probably escorted the Afghān families from Milwat also; Dilāwar Khān’s own seems to have been there already (f. 257).

The Bābur-nāma makes no mention of Daulat Khān’s relations with Nānak, the founder of the Sikh religion, nor does it mention Nānak himself. A tradition exists that Nānak, when on his travels, made exposition of his doctrines to an attentive Bābur and that he was partly instrumental in bringing Bābur against the Afghāns. He was 12 years older than Bābur and survived him nine. (Cf. Dabistān lith. ed. p. 270; and, for Jahāngīr Pādshāh’s notice of Daulat Khān, Tūzūk-i-jahāngīrī, Rogers and Beveridge, p. 87).

[1640] I translate dūn by dale because, as its equivalent, Bābur uses julga by which he describes a more pastoral valley than one he calls a dara.

[1641]bīr āqār-sū. Bābur’s earlier uses of this term [q.v. index] connect it with the swift flow of water in irrigation channels; this may be so here but also the term may make distinction between the rapid mountain-stream and the slow movement of rivers across plains.

[1642] There are two readings of this sentence; Erskine’s implies that the neck of land connecting the fort-rock with its adjacent hill measures 7-8 qārī (yards) from side to side; de Courteille’s that where the great gate was, the perpendicular fall surrounding the fort shallowed to 7-8 yards. The Turkī might be read, I think, to mean whichever alternative was the fact. Erskine’s reading best bears out Bābur’s account of the strength of the fort, since it allows of a cleft between the hill and the fort some 140-160 feet deep, as against the 21-24 of de Courteille’s. Erskine may have been in possession of information [in 1826] by which he guided his translation (p. 300), “At its chief gate, for the space of 7 or 8 gez (qārī), there is a place that admits of a draw-bridge being thrown across; it may be 10 or 12 gez wide.” If de Courteille’s reading be correct in taking 7-8 qārī only to be the depth of the cleft, that cleft may be artificial.

[1643]yīghāch, which also means wood.

[1644] f. 257.

[1645] Chief scribe (f. 13 n. to ‘Abdu’l-wahhāb). Shaw’s Vocabulary explains the word as meaning also a “high official of Central Asian sovereigns, who is supreme over all qāzīs and mullās.”

[1646] Bābur’s persistent interest in Balkh attracts attention, especially at this time so shortly before he does not include it as part of his own territories (f. 270).

Since I wrote of Balkh s.a. 923 AH. (1517 AD.), I have obtained the following particulars about it in that year; they are summarized from the Ḥabību’s-siyar (lith. ed. iii, 371). In 923 AH. Khwānd-amīr was in retirement at Pasht in Ghūrjistān where also was Muḥammad-i-zamān Mīrzā. The two went in company to Balkh where the Mīrzā besieged Bābur’s man Ibrāhīm chāpūk (Slash-face), and treacherously murdered one Aūrdū-shāh, an envoy sent out to parley with him. Information of what was happening was sent to Bābur in Kābul. Bābur reached Balkh when it had been besieged a month. His presence caused the Mīrzā to retire and led him to go into the Darā-i-gaz (Tamarind-valley). Bābur, placing in Balkh Faqīr-i-‘alī, one of those just come up with him, followed the Mīrzā but turned back at Āq-guṃbaz (White-dome) which lies between Chāch-charān in the Herī-rūd valley and the Ghūrjistān border, going no further because the Ghūrjistānīs favoured the Mīrzā. Bābur went back to Kābul by the Fīrūz-koh, Yaka-aūlāng (cf. f. 195) and Ghūr; the Mīrzā was followed up by others, captured and conveyed to Kābul.

[1647] Both were amīrs of Hind. I understand the cognomen Maẕhab to imply that its bearer occupied himself with the Muḥammadan Faith in its exposition by divines of Islām (Hughes’ Dictionary of Islām).

[1648] These incidents are included in the summary of ‘Ālam Khān’s affairs in section i (f. 255b). It will be observed that Bābur’s wording implies the “waiting” by one of lower rank on a superior.

[1649] Elph. MS. Karnāl, obviously a clerical error.

[1650] Shaikh Sulaimān Effendi (Kunos) describes a tunqit̤ār as the guardian in war of a prince’s tent; a night-guard; and as one who repeats a prayer aloud while a prince is mounting.

[1651]rūd, which, inappropriate for the lower course of the Ghaggar, may be due to Bābur’s visit to its upper course described immediately below. As has been noted, however, he uses the word rūd to describe the empty bed of a mountain-stream as well as the swift water sometimes filling that bed. The account, here-following, of his visit to the upper course of the Ghaggar is somewhat difficult to translate.

[1652]Hindūstāndā daryālārdīn bāshqa, bīr āqār-sū kīm bār (dūr, is added by the Elph. MS.), bū dūr. Perhaps the meaning is that the one (chief?) irrigation stream, apart from great rivers, is the Ghaggar. The bed of the Ghaggar is undefined and the water is consumed for irrigation (G. of I. xx, 33; Index s.n. āqār-sū).

[1653] in Patiāla. Maps show what may be Bābur’s strong millstream joining the Ghaggar.

[1654] Presumably he was of Ibrāhīm’s own family, the Sāhū-khail. His defeat was opportune because he was on his way to join the main army.

[1655] At this place the Elphinstone Codex has preserved, interpolated in its text, a note of Humāyūn’s on his first use of the razor. Part of it is written as by Bābur:—“Today in this same camp the razor or scissors was applied to Humāyūn’s face.” Part is signed by Humāyūn:—“As the honoured dead, earlier in these Acts (wāqi‘āt) mentions the first application of the razor to his own face (f. 120), so in imitation of him I mention this. I was then at the age of 18; now I am at the age of 48, I who am the sub-signed Muḥammad Humāyūn.” A scribe’s note attests that this is “copied from the hand-writing of that honoured one”. As Humāyūn’s 48th (lunar) birthday occurred a month before he left Kābul, to attempt the re-conquest of Hindūstān, in November 1554 AD. (in the last month of 961 AH.), he was still 48 (lunar) years old on the day he re-entered Dihlī on July 23rd 1555 AD. (Ramẓān 1st 962 AH.), so that this “shaving passage” will have been entered within those dates. That he should study his Father’s book at that time is natural; his grandson Jahāngīr did the same when going to Kābul; so doubtless would do its author’s more remote descendants, the sons of Shāh-jahān who reconquered Transoxiana.

(Concerning the “shaving passage” vide the notes on the Elphinstone Codex in JRAS. 1900 p. 443, 451; 1902 p. 653; 1905 p. 754; and 1907 p. 131.)

[1656] This ancient town of the Sahāranpūr district is associated with a saint revered by Hindūs and Muḥammadans. Cf. W. Crooke’s Popular Religion of Northern India p. 133. Its chashma may be inferred (from Bābur’s uses of the word q.v. Index) as a water-head, a pool, a gathering place of springs.

[1657] He was the eighth son of Bābur’s maternal-uncle Sl. Aḥmad Khān Chaghatāī and had fled to Bābur, other brothers following him, from the service of their eldest brother Manṣūr, Khāqān of the Mughūls (Tārīkh-i-rashīdī trs. p. 161).

[1658]fars̱-waqtī, when there is light enough to distinguish one object from another.

[1659]dīm kūrūldī (Index s.n. dīm). Here the L. & E. Memoirs inserts an explanatory passage in Persian about the dīm. It will have been in one of the Wāqi‘āt-i-bāburī MSS. Erskine used; it is in Muḥ. Shīrāzī’s lithograph copy of the Udaipūr Codex (p. 173). It is not in the Turkī text or in all the MSS. of the Persian translation. Manifestly, it was entered at a time when Bābur’s term dīm kūrūldī requires explanation in Hindustan. The writer of it himself does not make details clear; he says only, “It is manifest that people declare (the number) after counting the mounted army in the way agreed upon amongst them, with a whip or a bow held in the hand.” This explanation suggests that in the march-past the troops were measured off as so many bow- or whip-lengths (Index s.n. dīm).

[1660] These arāba may have been the baggage-carts of the army and also carts procured on the spot. Erskine omits (Memoirs p. 304) the words which show how many carts were collected and from whom. Doubtless it would be through not having these circumstances in his mind that he took the arāba for gun-carriages. His incomplete translation, again, led Stanley Lane-Poole to write an interesting note in his Bābur (p. 161) to support Erskine against de Courteille (with whose rendering mine agrees) by quoting the circumstance that Humāyūn had 700 guns at Qanauj in 1540 AD. It must be said in opposition to his support of Erskine’s “gun-carriages” that there is no textual or circumstantial warrant for supposing Bābur to have had guns, even if made in parts, in such number as to demand 700 gun-carriages for their transport. What guns Bābur had at Pānī-pat will have been brought from his Kābul base; if he had acquired any, say from Lāhor, he would hardly omit to mention such an important reinforcement of his armament; if he had brought many guns on carts from Kābul, he must have met with transit-difficulties harassing enough to chronicle, while he was making that long journey from Kābul to Pānī-pat, over passes, through skirt-hills and many fords. The elephants he had in Bīgrām may have been his transport for what guns he had; he does not mention his number at Pānī-pat; he makes his victory a bow-man’s success; he can be read as indicating that he had two guns only.

[1661] These Ottoman (text, Rūmī, Roman) defences Ustād ‘Alī-qulī may have seen at the battle of Chāldirān fought some 40 leagues from Tābrīz between Sl. Salīm Rūmī and Shāh Ismā‘īl Ṣafawī on Rajab 1st 920 AH. (Aug. 22nd 1514 AD.). Of this battle Khwānd-amīr gives a long account, dwelling on the effective use made in it of chained carts and palisades (Ḥabību’s-siyar iii, part 4, p. 78; Akbar-nāma trs. i, 241).

[1662] Is this the village of the Pānī Afghāns?

[1663] Index s.n. arrow.

[1664]

These two lines do not translate easily without the context of their original place of occurrence. I have not found their source.

[1665]i.e. of his father and grandfather, Sikandar and Buhlūl.

[1666] As to the form of this word the authoritative MSS. of the Turkī text agree and with them also numerous good ones of the Persian translation. I have made careful examination of the word because it is replaced or explained here and there in MSS. by s:hb:ndī, the origin of which is said to be obscure. The sense of b:d-hindī and of s:hb:ndī is the same, i.e. irregular levy. The word as Bābur wrote it must have been understood by earlier Indian scribes of both the Turkī and Persian texts of the Bābur-nāma. Some light on its correctness may be thought given by Hobson Jobson (Crooke’s ed. p. 136) s.n. Byde or Bede Horse, where the word Byde is said to be an equivalent of pindārī, lūtī, and qāzzāq, raider, plunderer, so that Bābur’s word b:d-hindī may mean qāzzāq of Hind. Wherever I have referred to the word in many MSS. it is pointed to read b:d, and not p:d, thus affording no warrant for understanding pad, foot, foot-man, infantry, and also negativing the spelling bīd, i.e. with a long vowel as in Byde.

It may be noted here that Muḥ. Shīrāzī (p. 174) substituted s:hb:ndī for Bābur’s word and that this led our friend the late William Irvine to attribute mistake to de Courteille who follows the Turkī text (Army of the Mughūls p. 66 and Mémoires ii, 163).

[1667]bī tajarba yīgīt aīdī of which the sense may be that Bābur ranked Ibrāhīm, as a soldier, with a brave who has not yet proved himself deserving of the rank of beg. It cannot mean that he was a youth (yīgīt) without experience of battle.

[1668] Well-known are the three decisive historical battles fought near the town of Pānī-pat, viz. those of Bābur and Ibrāhīm in 1526, of Akbar and Hīmū in 1556, and of Aḥmad Abdālī with the Mahratta Confederacy in 1761. The following lesser particulars about the battle-field are not so frequently mentioned:—(i) that the scene of Bābur’s victory was long held to be haunted, Badāyūnī himself, passing it at dawn some 62 years later, heard with dismay the din of conflict and the shouts of the combatants; (ii) that Bābur built a (perhaps commemorative) mosque one mile to the n.e. of the town; (iii) that one of the unaccomplished desires of Sher Shāh Sūr, the conqueror of Bābur’s son Humāyūn, was to raise two monuments on the battle-field of Pānī-pat, one to Ibrāhīm, the other to those Chaghatāī sult̤āns whose martyrdom he himself had brought about; (iv) that in 1910 AD. the British Government placed a monument to mark the scene of Shāh Abdālī’s victory of 1761 AD. This monument would appear, from Sayyid Ghulām-i-‘alī’s Nigār-nāma-i-hind, to stand close to the scene of Bābur’s victory also, since the Mahrattas were entrenched as he was outside the town of Pānī-pat. (Cf. E. & D. viii, 401.)

[1669] This important date is omitted from the L. & E. Memoirs.