(5) It appears to have been within a Pādshāh's competence to select his

successor; and it may be inferred that choice was made between Humāyūn

and another from the wording of more than one writer that Khalīfa

"supported" Humāyūn, and from the word "selected" used in

Aḥmad-i-yādgār's anecdote.[2737] Much more would there be freedom of

choice in a division of territory such as there is a good deal to

suggest was the basis of Niẕāmu'd-dīn Aḥmad's story. Whatever the extent

of power proposed for the _dāmād_, whether, as it is difficult to

believe, the Pādshāh's whole supremacy, or whether the limited

sovereignty of Hindūstān, it must have been known to Bābur as well as to

Khalīfa. Whatever their earlier plan however, it was changed by the

sequel of Humāyūn's illness which led to his becoming Pādshāh. The

_dāmād_ was dropped, on grounds it is safe to believe more impressive

than his threat to flay Khalīfa or than the remonstrance of that high

official's subordinate Muqīm of Herāt.

Humāyūn's arrival and continued stay in Hindūstān modified earlier

dispositions which included his remaining in Badakhshān. His actions may

explain why Bābur, when in 936 AH. he went as far as Lāhor, did not go

on to Kābul. Nothing in the sources excludes the surmise that Māhīm knew

of the bestowal of royal insignia on the Bāī-qarā Mīrzā, that she

summoned her son to Āgra and there kept him, that she would do this the

more resolutely if the _dāmād_ of the plan she must have heard of, were

that Bāī-qarā, and that but for Humāyūn's presence in Āgra and its

attendant difficulties, Bābur would have gone to Kābul, leaving his

_dāmād_ in charge of Hindūstān.

Bābur, however, turned back from Lāhor for Āgra, and there he made the

self-surrender which, resulting in Humāyūn's "selection" as Pādshāh,

became a turning point in history.

Humāyūn's recovery and Bābur's immediate illness will have made the

son's life seem Divinely preserved, the father's as a debt to be paid.

Bābur's impressive personal experience will have dignified Humāyūn as

one whom God willed should live. Such distinction would dictate the

bestowal on him of all that fatherly generosity had yet to give. The

imminence of death defeating all plans made for life, Humāyūn was

nominated to supreme power as Pādshāh.

_g. Bābur's death._

Amongst other family matters mentioned by Gul-badan as occurring shortly

before her Father's death, was his arrangement of marriages for Gul-rang

with Aīsān-tīmūr and for Gul-chihra with Tūkhta-būghā _Chaghatāī_. She

also writes of his anxiety to see Hind-āl who had been sent for from

Kābul but did not arrive till the day after the death.

When no remedies availed, Humāyūn was summoned from Saṃbhal. He reached

Āgra four days before the death; on the morrow Bābur gathered his chiefs

together for the last of many times, addressed them, nominated Humāyūn

his successor and bespoke their allegiance for him. Abū'l-faẓl thus

summarizes his words, "Lofty counsels and weighty mandates were

imparted. Advice was given (to Humāyūn) to be munificent and just, to

acquire God's favour, to cherish and protect subjects, to accept

apologies from such as had failed in duty, and to pardon transgressors.

And, he (Bābur) exclaimed, the cream of my testamentary dispositions is

this, 'Do naught against your brothers, even though they may deserve

it.' In truth," continues the historian, "it was through obedience to

this mandate that his Majesty Jannat-ashiyānī suffered so many injuries

from his brothers without avenging himself." Gul-badan's account of her

Father's last address is simple:—"He spoke in this wise, 'For years it

has been in my heart to make over the throne to Humāyūn and to retire to

the Gold-scattering Garden. By the Divine grace I have obtained in

health of body everything but the fulfilment of this wish. Now that

illness has laid me low, I charge you all to acknowledge Humāyūn in my

stead. Fail not in loyalty towards him. Be of one heart and mind towards

him. I hope to God that he, for his part, will bear himself well towards

men. Moreover, Humāyūn, I commit you and your brothers and all my

kinsfolk and your people and my people to God's keeping, and entrust

them all to you.'"

It was on Monday Jumāda 1. 5th 937 AH. (Dec. 26th 153O AD.) that Bābur

made answer to his summons with the _Adsum_ of the Musalmān, "Lord! I am

here for Thee."

"Black fell the day for children and kinsfolk and all," writes his

daughter;

"Alas! that time and the changeful heaven should exist without thee;

Alas! and Alas! that time should remain and thou shouldst be gone;"

mourns Khwāja Kalān in the funeral ode from which Badāyūnī quoted these

lines.[2738]

The body was laid in the Garden-of-rest (_Ārām-bāgh_) which is opposite

to where the Tāj-i-maḥāll now stands. Khwāja Muḥammad `Alī _`asas_[2739]

was made the guardian of the tomb, and many well-voiced readers and

reciters were appointed to conduct the five daily Prayers and to offer

supplication for the soul of the dead. The revenues of Sīkrī and 5

_laks_ from Bīāna were set aside for the endowment of the tomb, and

Māhīm Begīm, during the two and a half years of her remaining life, sent

twice daily from her own estate, an allowance of food towards the

support of its attendants.

In accordance with the directions of his will, Bābur's body was to be

conveyed to Kābul and there to be laid in the garden of his choice, in a

grave open to the sky, with no building over it, no need of a

door-keeper.

Precisely when it was removed from Āgra we have not found stated. It is

known from Gul-badan that Kāmrān visited his Father's tomb in Āgra in

1539 AD. (946 AH.) after the battle of Chausa; and it is known from

Jauhar that the body had been brought to Kābul before 1544 AD. (952

AH.), at which date Humāyūn, in Kābul, spoke with displeasure of

Kāmrān's incivility to "Bega Begīm", the "Bībī" who had conveyed their

Father's body to that place.[2740] That the widow who performed this

duty was the Afghān Lady, Bībī Mubārika[2741] is made probable by

Gul-badan's details of the movements of the royal ladies. Bābur's family

left Āgra under Hind-āl's escort, after the defeat at Chausa (June 7th,

1539 AD.); whoever took charge of the body on its journey to Kābul must

have returned at some later date to fetch it. It would be in harmony

with Sher Shāh's generous character if he safe-guarded her in her task.

The terraced garden Bābur chose for his burial-place lies on the slope

of the hill Shāh-i-Kābul, the Sher-darwāza of European writers.[2742] It

has been described as perhaps the most beautiful of the Kābul gardens,

and as looking towards an unsurpassable view over the Chār-dih plain

towards the snows of Paghmān and the barren, rocky hills which have been

the hunting-grounds of rulers in Kābul. Several of Bābur's descendants

coming to Kābul from Āgra have visited and embellished his

burial-garden. Shāh-i-jahān built the beautiful mosque which stands near

the grave; Jahāngīr seems to have been, if not the author, at least the

prompter of the well-cut inscription adorning the upright slab of white

marble of Māīdān, which now stands at the grave-head. The tomb-stone

itself is a low grave-covering, not less simple than those of relations

and kin whose remains have been placed near Bābur's. In the thirties of

the last century [the later Sir] Alexander Burnes visited and admirably

described the garden and the tomb. With him was Munshī Mohan Lāl who

added to his own account of the beauties of the spot, copies of the

inscriptions on the monumental slab and on the portal of the

Mosque.[2743] As is shown by the descriptions these two visitors give,

and by Daniel's drawings of the garden and the tomb, there were in their

time two upright slabs, one behind the other, near the head of the

grave. Mr. H. H. Hayden who visited the garden in the first decade of

the present century, shows in his photograph of the grave, one upright

stone only, the place of one of the former two having been taken by a

white-washed lamp holder (_chirāghdān_).

The purport of the verses inscribed on the standing-slab is as follows:—

A ruler from whose brow shone the Light of God was that[2744]

Back-bone of the Faith (_ẕahīru'd-dīn_) Muḥammad Bābur

Pādshāh. Together with majesty, dominion, fortune, rectitude,

the open-hand and the firm Faith, he had share in prosperity,

abundance and the triumph of victorious arms. He won the

material world and became a moving light; for his every

conquest he looked, as for Light, towards the world of souls.

When Paradise became his dwelling and Ruẓwān[2745] asked me

the date, I gave him for answer, "Paradise is forever Bābur

Pādshāh's abode."

_h. Bābur's wives and children._[2746]

Bābur himself mentions several of his wives by name, but Gul-badan is

the authority for complete lists of them and their children.

1. `Āyisha Sulṯān Begīm, daughter of Sl. Aḥmad Mīrzā _Mīrān-shāhī_ was

betrothed, when Bābur was _cir._ 5 years old, in 894 AH. (1488-89 AD.),

bore Fakhru'n-nisa' in 906 AH. [who died in about one month], left Bābur

before 909 AH. (1503 AD.).

2. Zainab Sl. Begīm, daughter of Sl. Maḥmūd Mīrzā _Mīrān-shāhī_, was

married in 910 AH. (1504-5 AD.), died childless two or three years

later.

3. Māhīm Begīm, whose parentage is not found stated, was married in 912

AH. (1506 AD.), bore Bār-būd, Mihr-jān, Āīsān-daulat, Farūq [who all

died in infancy], and Humāyūn.

4. Ma`ṣūma Sl. Begīm, daughter of Sl. Aḥmad Mīrzā _Mīrān-shāhī_, was

married in 913 AH. (1507 AD.), bore Ma`ṣūma and died at her birth,

presumably early in the _lacuna_ of 914-925 AH. (1508-19 AD.).

5. Gul-rukh Begīm, whose parentage is not found stated, was perhaps a

Begchīk Mughūl, was married between 914 AH. and 925 AH. (1508-19 AD.),

probably early in the period, bore Shāh-rukh, Aḥmad [who both died

young], Gul`iẕār [who also may have died young], Kamrān and `Askarī.

6. Dil-dār Begīm, whose parentage is not found stated, was married in

the same period as Gul-rukh, bore Gul-rang, Gul-chihra, Hind-āl,

Gul-badan and Alwar, [who died in childhood].

7. The Afghān Lady (Afghānī Āghācha), Bībī Mubārika _Yūsufzāī_, was

married in 925 AH. (1519 AD.), and died childless.

The two Circassian slaves Gul-nār Āghācha and Nār-gul Āghācha of whom

T̤ahmāsp made gift to Bābur in 933 AH. (f. 305), became recognized

ladies of the royal household. They are mentioned several times by

Gul-badan as taking part in festivities and in family conferences under

Humāyūn. Gul-nār is said by Abū'l-faẓl to have been one of Gul-badan's

pilgrim band in 983 AH. (1575 AD.).

The above list contains the names of three wives whose parentage is not

given or is vaguely given by the well-known sources,—namely, Māhīm,

Gul-rukh and Dil-dār. What would sufficiently explain the absence of

mention by Bābur of the parentage of Gul-rukh and Dil-dār is that his

record of the years within which the two Begīms were married is not now

with the _Bābur-nāma_. Presumably it has been lost, whether in diary or

narrative form, in the _lacuna_ of 914-25 AH. (1508-19 AD.). Gul-rukh

appears to have belonged to the family of Begchīk Mughūls described by

Ḥaidar Mīrzā[2747]; her brothers are styled Mīrzā; she was of good but

not royal birth. Dil-dār's case is less simple. Nothing in her daughter

Gul-badan's book suggests that she and her children were other than of

the highest rank; numerous details and shades of expression show their

ease of equality with royal personages. It is consistent with

Gul-badan's method of enumerating her father's wives that she should not

state her own mother's descent; she states it of none of her "mothers".

There is this interest in trying to trace Dil-dār's parentage, that she

may have been the third daughter of Sl. Maḥmūd Mīrzā and Pasha Begīm,

and a daughter of hers may have been the mother of Salīma Sulṯān Begīm

who was given in marriage by Humāyūn to Bairām Khān, later was married

by Akbar, and was a woman of charm and literary accomplishments. Later

historians, Abū'l-faẓl amongst their number, say that Salīma's mother

was a daughter of Bābur's wife Sālḥa Sulṯān Begīm, and vary that

daughter's name as Gul-rang-rukh-barg or -`iẕār (the last form being an

equivalent of _chihra_, face). As there cannot have been a wife with her

daughter growing up in Bābur's household, who does not appear in some

way in Gul-badan's chronicle, and as Salīma's descent from Bābur need

not be questioned, the knot is most readily loosened by surmising that

"Sālḥa" is the real name of Gul-badan's "Dildār". Instances of double

names are frequent, _e.g._ Māhīm, Māh-chīchām, Qarā-gūz, Āq, (My Moon,

My Moon sister, Black-eyed, Fair). "Heart-holding" (Dil-dār) sounds like

a home-name of affection. It is the _Ma`āsir-ī-raḥīmī_ which gives Sālḥa

as the name of Bābur's wife, Pasha's third daughter. Its author may be

wrong, writing so late as he did (1025 AH.-1616 AD.), or may have been

unaware that Sālḥa was (if she were) known as Dil-dār. It would not war

against seeming facts to take Pasha's third daughter to be Bābur's wife

Dil-dār, and Dil-dār's daughter Gul-chihra to be Salīma's mother.

Gul-chihra was born in about 1516 AD., married to Tūkhta-būghā in 1530

AD., widowed in cir. 1533 AD., might have remarried with Nūru'd-dīn

_Chaqānīānī_ (Sayyid Amīr), and in 945 AH. might have borne him Salīma;

she was married in 1547 AD. (954 AH.) to `Abbās Sulṯān _Aūzbeg_.[2748]

Two matters, neither having much weight, make against taking Dil-dār to

be a _Mīrān-shāhī_; the first being that the anonymous annotator who

added to the archetype of Kehr's Codex what is entered in Appendix

L.—_On Māhīm's adoption of Hind-āl_, styles her Dil-dār Āghācha; he,

however, may have known no more than others knew of her descent; the

second, that Māhīm forcibly took Dil-dār's child Hind-āl to rear; she

was the older wife and the mother of the heir, but could she have taken

the upper hand over a Mīrān-shāhī? A circumstance complicating the

question of Salīma's maternal descent is, that historians searching the

_Bābur-nāma_ or its Persian translation the _Wāqi`āt-i-bāburī_ for

information about the three daughters of Maḥmūd _Mīrān-shāhī_ and Pasha

_Bahārlū Turkmān_, would find an incomplete record, one in which the

husbands of the first and second daughters are mentioned and nothing is

said about the third who was Bābur's wife and the grandmother of Salīma.

Bābur himself appears to have left the record as it is, meaning to fill

it in later; presumably he waited for the names of the elder two sisters

to complete his details of the three. In the Ḥaidarabad Codex, which

there is good ground for supposing a copy of his original manuscript,

about three lines are left blank (f. 27) as if awaiting information; in

most manuscripts, however, this indication of intention is destroyed by

running the defective passage on to join the next sentence. Some chance

remark of a less well-known writer, may clear up the obscurity and show

that Sālḥa was Dil-dār.

Māhīm's case seems one having a different cause for silence about her

parentage. When she was married in Herāt, shortly after the death of Sl.

Ḥusain Mīrzā, Bābur had neither wife nor child. What Abū'l-faẓl tells

about her is vague; her father's name is not told; she is said to have

belonged to a noble Khurāsān family, to have been related

(_nisbat-i-khwesh_) to Sl. Ḥusain Mīrzā and to have traced her descent

to Shaikh Aḥmad of Jām. If her birth had been high, even though not

royal, it is strange that it is not stated by Bābur when he records the

birth of her son Humāyūn, incidentally by Gul-badan, or more precisely

by Abū'l-faẓl. Her brothers belonged to Khost, and to judge from a

considerable number of small records, seem to have been quiet, unwarlike

Khwājas. Her marriage took place in a year of which a full record

survives; it is one in the composed narrative, not in the diary. In the

following year, this also being one included in the composed narrative,

Bābur writes of his meeting with Ma`ṣūma _Mīrān-shāhī_ in Herāt, of

their mutual attraction, and of their marriage. If the marriage with

Humāyūn's mother had been an equal alliance, it would agree with Bābur's

custom to mention its occurrence, and to give particulars about Māhīm's

descent.[2749]

_i. Mr. William Erskine's estimate of Bābur._

"Z̤ahīru'd-dīn Muḥammad Bābur was undoubtedly one of the most

illustrious men of his age, and one of the most eminent and accomplished

princes that ever adorned an Asiatic throne. He is represented as having

been above the middle size, of great vigour of body, fond of all field

and warlike sports, an excellent swordsman, and a skilful archer. As a

proof of his bodily strength, it is mentioned, that he used to leap from

one pinnacle to another of the pinnacled ramparts used in the East, in

his double-soled boots; and that he even frequently took a man under

each arm and went leaping along the rampart from one of the pointed

pinnacles to another. Having been early trained to the conduct of

business, and tutored in the school of adversity, the powers of his mind

received full development. He ascended the throne at the age of twelve,

and before he had attained his twentieth year, had shared every variety

of fortune; he had not only been the ruler of subject provinces but had

been in thraldom to his own ambitious nobles, and obliged to conceal

every sentiment of his heart; he had been alternately hailed and obeyed

as a conqueror and deliverer by rich and extensive kingdoms, and forced

to lurk in the deserts and mountains of Farghāna as a houseless

wanderer. Down to the last dregs of life, we perceive in him strong

feelings of affection for his early friends and early enjoyments. * * *

He had been taught betimes, by the voice of events that cannot lie, that

he was a man dependent on the kindness and fidelity of other men; and,

in his dangers and escapes with his followers, had learned that he was

only one of an association. * * * The native benevolence and gaiety of

his disposition seems ever to overflow on all around him; * * * of his

companions in arms he speaks with the frank gaiety of a soldier. * * *

Ambitious he was and fond of conquest and glory in all its shapes; the

enterprise in which he was for a season engaged, seems to have absorbed

his whole soul, and all his faculties were exerted to bring it to a

fortunate issue. His elastic mind was not broken by discomfiture, and

few who have achieved such glorious conquests, have suffered more

numerous or more decisive defeats. His personal courage was conspicuous

during his whole life. Upon the whole, if we review with impartiality

the history of Asia, we find few princes entitled to rank higher than

Bābur in genius and accomplishments. * * * In activity of mind, in the

gay equanimity and unbroken spirit with which he bore the extremes of

good and bad fortune, in the possession of the manly and social virtues,

in his love of letters and his success in the cultivation of them, we

shall probably find no other Asiatic prince who can justly be placed

beside him."

THE END.

APPENDICES.

A.—THE SITE AND DISAPPEARANCE OF OLD AKHSĪ.

Some modern writers, amongst whom are Dr. Schuyler, General Nalivkine

and Mr. Pumpelly, have inferred from the Bābur-nāma account of Akhsī,

(in its translations?) that the landslip through which Bābur's father

died and the disappearance of old Akhsī were brought about by erosion.

Seen by the light of modern information, this erosion theory does not

seem to cover the whole ground and some other cause seems necessary in

explanation of both events.

For convenience of reference, the Bābur-nāma passages required, are

quoted here, with their translations.

Ḥai. MS. f. 4b. _Saiḥūn daryā-sī qūrghānī astīdīn āqār.

Qūrghānī baland jar austīdā wāqī' būlūb tūr. Khandaqī-nīng

aūrunīgha `umīq jārlār dūr. `Umar Shaikh M. kīm mūnī pāy-takht

qīldī, bīr īkī martaba tāshrāq-dīn yana jarlār sāldī._

Of this the translations are as follows:—

(_a_) Pers. trans. (I.O. 217, f. 3_b_): _Daryā-i Saiḥūn az

pāyhā qila`-i o mīrezad u qila`-i o bar jar balandī wāqi`

shuda ba jāy khandaq jarhā-i `umīq uftāda. `U. Sh. M. kah ānrā

pāy-takht sākhta, yak du martaba az bīrūn ham bāz jarhā

andākht._

(_b_) Erskine (p. 5, translating from the Persian): 'The river

Saiḥūn flows under the walls of the castle. The castle is

situated on a high precipice, and the steep ravines around

serve instead of a moat. When U. Sh. M. made it his capital

he, in one or two instances, scarped the ravines outside the

fort.'

(_c_) De Courteille (i, 8, translating from Ilminsky's

imprint, p. 6): 'Le Seihoun coule au pied de la fortresse qui

se dresse sur le sommet d'un ravin, dont les profondeurs lui

tiennent lieu d'un fossé. `U. Sh. M. à l'époque où il en avait

fait son capitale, avait augmenté à une ou deux réprises, les

escarpements qui la ceignent naturellement.'

Concerning `Umar Shaikh's death, the words needed are (f. 6_b_);—

_Maẕkūr būlūb aīdī kīm Akhsī qūrghānī buland jar austīdā wāqi`

būlūb tūr. `Imāratlār jar yāqāsīdā aīrdī.... Mīrzā jardīn

kabūtar u kabūtar-khāna bīla aūchūb shunqār būldī_;—'It has been

mentioned that the walled-town of Akhsī is situated above

ravine(s). The royal dwellings are along a ravine. The Mīrzā,

having flown with his pigeons and their house from the ravine,

became a falcon (_i.e._ died).'

A few particulars about Akhsī will shew that, in the translations just

quoted, certain small changes of wording are dictated by what, amongst

other writers, Kostenko and von Schwarz have written about the oases of

Turkistān.

The name Akhsī, as used by Ibn Haukal, Yāqūt and Bābur, describes an

oasis township, _i.e._ a walled-town with its adjacent cultivated lands.

In Yāqūt's time Akhsī had a second circumvallation, presumably less for

defence than for the protection of crops against wild animals. The oasis

was created by the Kāsān-water,[2750] upon the riverain loess of the

right and higher bank of the Saiḥūn (Sīr), on level ground west of the

junction of the Nārīn and the Qarā-daryā, west too of spurs from the

northern hills which now abut upon the river. Yāqūt locates it in the

12th century, at one _farsākh_ (_circa_ 4 m.) north of the river.[2751]

Depending as it did solely on the Kāsān-water, nothing dictated its

location close to the Sīr, along which there is now, and there seems to

have been in the 12th century, a strip of waste land. Bābur says of

Akhsī what Kostenko says (i, 321) of modern Tāshkīnt, that it stood

above ravines (_jarlār_). These were natural or artificial channels of

the Kāsān-water.[2752]

To turn now to the translations;—Mr. Erskine imaged Akhsī as a castle,

high on a precipice in process of erosion by the Sīr. But Bābur's word,

_qūrghān_ means the walled-town; his word for a castle is _ark_,

citadel; and his _jar_, a cleft, is not rendered by 'precipice.'

Again;—it is no more necessary to understand that the Sīr flowed close

to the walls than it is to understand, when one says the Thames flows

past below Richmond, that it washes the houses on the hill.

The key to the difficulties in the Turkī passage is provided by a

special use of the word _jar_ for not only natural ravines but

artificial water-cuts for irrigation. This use of it makes clear that

what `Umar Shaikh did at Akhsī was not to make escarpments but to cut

new water-channels. Presumably he joined those 'further out' on the

deltaic fan, on the east and west of the town, so as to secure a

continuous defensive cleft round the town[2753] or it may be, in order

to bring it more water.

Concerning the historic pigeon-house (f. 6_b_), it can be said safely

that it did not fall into the Sīr; it fell from a _jar_, and in this

part of its course, the river flows in a broad bed, with a low left

bank. Moreover the Mīrzā's residence was in the walled-town (f. 110_b_)

and there his son stayed 9 years after the accident. The slip did not

affect the safety of the residence therefore; it may have been local to

the birds' house. It will have been due to some ordinary circumstance

since no cause for it is mentioned by Bābur, Ḥaidar or Abū'l-faẓl. If it

had marked the crisis of the Sīr's approach, Akhsī could hardly have

been described, 25 years later, as a strong fort.

Something is known of Akhsī, in the 10th, the 12th, the 15th and the

19th centuries, which testifies to sæcular decadence. Ibn Haukal and

Yāqūt give the township an extent of 3 _farsākh_ (12 miles), which may

mean from one side to an opposite one. Yāqūt's description of it

mentions four gates, each opening into well-watered lands extending a

whole _farsākh_, in other words it had a ring of garden-suburb four

miles wide.

Two meanings have been given to Bābur's words indicating the status of

the oasis in the 15th century. They are, _maḥallātī qūrghān-dīn bīr

shar`ī yurāqrāq tūshūb tūr_. They have been understood as saying that

the suburbs were two miles from their _urbs_. This may be right but I

hesitate to accept it without pointing out that the words may mean, 'Its

suburbs extend two miles farther than the walled-town.' Whichever verbal

reading is correct, reveals a decayed oasis.

In the 19th century, Nalivkine and Ujfalvy describe the place then

bearing the name Akhsī, as a small village, a mere winter-station, at

some distance from the river's bank, that bank then protected from

denudation by a sand-bank.

Three distinctly-marked stages of decadence in the oasis township are

thus indicated by Yāqūt, Bābur and the two modern travellers.

It is necessary to say something further about the position of the

suburbs in the 15th century. Bābur quotes as especially suitable to

Akhsī, the proverbial questions, 'Where is the village?'[2754] (qy.

Akhsī-kīnt.) 'Where are the trees?' and these might be asked by some-one

in the suburbs unable to see Akhsī or _vice versâ_. But granting that

there were no suburbs within two miles of the town, why had the whole

inner circle, two miles of Yāqūt's four, gone out of cultivation?

Erosion would have affected only land between the river and the town.

Again;—if the Sīr only were working in the 15th century to destroy a

town standing on the Kāsān-water, how is it that this stream does not

yet reach the Sīr?

Various ingatherings of information create the impression that failure

of Kāsān-water has been the dominant factor in the loss of the Akhsī

township. Such failure might be due to the general desiccation of

Central Asia and also to increase of cultivation in the Kāsān-valley

itself. There may have been erosion, and social and military change may

have had its part, but for the loss of the oasis lands and for, as a

sequel, the decay of the town, desiccation seems a sufficient cause.

The Kāsān-water still supports an oasis on its riverain slope, the large

Aūzbeg town of Tūpa-qūrghān (Town-of-the-hill), from the modern castle

of which a superb view is had up the Kāsān-valley, now thickly studded

with villages.[2755]

B.—THE BIRDS, QĪL QŪYIRŪGH AND BĀGHRĪ QARĀ.

Describing a small bird (_qūsh-qīna_), abundant in the Qarshī district

(f. 49_b_), Bābur names it the _qīl-qūyirūgh_, horse-tail, and says it

resembles the _bāghrī qarā_.

Later on he writes (f. 280) that the _bāghrī qarā_ of India is smaller

and more slender than 'those' _i.e._ of Transoxiana (f. 49_b_, n. 1),

the blackness of its breast less deep, and its cry less piercing.

We have had difficulty in identifying the birds but at length conclude

that the _bāghrī qarā_ of Transoxiana is _Pterocles arenarius_, Pallas's

black-bellied sand-grouse and that the Indian one is a smaller

sand-grouse, perhaps a _Syrrhaptes_. As the _qīl qūyirūgh_ resembles the

other two, it may be a yet smaller _Syrrhaptes_.

Muḥ. Ṣāliḥ, writing of sport Shaibāq Khān had in Qarshī

(_Shaibānī-nāma_, Vambéry, p. 192) mentions the 'Little bird (_murghak_)

of Qarshī,' as on all sides making lament. The Sang-lākh[2756] gives its

Persian name as _khar-pala_, ass-hair, says it flies in large flocks

and resembles the _bāghrī qarā_. Of the latter he writes as abundant in

the open country and as making noise (_bāghīr_).

The Sang-lākh (f. 119) gives the earliest and most informing account we

have found of the _bāghrī qarā_. Its says the bird is larger than a

pigeon, marked with various colours, yellow especially, black-breasted

and a dweller in the stony and waterless desert. These details are

followed by a quotation from `Alī-sher _Nawā'ī_, in which he likens his

own heart to that of the bird of the desert, presumably referring to the

gloom of the bird's plumage. Three synonyms are then given; Ar. _qiṯā_,

one due to its cry (Meninsky); Pers. _sang-shikan_, stone-eating,

(Steingass, _sang-khwāra_, stone-eating); and Turkī _bāghīr-tīlāq_ which

refers, I think, to its cry.

Morier (Ḥājī Bābā) in his _Second journey through Persia_ (Lond. 1818,

p. 181), mentions that a bird he calls the black-breasted partridge,

(_i.e._ _Francolinus vulgaris_) is known in Turkish as _bokara kara_ and

in Persian as _siyāh-sīna_, both names, (he says), meaning black-breast;

that it has a horse-shoe of black feathers round the forepart of the

trunk, more strongly marked in the female than in the male; that they

fly in flocks of which he saw immense numbers near Tabrīz (p. 283), have

a soft note, inhabit the plains, and, once settled, do not run. Cock and

hen alike have a small spur,—a characteristic, it may be said,

identifying rather with _Francolinus vulgaris_ than with _Pterocles

arenarius_. Against this identification, however, is Mr. Blandford's

statement that _siyāh-sīna_ (Morier's _bokara kara_) is _Pterocles

arenarius_ (Report of the Persian Boundary Commission, ii, 271).

In Afghānistān and Bikanir, the sand-grouse is called _tūtūrak_ and

_boora kurra_ (Jerdon, ii, 498). Scully explains _baghītāq_ as

_Pterocles arenarius_.

Perhaps I may mention something making me doubt whether it is correct to

translate _bāghrī qarā_ by _black-liver_ and _gorge-noir_ or other names

in which the same meaning is expressed. To translate thus, is to

understand a Turkī noun and adjective in Persian construction, and to

make exception to the rule, amply exemplified in lists of birds, that

Turkī names of birds are commonly in Turkī construction, _e.g._ _qarā

bāsh_ (black-head), _āq-bāsh_ (white-head), _sārīgh-sūndūk_

(yellow-headed wagtail). _Bāghīr_ may refer to the cry of the bird. We

learn from Mr. Ogilvie Grant that the Mongol name for the sand-grouse

_njūpterjūn_, is derived from its cry in flight, _truck_, _truck_, and

its Arabic name _qiṯā_ is said by Meninsky to be derived from its cry

_kaetha_, _kaetha_. Though the dissimilarity of the two cries is against

taking the _njūpterjūn_ and the _qiṯā_ to be of one class of

sand-grouse, the significance of the derivation of the names remains,

and shows that there are examples in support of thinking that when a

sand-grouse is known as _bāghrī qarā_, it may be so known because of its

cry (_bāghir_).

The word _qarā_ finds suggestive interpretation in a B. N. phrase (f.

72_b_) _Taṃbal-nīng qarā-sī_, Taṃbal's blackness, _i.e._ the dark mass

of his moving men, seen at a distance. It is used also for an indefinite

number, _e.g._ 'family, servants, retainers, followers, _qarā_,' and I

think it may imply a massed flock.

Bābur's words (f. 280) _bāghrī-nīng qarā-sī ham kam dūr_, [its belly

(lit. liver) also is less black], do not necessarily contradict the view

that the word _bāghrī_ in the bird's name means crying. The root _bāgh_

has many and pliable derivatives; I suspect both Bābur (here) and Muḥ.

Ṣāliḥ (l. c.) of ringing changes on words.

We are indebted for kind reply to our questions to Mr. Douglas

Carruthers, Mr. Ogilvie Grant and to our friend, Mr. R. S. Whiteway.

C.—ON THE GOSHA-GĪR.

I am indebted to my husband's examination of two Persian MSS. on

archery for an explanation of the word _gosha-gīr_, in its technical

sense in archery. The works consulted are the Cyclopædia of

Archery (_Kulliyatu'r-rāmī_ I. O. 2771) and the Archer's Guide

(_Hidāyatu'r-rāmī_ I. O. 2768).

It should be premised that in archery, the word _gosha_ describes, in

the arrow, the notch by which it grips and can be carried on the string,

and, in the bow, both the tip (horn) and the notch near the tip in which

the string catches. It is explained by Vullers as _cornu et crena arcûs

cui immititur nervus_.

Two passages in the Cyclopædia of Archery (f. 9 and f. 36_b_) shew

_gosha_ as the bow-tip. One says that to bend the bow, two men must

grasp the two _gosha_; the other reports a tradition that the Archangel

Gabriel brought a bow having its two _gosha_ (tips) made of ruby. The

same book directs that the _gosha_ be made of seasoned ivory, the

Archer's Guide prescribing seasoned mulberry wood.

The C. of A. (f. 125_b_) says that a bowman should never be without two

things, his arrows and his _gosha-gīr_. The _gosha-gīr_ may be called an

item of the repairing kit; it is an implement (f. 53) for making good a

warped bow-tip and for holding the string into a displaced notch. It is

known also as the _chaprās_, brooch or buckle, and the _kardāng_; and is

said to bear these names because it fastens in the string. Its shape is

that of the upper part of the Ar. letter _jīm_, two converging lines of

which the lower curves slightly outward. It serves to make good a warped

bow, without the use of fire and it should be kept upon the bow-tip till

this has reverted to its original state. Until the warp has been

straightened by the _gosha-gīr_, the bow must be kept from the action of

fire because it, (composite of sinew and glutinous substance,) is of the

nature of wax.

The same implement can be used to straighten the middle of the bow, the

_kamān khāna_. It is then called _kar-dāng_. It can be used there on

condition that there are not two _daur_ (curves) in the bow. If there

are two the bow cannot be repaired without fire. The _halāl daur_ is

said to be characteristic of the Turkish bow. There are three _daur_. I

am indebted to Mr. Inigo Simon for the suggestions that _daur_ in this

connection means _warp_ and that the three twists (_daur_) may be those

of one horn (_gosha_), of the whole bow warped in one curve, and of the

two horns warped in opposite directions.

Of repair to the _kamān-khāna_ it is said further that if no _kardāng_

be available, its work can be done by means of a stick and string, and

if the damage be slight only, the bow and the string can be tightly tied

together till the bow comes straight. 'And the cure is with God!'

Both manuscripts named contain much technical information. Some parts of

this are included in my husband's article, _Oriental Crossbows_ (A. Q.

R. 1911, p. 1). Sir Ralph Payne-Gallwey's interesting book on the

Cross-bow allows insight into the fine handicraft of Turkish bow-making.

D.—ON THE RESCUE PASSAGE.

I have omitted from my translation an account of Bābur's rescue from

expected death, although it is with the Ḥaidarābād Codex, because closer

acquaintance with its details has led both my husband and myself to

judge it spurious. We had welcomed it because, being with the true

Bābur-nāma text, it accredited the same account found in the

Kehr-Ilminsky text, and also because, however inefficiently, it did

something towards filling the gap found elsewhere within 908 AH.

It is in the Ḥaidarābād MS. (f. 118_b_), in Kehr's MS. (p. 385), in

Ilminsky's imprint (p. 144), in _Les Mémoires de Bābour_ (i, 255) and

with the St. P. University Codex, which is a copy of Kehr's.

On the other hand, it is not with the Elphinstone Codex (f. 89_b_); that

it was not with the archetype of that codex the scribe's note shews (f.

90); it is with neither of the _Wāqi`āt-i-bāburī_ (Pers. translations)

nor with Leyden and Erskine's _Memoirs_ (p. 122).[2757]

Before giving our grounds for rejecting what has been offered to fill

the gap of 908 AH. a few words must be said about the lacuna itself.

Nothing indicates that Bābur left it and, since both in the Elphinstone

Codex and its archetype, the sentence preceding it lacks the terminal

verb, it seems due merely to loss of pages. That the loss, if any, was

of early date is clear,—the Elph. MS. itself being copied not later than

1567 AD. (JRAS. 1907, p. 137).

Two known circumstances, both of earlier date than that of the

Elphinstone Codex, might have led to the loss,—the first is the storm

which in 935 AH. scattered Bābur's papers (f. 376_b_), the second, the

vicissitudes to which Humāyūn's library was exposed in his exile.[2758]

Of the two the first seems the more probable cause.

The rupture of a story at a point so critical as that of Bābur's danger

in Karnān would tempt to its completion; so too would wish to make good

the composed part of the Bābur-nāma. Humāyūn annotated the archetype of

the Elphinstone Codex a good deal but he cannot have written the Rescue

passage if only because he was in a position to avoid some of its

inaccuracies.

CONTEXT AND TRANSLATION OF THE RESCUE PASSAGE.

To facilitate reference, I quote the last words preceding the gap

purported to be filled by the Rescue passage, from several texts;—

(_a_) Elphinstone MS. f. 89_b_,—_Qūptūm. Bāgh gosha-sī-gha bārdīm. Aūzūm

bīla andesha qīldīm. Dīdīm kīm kīshī agar yūz u agar mīng yāshāsā, ākhir

hech...._

(_b_) The Ḥai. MS. (f. 118_b_) varies from the Elphinstone by omitting

the word _hech_ and adding _aūlmāk kīrāk_, he must die.

(_c_) Pāyanda-ḥasan's _Wāqi`āt-i-bāburī_ (I. O. 215, f.

96_b_),—_Barkhwāstam u dar gosha-i bāgh raftam. Ba khūd andesha karda,

guftam kah agar kase ṣad sāl yā hazār sāl `umr dāshta bāshad, ākhir hech

ast._ (It will be seen that this text has the _hech_ of the Elph. MS.)

(_d_) `Abdu'r-raḥīm's _Wāqi`āt-i-bāburī_ (I. O. 217, f.

79),—_Barkhwāstam u ba gosha-i-bāgh raftam. Ba khūd andeshīdam u guftam

kah agar kase ṣad sāl u agar hazār sāl `umr bayābad ākhir...._

(_e_) Muḥ. _Shīrāzī's_ lith. ed. (p. 75) finishes the sentence with

_ākhir khūd bāyad murd_, at last one must die,—varying as it frequently

does, from both of the _Wāqi`āt_.

(_f_) Kehr's MS. (p. 383-454), Ilminsky, p. 144,—_Qūpūb bāghnīng bīr

būrjī-ghā bārīb, khāṯirīm-ghā kīltūrdīm kīm agar adam yūz yīl u agar

mīng yīl tīrīk būlsā, ākhir aūlmāk dīn aūzkā chāra yūq tūr._ (I rose.

Having gone to a tower of the garden, I brought it to my mind that if a

person be alive 100 years or a thousand years, at last he has no help

other than to die.)

The Rescue passage is introduced by a Persian couplet, identified by my

husband as from Niẕāmī's _Khusrau u Shīrīn_, which is as follows;—

If you stay a hundred years, and if one year,

Forth you must go from this heart-delighting palace.

I steadied myself for death (_qarār bīrdīm_). In that garden a stream

came flowing;[2759] I made ablution; I recited the prayer of two

inclinations (_ra`kat_); having raised my head for silent prayer, I

was making earnest petition when my eyes closed in sleep.[2760] I am

seeing[2761] that Khwāja Yaq`ūb, the son of Khwāja Yaḥyā and

grandson of His Highness Khwāja `Ubaidu'l-lāh, came facing me,

mounted on a piebald horse, with a large company of piebald horsemen

(_sic_).[2762] He said: 'Lay sorrow aside! Khwāja _Aḥrār_ (_i.e._

`Ubaidu'l-lāh) has sent me to you; he said, "We, having asked help

for him (_i.e._ Bābur), will seat him on the royal throne;[2763]

wherever difficulty befalls him, let him look towards us (lit. bring

us to sight) and call us to mind; there will we be present." Now, in

this hour, victory and success are on your side; lift up your head!

awake!'

At that time I awoke happy, when Yūsuf and those with him[2764] were

giving one another advice. 'We will make a pretext to deceive; to

seize and bind[2765] is necessary.' Hearing these words, I said,

'Your words are of this sort, but I will see which of you will come

to my presence to take me.' I was saying this when outside the garden

wall[2766] came the noise of approaching horsemen. Yūsuf _darogha_

said, 'If we had taken you to Taṃbal our affairs would have gone

forward. Now he has sent again many persons to seize you.' He was

certain that this noise might be the footfall of the horses of those

sent by Taṃbal. On hearing those words anxiety grew upon me; what to

do I did not know. At this time those horsemen, not happening to find

the garden gate, broke down the wall where it was old (and) came in.

I saw (_kūrsām_, lit. might see) that Qutluq Muḥ. _Barlās_ and Bābā-i

_Pargharī_, my life-devoted servants, having arrived [with], it may

be, ten, fifteen, twenty persons, were approaching. Having flung

themselves from their horses,[2767] bent the knee from afar and

showed respect, they fell at my feet. In that state (_ḥal_) such

ecstasy (_ḥāl_) came over me that you might say (_goyā_) God gave me

life from a new source (_bāsh_). I said, 'Seize and bind that Yūsuf

_darogha_ and these here (_tūrghān_) hireling mannikins.' These same

mannikins had taken to flight. They (_i.e._ the rescuers), having

taken them, one by one, here and there, brought them bound. I said,

'Where do you come from? How did you get news?' Qutluq Muḥ. _Barlās_

said: 'When, having fled from Akhsī, we were separated from you in

the flight, we went to Andijān when the Khāns also came to Andijān. I

saw a vision that Khwāja `Ubaidu'l-lāh said, "Bābur _pādshāh_[2768]

is in a village called Karnān; go and bring him, since the royal seat

(_masnad_) has become his possession (_ta`alluq_)." I having seen

this vision and become happy, represented (the matter) to the Elder

Khān (and) the Younger Khān. I said to the Khāns, "I have five or six

younger brothers (and) sons; do you add a few soldiers. I will go

through the Karnān side and bring news." The Khāns said, "It occurs

to our minds also that (he) may have gone that same road (?)." They

appointed ten persons; they said, "Having gone in that direction

(_sārī_) and made very sure, bring news. Would to God you might get

true news!" We were saying this when Bābā-i _Parghārī_ said, "I too

will go and seek." He also having agreed with two young men, (his)

younger brothers, we rode out. It is three days to-day that we are

on the road. Thank God! we have found you.' They said (_dīdīlār_, for

_dīb_). They spoke (_aītīlār_), 'Make a move! Ride off! Take these

bound ones with you! To stay here is not well; Taṃbal has had news of

your coming here; go, in whatever way, and join yourself to the

Khāns!' At that time we having ridden out, moved towards Andijān. It

was two days that we had eaten no food; the evening prayer had come

when we found a sheep, went on, dismounted, killed, and roasted. Of

that same roast we ate as much as a feast. After that we rode on,

hurried forward, made a five days' journey in a day and two nights,

came and entered Andijān. I saluted my uncle the Elder Khān (and) my

uncle the Younger Khān, and made recital of past days. With the Khāns

I spent four months. My servants, who had gone looking in every

place, gathered themselves together; there were more than 300

persons. It came to my mind (_kīm_), 'How long must I wander, a

vagabond (_sar-gardān_),[2769] in this Farghāna country? I will make

search (_ṯalab_) on every side (_dīb_).' Having said, I rode out in

the month of Muḥarram to seek Khurāsān, and I went out from the

country of Farghāna.[2770]

REASONS AGAINST THE REJECTION OF THE RESCUE PASSAGE.

Two circumstances have weight against rejecting the passage, its

presence with the Ḥaidarābād Codex and its acceptance by Dr. Ilminsky

and M. de Courteille.

That it is with the Codex is a matter needing consideration and this the

more that it is the only extra matter there found. Not being with the

Persian translations, it cannot be of early date. It seems likely to owe

its place of honour to distinguished authorship and may well be one of

the four portions (_juzwe_) mentioned by Jahāngīr in the

Tuzūk-i-jahāngīrī,[2771] as added by himself to his ancestor's book. If

so, it may be mentioned, it will have been with Bābur's autograph MS.

[now not to be found], from which the Ḥaidarābād Codex shews signs of

being a direct copy.[2772]

[The incongruity of the Rescue passage with the true text has been

indicated by foot-notes to the translation of it already given. What

condemns it on historic and other grounds will follow.]

On linguistic grounds it is a strong argument in its favour that Dr.

Ilminsky and M. de Courteille should have accepted it but the argument

loses weight when some of the circumstances of their work are taken into

account.

In the first place, it is not strictly accurate to regard Dr. Ilminsky

as accepting it unquestioned, because it is covered by his depreciatory

remarks, made in his preface, on Kehr's text. He, like M. de Courteille,

worked with a single Turkī MS. and neither of the two ever saw a

complete true text. When their source (the Kehr-Ilminsky) was able to be

collated with the Elph. and Ḥai. MSS. much and singular divergence was

discovered.

I venture to suggest what appears to me to explain M. de Courteille's

acceptance of the Rescue passage. Down to its insertion, the

Kehr-Ilminsky text is so continuously and so curiously corrupt that it

seems necessary to regard it as being a re-translation into Turkī from

one of the Persian translations of the _Bābur-nāma_. There being these

textual defects in it, it would create on the mind of a reader initiated

through it, only, in the book, an incorrect impression of Bābur's style

and vocabulary, and such a reader would feel no transition when passing

on from it to the Rescue passage.

In opposition to this explanation, it might be said that a wrong

standard set up by the corrupt text, would or could be changed by the

excellence of later parts of the Kehr-Ilminsky one. In words, this is

sound, no doubt, and such reflex criticism is now easy, but more than

the one defective MS. was wanted even to suggest the need of such reflex

criticism. The _Bābur-nāma_ is lengthy, ponderous to poise and grasp,

and work on it is still tentative, even with the literary gains since

the Seventies.

Few of the grounds which weigh with us for the rejection of the Rescue

passage were known to Dr. Ilminsky or M. de Courteille;—the two good

Codices bring each its own and varied help; Teufel's critique on the

'Fragments,' though made without acquaintance with those adjuncts as

they stand in Kehr's own volume, is of much collateral value; several

useful oriental histories seem not to have been available for M. de

Courteille's use. I may add, for my own part, that I have the great

advantage of my husband's companionship and the guidance of his wide

acquaintance with related oriental books. In truth, looking at the

drawbacks now removed, an earlier acceptance of the passage appears as

natural as does today's rejection.

GROUNDS FOR REJECTING THE RESCUE PASSAGE.

The grounds for rejecting the passage need here little more than

recapitulation from my husband's article in the JASB. 1910, p. 221, and

are as follows;—

i. The passage is in neither of the _Wāqi`āt-i-bāburī_.

ii. The dreams detailed are too à propos and marvellous for

credence.

iii. Khwāja Yaḥyā is not known to have had a son, named

Ya`qūb.

iv. The _Bābur-nāma_ does not contain the names assigned to

the rescuers.

v. The Khāns were not in Andijān and Bābur did not go there.

vi. He did not set out for Khurāsān after spending 4 months

with The Khāns but after Aḥmad's death (end of 909 AH.), while

Maḥmud was still in Eastern Turkistān and after about a year's

stay in Sūkh.

vii. The followers who gathered to him were not 'more than

300' but between 2 and 300.

viii. The '3 days,' and the 'day and two nights,' and the '5

days' journey was one of some 70 miles, and one recorded as

made in far less time.

ix. The passage is singularly inadequate to fill a gap of 14

to 16 months, during which events of the first importance

occurred to Bābur and to the Chaghatāī dynasty.

x. Khwāja _Aḥrārī's_ promises did nothing to fulfil Bābur's

wishes for 908 AH. while those of Ya`qūb for immediate victory

were closely followed by defeat and exile. Bābur knew the

facts; the passage cannot be his. It looks as though the

writer saw Bābur in Karnān across Tīmūrid success in

Hindūstān.

xi. The style and wording of the passage are not in harmony

with those of the true text.

Other reasons for rejection are marked change in choice of the details

chosen for commemoration, _e.g._ when Bābur mentions prayer, he does so

simply; when he tells a dream, it seems a real one. The passage leaves

the impression that the writer did not think in Turkī, composed in it

with difficulty, and looked at life from another view-point than

Bābur's.

On these various grounds, we have come to the conclusion that it is no

part of the _Bābur-nāma_.

[APPENDICES TO THE KĀBUL SECTION.]

E.—NAGARAHĀR, AND NĪNG-NAHĀR

Those who consult books and maps about the riverain tract between the

Safed-koh (Spīn-ghur) and (Anglicé) the Kābul-river find its name in

several forms, the most common being Nangrahār and Nangnahār (with

variant vowels). It would be useful to establish a European book-name

for the district. As European opinion differs about the origin and

meaning of the names now in use, and as a good deal of interesting

circumstance gathers round the small problem of a correct form (there

may be two), I offer about the matter what has come into the restricted

field of my own work, premising that I do this merely as one who drops a

casual pebble on the cairn of observation already long rising for

scholarly examination.

_a. The origin and meaning of the names._

I have met with three opinions about the origin and meaning of the names

found now and earlier. To each one of them obvious objection can be

made. They are:—

1. That all forms now in use are corruptions of the Sanscrit

word Nagarahāra, the name of the Town-of-towns which in the

_dū-āb_ of the Bārān-sū and Sūrkh-rūd left the ruins Masson

describes in Wilson's _Ariana Antigua_. But if this is so, why

is the Town-of-towns multiplied into the nine of Na-nagrahār

(Nangrahār)?[2773]

2. That the names found represent Sanscrit _nawā vihāra_, nine

monasteries, an opinion the Gazetteer of India of 1907 has

adopted from Bellew. But why precisely nine monasteries? Nine

appears an understatement.

3. That Nang (Ning or Nung) -nahār verbally means nine

streams, (Bābur's Tūqūz-rūd,) an interpretation of long

standing (Section _b infra_). But whence _nang_, _ning_,

_nung_, for nine? Such forms are not in Persian, Turkī or

Pushtu dictionaries, and, as Sir G. A. Grierson assures me, do

not come into the Linguistic Survey.

_b. On nang, ning, nung for nine._

Spite of their absence from the natural homes of words, however, the

above sounds have been heard and recorded as symbols of the number nine

by careful men through a long space of time.

The following instances of the use of "Nangnahār" show this, and also

show that behind the variant forms there may be not a single word but

two of distinct origin and sense.

1. In Chinese annals two names appear as those of the district

and town (I am not able to allocate their application with

certainty). The first is Na-kie-lo-ho-lo, the second

Nang-g-lo-ho-lo and these, I understand to represent

Nagara-hāra and Nang-nahār, due allowance being made for

Chinese idiosyncrasy.[2774]

2. Some 900 years later (1527-30 AD.) Bābur also gives two

names, Nagarahār (as the book-name of his _tūmān_) and

Nīng-nahār.[2775] He says the first is found in several

histories (B.N. f. 131_b_); the second will have been what he

heard and also presumably what appeared in revenue accounts;

of it he says, "it is nine torrents" (_tūqūz-rūd_).

3. Some 300 years after Bābur, Elphinstone gives two names

for the district, neither of them being Bābur's book-name,

"Nangrahaur[2776] or Nungnahaur, from the nine streams which

issue from the Safed-koh, _nung_ in Pushtoo signifying _nine_,

and _nahaura_, a stream" (_Caubul_, i, 160).

4. In 1881 Colonel H. S. Tanner had heard, in Nūr-valley on

the north side of the Kābul-water, that the name of the

opposite district was Nīng-nahār and its meaning Nine-streams.

He did not get a list of the nine and all he heard named do

not flow from Safed-koh.

5. In 1884 Colonel H. G. McGregor gives two names with their

explanation, "Ningrahar and Nungnihar; the former is a

corruption of the latter word[2777] which in the Afghān

language signifies nine rivers or rivulets." He names nine,

but of them six only issue from Safed-koh.

6. I have come across the following instances in which the

number nine is represented by other words than _na_ (_ni_ or

_nu_); _viz._ the _nenhan_ of the Chitrālī Kāfir and the

_noun_ of the Panjābi, recorded by Leech,—the _nyon_ of the

Khowārī and the _huncha_ of the Boorishki, recorded by Colonel

Biddulph.

The above instances allow opinion that in the region concerned and

through a long period of time, nine has been expressed by _nang_ (_ning_

or _nung_) and other nasal or high palatal sounds, side by side with

_na_ (_ni_ or _nu_). The whole matter may be one of nasal

utterance,[2778] but since a large number of tribesmen express nine by a

word containing a nasal sound, should that word not find place in lists

of recognized symbols of sounds?

_c. Are there two names of distinct origin?_

1. Certainly it makes a well-connected story of decay in the Sanscrit

word Nagarahāra to suppose that tribesmen, prone by their organism to

nasal utterance, pronounced that word Nangrahār, and by force of their

numbers made this corruption current,—that this was recognized as the

name of the town while the Town-of-towns was great or in men's memory,

and that when through the decay of the town its name became a

meaningless husk, the wrong meaning of the Nine-streams should enter

into possession.

But as another and better one can be put together, this fair-seeming

story may be baseless. Its substitute has the advantage of explaining

the double sequence of names shown in Section _b_.

The second story makes all the variant names represent one or other of

two distinct originals. It leaves Nagrahār to represent Nagarahāra, the

dead town; it makes the nine torrents of Safed-koh the primeval sponsors

of Nīng-nahār, the name of the riverain tract. Both names, it makes

contemporary in the relatively brief interlude of the life of the town.

For the fertilizing streams will have been the dominant factors of

settlement and of revenue from the earliest times of population and

government. They arrest the eye where they and their ribbons of

cultivation space the riverain waste; they are obvious units for

grouping into a sub-government. Their name has a counterpart in adjacent

Panj-āb; the two may have been given by one dominant power, how long

ago, in what tongue matters not. The riverain tract, by virtue of its

place on a highway of transit, must have been inhabited long before the

town Nagarahāra was built, and must have been known by a name. What

better one than Nine-streams can be thought of?

2. Bellew is quoted by the Gazetteer of India (ed. 1907) as saying, in

his argument in favour of _nawā vihāra_, that no nine streams are found

to stand sponsor, but modern maps shew nine outflows from Safed-koh to

the Kābul-river between the Sūrkh-rūd and Daka, while if affluents to

the former stream be reckoned, more than nine issue from the

range.[2779]

Against Bellew's view that there are not nine streams, is the long

persistence of the number nine in the popular name (Sect. _b_).

It is also against his view that he supposes there were nine

monasteries, because each of the nine must have had its fertilizing

water.

Bābur says there were nine; there must have been nine of significance;

he knew his _tūmān_ not only by frequent transit but by his revenue

accounts. A supporting point in those accounts is likely to have been

that the individual names of the villages on the nine streams would

appear, with each its payment of revenue.

3. In this also is some weight of circumstance against taking Nagarahāra

to be the parent of Nīng-nahār:—An earlier name of the town is said to

be Udyānapūra, Garden town.[2780] Of this Bābur's Adīnapūr is held to be

a corruption; the same meaning of garden has survived on approximately

the same ground in Bālā-bāgh and Roẓābād.

Nagarahāra is seen, therefore, to be a parenthetical name between others

which are all derived from gardens. It may shew the promotion of a

"Garden-town" to a "Chief-town". If it did this, there was relapse of

name when the Chief-town lost status. Was it ever applied beyond the

delta? If it were, would it, when dead in the delta, persist along the

riverain tract? If it were not, _cadit quæstio_; the suggestion of two

names distinct in origin, is upheld.

Certainly the riverain tract would fall naturally under the government

of any town flourishing in the delta, the richest and most populous part

of the region. But for this very reason it must have had a name older

than parenthetical Nagarahāra. That inevitable name would be

appropriately Nīng-nahār (or Na-nahār) Nine-streams; and for a period

Nagarahāra would be the Chief-town of the district of Na-nahār

(Nine-streams).[2781]

_d. Bābur's statements about the name._

What the cautious Bābur says of his _tūmān_ of Nīng-nahār has weight:—

1. That some histories write it Nagarahār (Ḥaidarābād Codex,

f. 131_b_);

2. That Nīng-nahār is nine torrents, _i.e._ mountain streams,

_tūquz-rud_;

3. That (the) nine torrents issue from Safed-koh (f. 132_b_).

Of his first statement can be said, that he will have seen the book-name

in histories he read, but will have heard Nīng-nahār, probably also have

seen it in current letters and accounts.

Of his second,—that it bears and may be meant to bear two senses, (_a_)

that the _tūmān_ consisted of nine torrents,—their lands implied; just

as he says "Asfara is four _būlūks_" (sub-divisions f. 3_b_)—(_b_) that

_tūqūz rūd_ translates _nīng-nahār_.

Of his third,—that in English its sense varies as it is read with or

without the definite article Turkī rarely writes, but that either sense

helps out his first and second, to mean that verbally and by its

constituent units Nīng-nahār is nine-torrents; as verbally and by its

constituents Panj-āb is five-waters.

_e. Last words._

Detailed work on the Kābul section of the _Bābur-nāma_ has stamped two

impressions so deeply on me, that they claim mention, not as novel or as

special to myself, but as set by the work.

The first is of extreme risk in swift decision on any problem of words

arising in North Afghānistān, because of its local concourse of tongues,

the varied utterance of its unlettered tribes resident or nomad, and the

frequent translation of proper names in obedience to their verbal

meanings. Names lie there too in _strata_, relics of successive

occupation—Greek, Turkī, Hindī, Pushtū and tribes _galore_.

The second is that the region is an exceptionally fruitful field for

first-hand observation of speech, the movent ocean of the uttered word,

free of the desiccated symbolism of alphabets and books.

The following books, amongst others, have prompted the above note:—

Ghoswāra Inscription, Kittoe, JASB., 1848, and Kielhorn,

_Indian Antiquary_, 1888, p. 311.

H. Sastrī's _Rāmacārita_, Introduction, p. 7 (ASB. Memoirs).

Cunningham's _Ancient India_, vol. i.

Beal's _Buddhist Records_, i, xxxiv, and cii, 91.

Leech's Vocabularies, JASB., 1838.

The writings of Masson (_Travels_ and _Ariana Antiqua_), Wood,

Vigne, etc.

Raverty's _T̤abaqāt-i-nāsirī_.

Jarrett's _Āyīn-i-akbarī_.

P.R.G.S. for maps, 1879; Macnair on the Kafirs, 1884; Tanner's

_On the Chugānī and neighbouring tribes of Kāfiristān_, 1881.

Simpson's _Nagarahāra_, JASB., xiii.

Biddulph's _Dialects of the Hindū-kush_, JRAS.

Gazette of India, 1907, art. Jalalābād.

Bellew's _Races of Afghānistān_.

F.—ON THE NAME DARA-I-NŪR

Some European writers have understood the name Dara-i-nūr to mean Valley

of Light, but natural features and also the artificial one mentioned by

Colonel H. G. Tanner (_infra_), make it better to read the component

_nūr_, not as Persian _nūr_, light, but as Pushtū _nūr_, rock. Hence it

translates as Valley of Rocks, or Rock-valley. The region in which the

valley lies is rocky and boulder-strewn; its own waters flow to the

Kābul-river east of the water of Chitrāl. It shews other names composed

with _nūr_, in which _nūr_ suits if it means rock, but is inexplicable

if it means light, _e.g._ Nūr-lām (Nūr-fort), the master-fort in the

mouth of Nūr-valley, standing high on a rock between two streams, as

Bābur and Tanner have both described it from eye-witness,—Nūr-gal

(village), a little to the north-west of the valley,—Aūlūgh-nūr (great

rock), at a crossing mentioned by Bābur, higher up the Bārān-water,—and

Koh-i-nūr (Rocky-mountains), which there is ground for taking as the

correct form of the familiar "Kunar" of some European writers (Raverty's

_Notes_, p. 106). The dominant feature in these places dictates reading

_nūr_ as rock; so too the work done in Nūr-valley with boulders, of

which Colonel H. G. Tanner's interesting account is subjoined (P.R.G.S.

1881, p. 284).

"Some 10 miles from the source of the main stream of the Nur-valley the

Dameneh stream enters, but the waters of the two never meet; they flow

side by side about three-quarters of a mile apart for about 12 miles and

empty themselves into the Kunar river by different mouths, each torrent

hugging closely the foot of the hills at its own side of the valley.

Now, except in countries where terracing has been practised continuously

for thousands of years, such unnatural topography as exists in the

valley of Nur is next to impossible. The forces which were sufficient to

scoop out the valley in the first instance, would have kept a water-way

at the lowest part, into which would have poured the drainage of the

surrounding mountains; but in the Nur-valley long-continued terracing

has gradually raised the centre of the valley high above the edges. The

population has increased to its maximum limit and every available inch

of ground is required for cultivation; the people, by means of

terrace-walls built of ponderous boulders in the bed of the original

single stream, have little by little pushed the waters out of their true

course, until they run, where now found, in deep rocky cuttings at the

foot of the hills on either side" (p. 280).

"I should like to go on and say a good deal more about boulders; and

while I am about it I may as well mention one that lies back from a

hamlet in Shulut, which is so big that a house is built in a fault or

crack running across its face. Another pebble lies athwart the village

and covers the whole of the houses from that side."

G.—ON THE NAMES OF TWO DARA-I-NŪR WINES.

From the two names, Arat-tāshī and Sūhān (Suhār) -tāshī, which Bābur

gives as those of two wines of the Dara-i-nūr, it can be inferred that

he read _nūr_ to mean rock. For if in them Turkī _tāsh_, rock, be

replaced by Pushtū _nūr_, rock, two place-names emerge, Arat (-nūrī) and

Sūhān (-nūrī), known in the Nūr-valley.

These may be villages where the wines were grown, but it would be quite

exceptional for Bābur to say that wines are called from their villages,

or indeed by any name. He says here not where they grow but what they

are called.

I surmise that he is repeating a joke, perhaps his own, perhaps a

standing local one, made on the quality of the wines. For whether with

_tāsh_ or with _nūr_ (rock), the names can be translated as Rock-saw and

Rock-file, and may refer to the rough and acid quality of the wines,

rasping and setting the teeth on edge as does iron on stone.

The villages themselves may owe their names to a serrated edge or

splintered pinnacle of weathered granite, in which local people, known

as good craftsmen, have seen resemblance to tools of their trade.

H.—ON THE COUNTERMARK BIH BŪD ON COINS.

As coins of Sl. Ḥusain Mīrzā _Bāī-qarā_ and other rulers do actually

bear the words _Bih būd_, Bābur's statement that the name of Bihbūd Beg

was on the Mīrzā's coins acquires a numismatic interest which may make

serviceable the following particulars concerning the passage and the

beg.[2782]

_a. The Turkī passage_ (Elph. MS. f. 135_b_; Ḥaidarābād Codex

f. 173_b_; Ilminsky p. 217).

For ease of reference the Turkī, Persian and English version are

subjoined:—

(1) _Yana Bihbūd Beg aīdī. Būrūnlār chuhra-jīrga-sī-dā khidmat qīlūr

aīdī. Mīrzā-nīng qāzāqlīqlārīdā khidmatī bāqīb Bihbūd Beg-kā bū

`ināyatnī qīlīb aīdī kīm tamghā u sikka-dā ānīng ātī aīdī._

(2) The Persian translation of `Abdu'r-raḥīm (Muḥ. Shīrāzī's lith. ed.

p. 110):—

_Dīgar Bihbūd Beg būd. Auwalhā dar jīrga-i-chuhrahā khidmat mikard. Chūn

dar qāzāqīhā Mīrzārā khidmat karda būd u ānrā mulāḥaẓa namūda, aīnrā

`ināyat karda būd kah dar tamghānāt sikka_[2783] _nām-i-au būd._

(3) A literal English translation of the Turkī:—

Another was Bihbūd Beg. He served formerly in the _chuhra-jīrga-sī_

(corps of braves). Looking to his service in the Mīrzā's guerilla-times,

the favour had been done to Bihbūd Beg that his name was on the stamp

and coin.[2784]

_b. Of Bihbūd Beg._

We have found little so far to add to what Bābur tells of Bihbūd Beg and

what he tells we have not found elsewhere. The likely sources of his

information are Daulat Shāh and Khwānd-amīr who have written at length

of Ḥusain _Bāī-qarā_. Considerable search in the books of both men has

failed to discover mention of signal service or public honour connected

with the beg. Bābur may have heard what he tells in Harāt in 912 AH.

(1506 AD.) when he would see Ḥusain's coins presumably; but later

opportunity to see them must have been frequent during his campaigns and

visits north of Hindū-kush, notably in Balkh.

The sole mention we have found of Bihbūd Beg in the _Ḥabību's-siyar_ is

that he was one of Ḥusain's commanders at the battle of Chīkmān-sarāī

which was fought with Sl. Maḥmūd Mīrzā _Mīrānshāhī_ in Muḥarram 876 AH.

(June-July 1471 AD.).[2785] His place in the list shews him to have had

importance. "Amīr Niẕāmu'd-dīn `Alī-sher's brother Darwesh-i-`alī the

librarian (_q.v._ Ḥai. Codex Index), and Amīr Bihbūd, and Muḥ. `Alī

_ātāka_, and Bakhshīka and Shāh Walī _Qīpchāq_, and Dost-i-muḥammad

_chuhra_, and Amīr Qul-i-`alī, and" (another).

The total of our information about the man is therefore:—

(1) That when Ḥusain[2786] from 861 to 873 AH. (1457 to 1469 AD.) was

fighting his way up to the throne of Harāt, Bihbūd served him well in

the corps of braves, (as many others will have done).

(2) That he was a beg and one of Ḥusain's commanders in 876 AH. (1471

AD.).

(3) That Bābur includes him amongst Ḥusain's begs and says of him what

has been quoted, doing this _circa_ 934 AH. (1528 AD.), some 56 years

after Khwānd-amīr's mention of him _s.a._ 876 AH. (1471 AD.).

_c. Of the term chuhra-jīrga-sī used by Bābur._

Of this term Bābur supplies an explicit explanation which I have not

found in European writings. His own book amply exemplifies his

explanation, as do also Khwānd-amīr's and Ḥaidar's.

He gives the explanation (f. 15_b_) when describing a retainer of his

father's who afterwards became one of his own begs. It is as follows:—

"`Alī-darwesh of Khurāsān served in the Khurāsān _chuhra-jīrga-sī_, one

of two special corps (_khāṣa tābīn_) of serviceable braves (_yārār

yīgītlār_) formed by Sl. Abū-sa`īd Mīrzā when he first began to arrange

the government of Khurāsān and Samarkand and, presumably, called by him

the Khurāsān corps and the Samarkand corps."

This shews the circle to have consisted of fighting-men, such

serviceable braves as are frequently mentioned by Bābur; and his words

"_yārār yīgīt_" make it safe to say that if instead of using a Persian

phrase, he had used a Turkī one, _yīgīt_, brave would have replaced

_chuhra_, "young soldier" (Erskine). A considerable number of men on

active service are styled _chuhra_, one at least is styled _yīgīt_, in

the same way as others are styled _beg_.[2787]

Three military circles are mentioned in the _Bābur-nāma_, consisting

respectively of braves, household begs (under Bābur's own command), and

great begs. Some men are mentioned who never rose from the rank of brave

(_yīgīt_), some who became household-begs, some who went through the

three grades.

Of the corps of braves Bābur conveys the information that Abū-sa`īd

founded it at a date which will have lain between 1451 and 1457 AD.;

that `Umar Shaikh's man `Alī-darwesh belonged to it; and that Ḥusain's

man Bihbūd did so also. Both men, `Ali-darwesh and Bihbūd, when in its

circle, would appropriately be styled _chuhra_ as men of the beg-circle

were styled beg; the Dost-i-muḥammad _chuhra_ who was a commander, (he

will have had a brave's command,) at Chīkmān-sarāī (_see_ list _supra_)

will also have been of this circle. Instances of the use by Bābur of the

name _khaṣa-tābīn_ and its equivalent _būītīkīnī_ are shewn on f. 209

and f. 210_b_. A considerable number of Bābur's fighting men, the braves

he so frequently mentions as sent on service, are styled _chuhra_ and

inferentially belong to the same circle.[2788]

_d. Of Bih būd on Ḥusain Bāī-qarā's coins._

So far it does not seem safe to accept Bābur's statement literally. He

may tell a half-truth and obscure the rest by his brevity.

Nothing in the sources shows ground for signal and public honour to

Bihbūd Beg, but a good deal would allow surmise that jesting allusion to

his name might decide for _Bih būd_ as a coin mark when choice had to be

made of one, in the flush of success, in an assembly of the begs, and,

amongst those begs, lovers of word-play and enigma.

The personal name is found written Bihbūd, as one word and with medial

_h_; the mark is _Bih būd_ with the terminal _h_ in the _Bih_. There

have been discussions moreover as to whether to read on the coins _Bih

būd_, it was good, or _Bih buvad_, let it be, or become, good (valid for

currency?).

The question presents itself; would the beg's name have appeared on the

coins, if it had not coincided in form with a suitable coin-mark?

Against literal acceptance of Bābur's statement there is also doubt of a

thing at once so _ben trovato_ and so unsupported by evidence.

Another doubt arises from finding _Bih būd_ on coins of other rulers,

one of Iskandar Khan's being of a later date,[2789] others, of Tīmūr,

Shāhrukh and Abū-sa`īd, with nothing to shew who counterstruck it on

them.

On some of Ḥusain's coins the sentence _Bih būd_ appears as part of the

legend and not as a counterstrike. This is a good basis for finding a

half-truth in Bābur's statement. It does not allow of a whole-truth in

his statement because, as it is written, it is a coin-mark, not a name.

An interesting matter as bearing on Ḥusain's use of _Bih būd_ is that in

865 AH. (1461 AD.) he had an incomparable horse named Bihbūd, one he

gave in return for a falcon on making peace with Mustapha Khān.[2790]

_e. Of Bābur's vassal-coinage._

The following historical details narrow the field of numismatic

observation on coins believed struck by Bābur as a vassal of Ismā`īl

_Ṣafawī_. They are offered because not readily accessible.

The length of Bābur's second term of rule in Transoxiana was not the

three solar years of the B.M. Coin Catalogues but did not exceed eight

months. He entered Samarkand in the middle of Rajab 917 AH. (_c._ Oct.

1st, 1511 AD.). He returned to it defeated and fled at once, after the

battle of Kūl-i-malik which was fought in Ṣafar 918 AH. (mid-April to

mid-May 1512 AD.). Previous to the entry he was in the field, without a

fixed base; after his flight he was landless till at the end both of 920

AH. and of 1514 AD. he had returned to Kābul.

He would not find a full Treasury in Samarkand because the Aūzbegs

evacuated the fort at their own time; eight months would not give him

large tribute in kind. He failed in Transoxiana because he was the ally

of a Shī`a; would coins bearing the Shī`a legend have passed current

from a Samarkand mint? These various circumstances suggest that he could

not have struck many coins of any kind in Samarkand.

The coins classed in the B.M. Catalogues as of Bābur's vassalage, offer

a point of difficulty to readers of his own writings, inasmuch as

neither the "Sulṯān Muḥammad" of No. 652 (gold), nor the "Sulṯān Bābur

Bahādur" of the silver coins enables confident acceptance of them as

names he himself would use.

I.—ON THE WEEPING-WILLOWS OF f. 190_b_.

The passage omitted from f. 190_b_, which seems to describe something

decorative done with weeping willows, (_bed-i-mawallah_) has been

difficult to all translators. This may be due to inaccurate pointing in

Bābur's original MS. or may be what a traveller seeing other willows at

another feast could explain.

The first Persian translation omits the passage (I.O. 215 f. 154_b_);

the second varies from the Turkī, notably by changing _sāch_ and _sāj_

to _shākh_ throughout (I.O. 217 f. 150_b_). The English and French

translations differ much (_Memoirs_ p. 206, _Mémoires_ i, 414), the

latter taking the _mawallah_ to be _mūla_, a hut, against which much is

clear in the various MSS.

Three Turkī sources[2791] agree in reading as follows:—

_Mawallahlār-nī_ (or _muwallah_ Ḥai. MS.) _kīltūrdīlār. Bīlmān

sāchlārī-nīng yā `amlī sāchlārī-nīng ārālārīgha k:msān-nī_ (Ilminsky,

_kamān_) _shākh-nīng_ (Ḥai. MS. _șākh_) _aūzūnlūghī bīla aīnjīga aīnjīga

kīsīb, qūīūb tūrlār._

The English and French translations differ from the Turkī and from one

another:—

(_Memoirs_, p. 206) They brought in branching willow-trees. I do not

know if they were in the natural state of the tree, or if the branches

were formed artificially, but they had small twigs cut the length of the

ears of a bow and inserted between them.

(_Mémoires_ i, 434) On façonna des huttes (_mouleh_). Ils les

établissent en taillant des baguettes minces, de la longeur du bout

recourbé de l'arc, qu'on place entre des branches naturelles ou

façonnées artificiellement, je l'ignore.

The construction of the sentence appears to be thus:—_Mawal-lahlār-nī

kīltūrdīlār_, they brought weeping-willows; _k:msān-nī_ _qūīūbtūrlār_,

they had put _k:msān-nī_; _aīnjīga aīnjīga kīsīb_, cut very fine (or

slender); _shākh_ (or _șākh_)_-nīng aūzūnlūghī_, of the length of a

_shākh_, bow, or _șākh_ ...; _bīlmān sāchlārī-nīng yā `amlī

sāchlārī-nīng ārālārīgha_, to (or at) the spaces of the _sāchlār_

whether their (_i.e._ the willows') own or artificial _sāchlār_.

These translations clearly indicate felt difficulty. Mr. Erskine does

not seem to have understood that the trees were _Salix babylonica_. The

crux of the passage is the word _k:msān-nī_, which tells what was placed

in the spaces. It has been read as _kamān_, bow, by all but the scribes

of the two good Turkī MSS. and as in a phrase _horn of a bow_. This

however is not allowed by the Turkī, for the reason that _k:msān-nī_ is

not in the genitive but in the accusative case. (I may say that Bābur

does not use _nī_ for _nīng_; he keeps strictly to the prime uses of

each enclitic, _nī_ accusative, _nīng_ genitive.) Moreover, if

_k:msān-nī_ be taken as a genitive, the verbs _qūīūb-tūrlār_ and _kīsīb_

have no object, no other accusative appearing in the sentence than

_k:msān-nī_.

A weighty reason against changing _sāch_ into _shākh_ is that Dr.

Ilminsky has not done so. He must have attached meaning to _sāch_ since

he uses it throughout the passage. He was nearer the region wherein the

original willows were seen at a feast. Unfortunately nothing shows how

he interpreted the word.

_Sāchmāq_ is a tassel; is it also a catkin and were there decorations,

_kimsān-nī_ (things _kimsa_, or flowers Ar. _kim_, or something shining,

_kimcha_, gold brocade) hung in between the catkins?

Ilminsky writes _mu'lah_ (with _ḥamza_) and this de Courteille

translates by hut. The Ḥai. MS. writes _muwallah_ (marking the _ẓamma_).

In favour of reading _mawallah_ (_mulah_) as a tree and that tree _Salix

babylonica_ the weeping-willow, there are annotations in the Second

Persian translation and, perhaps following it, in the Elphinstone MS. of

_nām-i-dirakht_, name of a tree, _dīdān-i-bed_, sight of the willow,

_bed-i-mawallah_, mournful-willow. Standing alone _mawallah_ means

weeping-willow, in this use answering to _majnūn_ the name Panj-ābīs

give the tree, from Leila's lover the distracted _i.e._ Majnūn

(Brandis).

The whole question may be solved by a chance remark from a traveller

witnessing similar festive decoration at another feast in that

conservative region.

J.—ON BĀBUR'S EXCAVATED CHAMBER AT QANDAHĀR (f. 208_b_).

Since making my note (f. 208_b_) on the wording of the passage in which

Bābur mentions excavation done by him at Qandahār, I have learned that

he must be speaking of the vaulted chamber containing the celebrated

inscriptions about which much has been written.[2792]

The primary inscription, the one commemorating Bābur's final possession

of Qandahār, gives the chamber the character of a Temple of Victory and

speaks of it as _Rawāq-i-jahān namāī_, World-shewing-portal,[2793]

doubtless because of its conspicuous position and its extensive view,

probably also in allusion to its declaration of victory. Mīr Ma`ṣūm

writes of it as a Pesh-ṯāq, frontal arch, which, coupled with Mohan

Lall's word arch (_ṯāq_) suggests that the chamber was entered through

an arch pierced in a parallelogram smoothed on the rock and having

resemblance to the _pesh-tāq_ of buildings, a suggestion seeming the

more probable that some inscriptions are on the "wings" of the arch. But

by neither of the above-mentioned names do Mohan Lall and later

travellers call the chamber or write of the place; all describe it by

its approach of forty steps, Chihil-zīna.[3]

The excavation has been chipped out of the white-veined limestone of the

bare ridge on and below which stood Old Qandahār.[2794] It does not

appear from the descriptions to have been on the summit of the ridge;

Bellew says that the forty steps start half-way up the height. I have

found no estimate of the height of the ridge, or statement that the

steps end at the chamber. The ridge however seems to have been of

noticeably dominating height. It rises steeply to the north and there

ends in the naze of which Bābur writes. The foot of the steps is guarded

by two towers. Mohan Lall, unaccustomed to mountains, found their ascent

steep and dizzy. The excavated chamber of the inscriptions, which Bellew

describes as "bow-shaped and dome-roofed", he estimated as 12 feet at

the highest point, 12 feet deep and 8 feet wide. Two sculptured beasts

guard the entrance; Bellew calls them leopards but tigers would better

symbolize the watch and ward of the Tiger Bābur. In truth the whole

work, weary steps of approach, tiger guardians, commemorative chamber,

laboriously incised words, are admirably symbolic of his long-sustained

resolve and action, taken always with Hindūstān as the goal.

There are several inscriptions of varying date, within and without the

chamber. Mohan Lall saw and copied them; Darmesteter worked on a copy;

the two English observers Lumsden and Bellew made no attempt at correct

interpretation. In the versions all give there are inaccuracies, arising

from obvious causes, especially from want of historical _data_. The last

word has not been said; revision awaits photography and the leisured

expert. A part of the needed revision has been done by Beames, who deals

with the geography of what Mīr Ma`ṣūm himself added under Akbar after he

had gone as Governor to Qandahār in 1007 AH. (1598 AD.). This

commemorates not Bābur's but Akbar's century of cities.

It is the primary inscription only which concerns this Appendix. This is

one in relief in the dome of the chamber, recording in florid Persian

that Abū'l-ghāzī Bābur took possession of Qandahār on Shawwāl 13th 928

AH. (Sep. 1st 1522 AD.), that in the same year he commanded the

construction of this _Rawāq-i-jahān-namāī_, and that the work had been

completed by his son Kāmrān at the time he made over charge of Qandahār

to his brother `Askarī in 9 ... (mutilated). After this the gravure

changes in character.

In the above, Bābur's title Abū'l-ghāzī fixes the date of the

inscription as later than the battle of Kanwāha (f. 324_b_), because it

was assumed in consequence of this victory over a Hindū, in March 1527

(Jumāda II 933 AH.).

The mutilated date 9 ... is given by Mohan Lall as 952 AH. but this does

not suit several circumstances, _e.g._ it puts completion too far beyond

the time mentioned as consumed by the work, nine years,—and it was not

that at which Kāmrān made over charge to `Askarī, but followed the

expulsion of both full-brothers from Qandahār by their half-brother

Humāyūn.

The mutilated date 9 ... is given by Darmesteter as 933 AH. but this

again does not fit the historical circumstance that Kāmrān was in

Qandahār after that date and till 937 AH. This date (937 AH.) we suggest

as fitting to replace the lost figures, (1) because in that year and

after his father's death, Kāmrān gave the town to `Askarī and went

himself to Hindūstān, and (2) because work begun in 928 AH. and recorded

as occupying 70-80 men for nine years would be complete in 937 AH.[2795]

The inscription would be one of the last items of the work.

The following matters are added here because indirectly connected with

what has been said and because not readily accessible.

_a. Birth of Kāmrān._

Kāmrān's birth falling in a year of one of the _Bābur-nāma_ gaps, is

nowhere mentioned. It can be closely inferred as 914 or 915 AH. from the

circumstances that he was younger than Humāyūn born late in 913 AH.,

that it is not mentioned in the fragment of the annals of 914 AH., and

that he was one of the children enumerated by Gul-badan as going with

her father to Samarkand in 916 AH. (Probably the children did not start

with their father in the depth of winter across the mountains.) Possibly

the joyful name Kāmrān is linked to the happy issue of the Mughūl

rebellion of 914 AH. Kāmrān would thus be about 18 when left in charge

of Kābul and Qandahār by Bābur in 932 AH. before the start for the fifth

expedition to Hindūstān.

A letter from Bābur to Kāmrān in Qandahār is with Kehr's Latin version

of the _Bābur-nāma_, in Latin and entered on the lining of the cover. It

is shewn by its main topic _viz._ the despatch of Ibrāhīm _Lūdī_'s son

to Kāmrān's charge, to date somewhere close to Jan. 3rd 1527

(Rabī`u'l-awwal 29th 933 AH.) because on that day Bābur writes of the

despatch (Ḥai. Codex f. 306_b_ foot).

Presumably the letter was with Kāmrān's own copy of the _Bābur-nāma_.

That copy may have reached Humāyūn's hands (JRAS 1908 p. 828 _et

seq._). The next known indication of the letter is given in St.

Petersburg by Dr. Kehr. He will have seen it or a copy of it with the

B.N. Codex he copied (one of unequaled correctness), and he, no doubt,

copied it in its place on the fly-leaf or board of his own transcript,

but if so, it has disappeared.

Fuller particulars of it and of other items accompanying it are given in

JRAS 1908 p. 828 _et seq._

K.—AN AFGHĀN LEGEND.

My husband's article in the Asiatic Quarterly Review of April 1901

begins with an account of the two MSS. from which it is drawn, _viz._

I.O. 581 in Pushtū, I.O. 582 in Persian. Both are mainly occupied with

an account of the Yūsuf-zāī. The second opens by telling of the power of

the tribe in Afghānistān and of the kindness of Malik Shāh Sulaimān, one

of their chiefs, to Aūlūgh Beg Mīrzā _Kābulī_, (Bābur's paternal uncle,)

when he was young and in trouble, presumably as a boy ruler.

It relates that one day a wise man of the tribe, Shaikh `Us̤mān saw

Sulaimān sitting with the young Mīrzā on his knee and warned him that

the boy had the eyes of Yazīd and would destroy him and his family as

Yazīd had destroyed that of the Prophet. Sulaimān paid him no attention

and gave the Mīrzā his daughter in marriage. Subsequently the Mīrzā

having invited the Yūsuf-zāī to Kābul, treacherously killed Sulaimān and

700 of his followers. They were killed at the place called Siyāh-sang

near Kābul; it is still known, writes the chronicler in about 1770 AD.

(1184 AH.), as the Grave of the Martyrs. Their tombs are revered and

that of Shaikh `Us̤mān in particular.

Shāh Sulaimān was the eldest of the seven sons of Malik Tāju'd-dīn; the

second was Sulṯān Shāh, the father of Malik Aḥmad. Before Sulaimān was

killed he made three requests of Aūlūgh Beg; one of them was that his

nephew Aḥmad's life might be spared. This was granted.

Aūlūgh Beg died (after ruling from 865 to 907 AH.), and Bābur defeated

his son-in-law and successor M. Muqīm (_Arghūn_, 910 AH.). Meantime the

Yūsuf-zāī had migrated to Pashāwar but later on took Sawād from Sl. Wais

(Ḥai. Codex ff. 219, 220_b_, 221).

When Bābur came to rule in Kābul, he at first professed friendship for

the Yūsuf-zāī but became prejudiced against them through their enemies

the Dilazāk[2796] who gave force to their charges by a promised subsidy

of 70,000 _shāhrukhī_. Bābur therefore determined, says the Yūsuf-zāī

chronicler, to kill Malik[2797] Aḥmad and so wrote him a friendly

invitation to Kābul. Aḥmad agreed to go, and set out with four brothers

who were famous musicians. Meanwhile the Dilazāk had persuaded Bābur to

put Aḥmad to death at once, for they said Aḥmad was so clever and

eloquent that if allowed to speak, he would induce the Pādshāh to pardon

him.

On Aḥmad's arrival in Kābul, he is said to have learned that Bābur's

real object was his death. His companions wanted to tie their turbans

together and let him down over the wall of the fort, but he rejected

their proposal as too dangerous for him and them, and resolved to await

his fate. He told his companions however, except one of the musicians,

to go into hiding in the town.

Next morning there was a great assembly and Bābur sat on the

daïs-throne. Aḥmad made his reverence on entering but Bābur's only

acknowledgment was to make bow and arrow ready to shoot him. When Aḥmad

saw that Bābur's intention was to shoot him down without allowing him to

speak, he unbuttoned his jerkin and stood still before the Pādshāh.

Bābur, astonished, relaxed the tension of his bow and asked Aḥmad what

he meant. Aḥmad's only reply was to tell the Pādshāh not to question him

but to do what he intended. Bābur again asked his meaning and again got

the same reply.

Bābur put the same question a third time, adding that he could not

dispose of the matter without knowing more. Then Aḥmad opened the mouth

of praise, expatiated on Bābur's excellencies and said that in this

great assemblage many of his subjects were looking on to see the

shooting; that his jerkin being very thick, the arrow might not pierce

it; the shot might fail and the spectators blame the Pādshāh for missing

his mark; for these reasons he had thought it best to bare his breast.

Bābur was so pleased by this reply that he resolved to pardon Aḥmad at

once, and laid down his bow.

Said he to Aḥmad, "What sort of man is Buhlūl _Lūdī_?" "A giver of

horses," said Aḥmad.

"And of what sort his son Sikandar?" "A giver of robes."

"And of what sort is Bābur?" "He," said Aḥmad, "is a giver of heads."

"Then," rejoined Bābur, "I give you yours."

The Pādshāh now became quite friendly with Aḥmad, came down from his

throne, took him by the hand and led him into another room where they

drank together. Three times did Bābur have his cup filled, and after

drinking a portion, give the rest to Aḥmad. At length the wine mounted

to Bābur's head; he grew merry and began to dance. Meantime Aḥmad's

musician played and Aḥmad who knew Persian well, poured out an eloquent

harangue. When Bābur had danced for some time, he held out his hands to

Aḥmad for a reward (_bakhshīsh_), saying, "I am your performer." Three

times did he open his hands, and thrice did Aḥmad, with a profound

reverence, drop a gold coin into them. Bābur took the coins, each time

placing his hand on his head. He then took off his robe and gave it to

Aḥmad; Aḥmad took off his own coat, gave it to Adu the musician, and put

on what the Pādshāh had given.

Aḥmad returned safe to his tribe. He declined a second invitation to

Kābul, and sent in his stead his brother Shāh Manṣūr. Manṣūr received

speedy dismissal as Bābur was displeased at Aḥmad's not coming. On his

return to his tribe Manṣūr advised them to retire to the mountains and

make a strong _sangur_. This they did; as foretold, Bābur came into

their country with a large army. He devastated their lands but could

make no impression on their fort. In order the better to judge of its

character, he, as was his wont, disguised himself as a Qalandar, and

went with friends one dark night to the Mahūra hill where the stronghold

was, a day's journey from the Pādshāh's camp at Dīārūn.

It was the `Īd-i-qurbān and there was a great assembly and feasting at

Shāh Manṣūr's house, at the back of the Mahūra-mountain, still known as

Shāh Manṣūr's throne. Bābur went in his disguise to the back of the

house and stood among the crowd in the courtyard. He asked servants as

they went to and fro about Shāh Manṣūr's family and whether he had a

daughter. They gave him straightforward answers.

At the time Musammat Bībī Mubāraka, Shāh Manṣur's daughter was sitting

with other women in a tent. Her eye fell on the qalandars and she sent a

servant to Bābur with some cooked meat folded between two loaves. Bābur

asked who had sent it; the servant said it was Shāh Manṣūr's daughter

Bībī Mubāraka. "Where is she?" "That is she, sitting in front of you in

the tent." Bābur Pādshāh became entranced with her beauty and asked the

woman-servant, what was her disposition and her age and whether she was

betrothed. The servant replied by extolling her mistress, saying that

her virtue equalled her beauty, that she was pious and brimful of

rectitude and placidity; also that she was not betrothed. Bābur then

left with his friends, and behind the house hid between two stones the

food that had been sent to him.

He returned to camp in perplexity as to what to do; he saw he could not

take the fort; he was ashamed to return to Kābul with nothing effected;

moreover he was in the fetters of love. He therefore wrote in friendly

fashion to Malik Aḥmad and asked for the daughter of Shāh Manṣūr, son of

Shāh Sulaimān. Great objection was made and earlier misfortunes accruing

to Yūsuf-zāī chiefs who had given daughters to Aūlūgh Beg and Sl. Wais

(Khān Mīrzā?) were quoted. They even said they had no daughter to give.

Bābur replied with a "beautiful" royal letter, told of his visit

disguised to Shāh Manṣūr's house, of his seeing Bībī Mubāraka and as

token of the truth of his story, asked them to search for the food he

had hidden. They searched and found. Aḥmad and Manṣūr were still

averse, but the tribesmen urged that as before they had always made

sacrifice for the tribe so should they do now, for by giving the

daughter in marriage, they would save the tribe from Bābur's anger. The

Maliks then said that it should be done "for the good of the tribe".

When their consent was made known to Bābur, the drums of joy were beaten

and preparations were made for the marriage; presents were sent to the

bride, a sword of his also, and the two Maliks started out to escort

her. They are said to have come from Thana by M`amūra (?), crossed the

river at Chakdara, taken a narrow road between two hills and past

Talāsh-village to the back of Tīrī (?) where the Pādshāh's escort met

them. The Maliks returned, spent one night at Chakdara and next morning

reached their homes at the Mahūra _sangur_.

Meanwhile Runa the nurse who had control of Malik Manṣūr's household,

with two other nurses and many male and female servants, went on with

Bībī Mubāraka to the royal camp. The bride was set down with all honour

at a large tent in the middle of the camp.

That night and on the following day the wives of the officers came to

visit her but she paid them no attention. So, they said to one another

as they were returning to their tents, "Her beauty is beyond question,

but she has shewn us no kindness, and has not spoken to us; we do not

know what mystery there is about her."

Now Bībī Mubāraka had charged her servants to let her know when the

Pādshāh was approaching in order that she might receive him according to

Malik Aḥmad's instructions. They said to her, "That was the pomp just

now of the Pādshāh's going to prayers at the general mosque." That same

day after the Mid-day Prayer, the Pādshāh went towards her tent. Her

servants informed her, she immediately left her divan and advancing,

lighted up the carpet by her presence, and stood respectfully with

folded hands. When the Pādshāh entered, she bowed herself before him.

But her face remained entirely covered. At length the Pādshāh seated

himself on the divan and said to her, "Come Afghāniya, be seated." Again

she bowed before him, and stood as before. A second time he said,

"Afghāniya, be seated." Again she prostrated herself before him and came

a little nearer, but still stood. Then the Pādshāh pulled the veil from

her face and beheld incomparable beauty. He was entranced, he said

again, "O, Afghāniya, sit down." Then she bowed herself again, and said,

"I have a petition to make. If an order be given, I will make it." The

Pādshāh said kindly, "Speak." Whereupon she with both hands took up her

dress and said, "Think that the whole Yūsuf-zāī tribe is enfolded in my

skirt, and pardon their offences for my sake." Said the Pādshāh, "I

forgive the Yūsuf-zāī all their offences in thy presence, and cast them

all into thy skirt. Hereafter I shall have no ill-feeling to the

Yūsuf-zāī." Again she bowed before him; the Pādshāh took her hand and

led her to the divan.

When the Afternoon Prayer time came and the Pādshāh rose from the divan

to go to prayers, Bībī Mubāraka jumped up and fetched him his

shoes.[2798] He put them on and said very pleasantly, "I am extremely

pleased with you and your tribe and I have pardoned them all for your

sake." Then he said with a smile, "We know it was Malik Aḥmad taught you

all these ways." He then went to prayers and the Bībī remained to say

hers in the tent.

After some days the camp moved from Dīārūn and proceeded by Bajaur and

Tankī to Kābul.[2799]...

Bībī Mubāraka, the Blessed Lady, is often mentioned by Gul-badan; she

had no children; and lived an honoured life, as her chronicler says,

until the beginning of Akbar's reign, when she died. Her brother Mīr

Jamāl rose to honour under Bābur, Humāyūn and Akbar.

L.—ON MĀHĪM'S ADOPTION OF HIND-ĀL.

The passage quoted below about Māhīm's adoption of the unborn Hind-āl we

have found so far only in Kehr's transcript of the _Bābur-nāma_ (_i.e._

the St. Petersburg Foreign Office Codex). Ilminsky reproduced it (Kāsān

imprint p. 281) and de Courteille translated it (ii, 45), both with

endeavour at emendation. It is interpolated in Kehr's MS. at the wrong

place, thus indicating that it was once marginal or apart from the text.

I incline to suppose the whole a note made by Humāyūn, although part of

it might be an explanation made by Bābur, at a later date, of an

over-brief passage in his diary. Of such passages there are several

instances. What is strongly against its being Bābur's where otherwise it

might be his, is that Māhīm, as he always calls her simply, is there

written of as Ḥaẓrat Wālida, Royal Mother and with the honorific plural.

That plural Bābur uses for his own mother (dead 14 years before 925 AH.)

and never for Māhīm. The note is as follows:—

"The explanation is this:—As up to that time those of one birth

(_tūqqān_, womb) with him (Humāyūn), that is to say a son Bār-būl, who

was younger than he but older than the rest, and three daughters,

Mihr-jān and two others, died in childhood, he had a great wish for one

of the same birth with him.[2800] I had said 'What it would have been if

there had been one of the same birth with him!' (Humāyūn). Said the

Royal Mother, 'If Dil-dār Āghācha bear a son, how is it if I take him

and rear him?' 'It is very good' said I."

So far doubtfully _might_ be Bābur's but it may be Humāyūn's written as

a note for Bābur. What follows appears to be by some-one who knew the

details of Māhīm's household talk and was in Kābul when Dil-dār's child

was taken from her.

"Seemingly women have the custom of taking omens in the following

way:—When they have said, 'Is it to be a boy? is it to be a girl?' they

write `Alī or Ḥasan on one of two pieces of paper and Fāṯima on the

other, put each paper into a ball of clay and throw both into a bowl of

water. Whichever opens first is taken as an omen; if the man's, they say

a man-child will be born; if the woman's, a girl will be born. They took

the omen; it came out a man."

"On this glad tidings we at once sent letters off.[2801] A few days

later God's mercy bestowed a son. Three days before the news[2802] and

three days after the birth, they[2803] took the child from its mother,

(she) willy-nilly, brought it to our house[2804] and took it in their

charge. When we sent the news of the birth, Bhīra was being taken. They

named him Hind-āl for a good omen and benediction."[2805]

The whole may be Humāyūn's, and prompted by a wish to remove an

obscurity his father had left and by sentiment stirred through

reminiscence of a cherished childhood.

Whether Humāyūn wrote the whole or not, how is it that the passage

appears only in the Russian group of Bāburiana?

An apparent answer to this lies in the following little mosaic of

circumstances:—The St. Petersburg group of Bāburiana[2806] is linked to

Kāmrān's own copy of the _Bābur-nāma_ by having with it a letter of

Bābur to Kāmrān and also what _may be_ a note indicating its passage

into Humāyūn's hands (JRAS 1908 p. 830). If it did so pass, a note by

Humāyūn may have become associated with it, in one of several obvious

ways. This would be at a date earlier than that of the Elphinstone MS.

and would explain why it is found in Russia and not in Indian MSS.[2807]

[APPENDICES TO THE HINDŪSTĀN SECTION.]

M.—ON THE TERM _BAḤRĪ QŪT̤ĀS_.

That the term _baḥrī qūṯās_ is interpreted by Meninski, Erskine, and de

Courteille in senses so widely differing as _equus maritimus_,

mountain-cow, and _bœuf vert de mer_ is due, no doubt, to their writing

when the _qūṯās_, the yāk, was less well known than it now is.

The word _qūṯās_ represents both the yāk itself and its neck-tassel and

tail. Hence Meninski explains it by _nodus fimbriatus ex cauda seu

crinibus equi maritimi_. His "sea-horse" appears to render _baḥrī

qūṯās_, and is explicable by the circumstance that the same purposes are

served by horse-tails and by yāk-tails and tassels, namely, with both,

standards are fashioned, horse-equipage is ornamented or perhaps

furnished with fly-flappers, and the ordinary hand-fly-flappers are

made, _i.e._ the _chowries_ of Anglo-India.

Erskine's "mountain-cow" (_Memoirs_ p. 317) may well be due to his

_munshī's_ giving the yāk an alternative name, _viz._ _Kosh-gau_ (Vigne)

or _Khāsh-gau_ (Ney Elias), which appears to mean mountain-cow (cattle,

oxen).[2808]

De Courteille's _Dictionary_ p. 422, explains _qūtās_ (_qūṯās_) as _bœuf

marin_ (_baḥrī qūṯās_) and his _Mémoires_ ii, 191, renders Bābur's

_baḥrī qūṯās_ by _bœuf vert de mer_ (f. 276, p. 490 and n. 8).

The term _baḥrī qūṯās_ could be interpreted with more confidence if one

knew where the seemingly Arabic-Turkī compound originated.[2809] Bābur

uses it in Hindūstān where the neck-tassel and the tail of the domestic

yāk are articles of commerce, and where, as also probably in Kābul, he

will have known of the same class of yāk as a saddle-animal and as a

beast of burden into Kashmīr and other border-lands of sufficient

altitude to allow its survival. A part of its wide Central Asian habitat

abutting on Kashmīr is Little Tibet, through which flows the upper Indus

and in which tame yāk are largely bred, Skardo being a place specially

mentioned by travellers as having them plentifully. This suggests that

the term _baḥrī qūṯās_ is due to the great river (_baḥr_) and that those

of which Bābur wrote in Hindūstān were from Little Tibet and its great

river. But _baḥrī_ may apply to another region where also the domestic

yāk abounds, that of the great lakes, inland seas such as Pangong,

whence the yāk comes and goes between _e.g._ Yārkand and the Hindūstān

border.

The second suggestion, _viz._ that "_baḥrī qūṯās_" refers to the habitat

of the domestic yāk in lake and marsh lands of high altitude (the wild

yāk also but, as Tibetan, it is less likely to be concerned here) has

support in Dozy's account of the _baḥrī_ falcon, a bird mentioned also

by Abū'l-faẓl amongst sporting birds (_Āyīn-i-akbarī_, Blochmann's trs.

p. 295):—"_Baḥrī, espèce de faucon le meilleur pour les oiseaux de

marais. Ce renseignment explique peut-être l'origine du mot. Marguerite

en donne la même etymologie que Tashmend et le Père Guagix. Selon lui ce

faucon aurait été appelé ainsi parce qu'il vient de l'autre côté de la

mer, mais peut-être dériva-t-il de baḥrī dans le sens de marais, flaque,

étang._"

Dr. E. Denison Ross' _Polyglot List of Birds_ (_Memoirs of the Asiatic

Society of Bengal_ ii, 289) gives to the _Qarā Qīrghāwal_ (Black

pheasant) the synonym "Sea-pheasant", this being the literal translation

of its Chinese name, and quotes from the Manchū-Chinese "Mirror" the

remark that this is a black pheasant but called "sea-pheasant" to

distinguish it from other black ones.

It may be observed that Bābur writes of the yāk once only and then of

the _baḥrī qūṯās_ so that there is no warrant from him for taking the

term to apply to the wild yāk. His cousin and contemporary Ḥaidar

Mīrzā, however, mentions the wild yāk twice and simply as the wild

_qūṯās_.

The following are random gleanings about "_baḥrī_" and the yāk:—

(1) An instance of the use of the Persian equivalent _daryā'ī_ of

_baḥrī_, sea-borne or over-sea, is found in the _Akbar-nāma_ (Bib. Ind.

ed. ii, 216) where the African elephant is described as _fīl-i-daryā'ī_.

(2) In Egypt the word _baḥrī_ has acquired the sense of northern,

presumably referring to what lies or is borne across its northern sea,

the Mediterranean.

(3) Vigne (_Travels in Kashmīr_ ii, 277-8) warns against confounding the

_qūch-qār_ _i.e._ the gigantic _moufflon_, Pallas' _Ovis ammon_, with

the _Kosh-gau_, the cow of the Kaucasus, _i.e._ the yāk. He says,

"Kaucasus (_hodie_ Hindū-kush) was originally from Kosh, and Kosh is

applied occasionally as a prefix, _e.g._ _Kosh-gau_, the yāk or ox of

the mountain or Kaucasus." He wrote from Skardo in Little Tibet and on

the upper Indus. He gives the name of the female yāk as _yāk-mo_ and of

the half-breeds with common cows as _bzch_, which class he says is

common and of "all colours".

(4) Mr. Ney Elias' notes (_Tārīkh-i-rashīdī_ trs. pp. 302 and 466) on

the _qūṯās_ are of great interest. He gives the following synonymous

names for the wild yāk, _Bos Poëphagus_, _Khāsh-gau_, the Tibetan yāk or

Dong.

(5) Hume and Henderson (_Lāhor to Yārkand_ p. 59) write of the numerous

black yāk-hair tents seen round the Pangong Lake, of fine saddle yāks,

and of the tame ones as being some white or brown but mostly black.

(6) Olufsen's _Through the Unknown Pamirs_ (p. 118) speaks of the large

numbers of _Bos grunniens_ (yāk) domesticated by the Kirghiz in the

Pamirs.

(7) Cf. Gazetteer of India _s.n._ yāk.

(8) Shaikh Zain applies the word _baḥrī_ to the porpoise, when

paraphrasing the _Bābur-nāma_ f. 281_b_.

N.—NOTES ON A FEW BIRDS.

In attempting to identify some of the birds of Bābur's lists difficulty

arises from the variety of names provided by the different tongues of

the region concerned, and also in some cases by the application of one

name to differing birds. The following random gleanings enlarge and, in

part, revise some earlier notes and translations of Mr. Erskine's and my

own. They are offered as material for the use of those better acquainted

with bird-lore and with Himālayan dialects.

_a._ _Concerning the lūkha_, _lūja_, _lūcha_, _kūja_ (f.135 and

f.278_b_).

The nearest word I have found to _lūkha_ and its similars is _likkh_, a

florican (Jerdon, ii, 615), but the florican has not the chameleon

colours of the _lūkha_ (var.). As Bābur when writing in Hindūstān, uses

such "book-words" as Ar. _baḥrī_ (_qūṯās_) and Ar. _bū-qalamūn_

(chameleon), it would not be strange if his name for the "_lūkha_" bird

represented Ar. _awja_, very beautiful, or connected with Ar. _loḥ_,

shining splendour.

The form _kūja_ is found in Ilminsky's imprint p.361 (_Mémoires_ ii,

198, _koudjeh_).

What is confusing to translators is that (as it now seems to me) Bābur

appears to use the name _kabg-i-darī_ in both passages (f.135 and

f.278_b_) to represent two birds; (1) he compares the _lūkha_ as to size

with the _kabg-i-darī_ of the Kābul region, and (2) for size and colour

with that of Hindūstān. But the bird, of the Western Himālayas known by

the name _kabg-i-darī_ is the Himālayan snow-cock, _Tetraogallus

himālayensis_, Turkī, _aūlār_ and in the Kābul region, _chīūrtika_

(f.249, Jerdon, ii, 549-50); while the _kabg-i-darī_ (syn. _chikor_) of

Hindūstān, whether of hill or plain, is one or more of much smaller

birds.

The snow-cock being 28 inches in length, the _lūkha_ bird must be of

this size. Such birds as to size and plumage of changing colour are the

_Lophophori_ and _Trapagons_, varieties of which are found in places

suiting Bābur's account of the _lūkha_.

It may be noted that the Himālayan snow-cock is still called

_kabg-i-darī_ in Afghānistān (Jerdon, ii, 550) and in Kashmīr (Vigne's

_Travels in Kashmīr_ ii, 18). As its range is up to 18,000 feet, its

Persian name describes it correctly whether read as "of the mountains"

(_dari_), or as "royal" (_darī_) through its splendour.

I add here the following notes of Mr. Erskine's, which I have not quoted

already where they occur (cf. f. 135 and f. 278_b_):—

On f. 135, "_lokheh_" is said to mean _hill-chikor_.

On f. 278_b_, to "_lūjeh_", "The Persian has _lūkheh_."

" to "_kepki durrī_", "The _kepkī deri_, or _durri_ is

much larger than the common _kepk_ of Persia

and is peculiar to Khorāsān. It is said to be

a beautiful bird. The common _kepk_ of Persia

and Khorāsān is the _hill-chikor_ of India."

" to "higher up", "The _lujeh_ may be the _chikor_

of the plains which Hunter calls bartavelle or

Greek partridge."

The following corrections are needed about my own notes:—(1) on f. 135

(p. 213) n. 7 is wrongly referred; it belongs to the first word, _viz._

_kabg-i-darī_, of p. 214; (2) on f. 279 (p. 496) n. 2 should refer to

the second _kabg-i-darī_.

_b. Birds called mūnāl (var. monāl and moonaul)._

Yule writing in _Hobson Jobson_ (p. 580) of the "_moonaul_" which he

identifies as _Lophophorus Impeyanus_, queries whether, on grounds he

gives, the word _moonaul_ is connected etymologically with Sanscrit

_muni_, an "eremite". In continuation of his topic, I give here the

names of other birds called _mūnāl_, which I have noticed in various

ornithological works while turning their pages for other information.

Besides _L. Impeyanus_ and _Trapagon Ceriornis satyra_ which Yule

mentions as called "_moonaul_", there are _L. refulgens_, _mūnāl_ and

_Ghūr_ (mountain)-_mūnāl_; _Trapagon Ceriornis satyra_, called _mūnāl_

in Nipāl; _T. C. melanocephalus_, called _sing_ (horned)-_mūnāl_ in the

N.W. Himālayas; _T. himālayensis_, the _jer_- or _cher-mūnāl_ of the

same region, known also as _chikor_; and _Lerwa nevicola_, the

snow-partridge known in Garhwal as _Quoir_- or _Qūr-mūnāl_. Do all these

birds behave in such a way as to suggest that _mūnāl_ may imply the

individual isolation related by Jerdon of _L. Impeyanus_, "In the

autumnal and winter months numbers are generally collected in the same

quarter of the forest, though often so widely scattered that each bird

appears to be alone?" My own search amongst vocabularies of

hill-dialects for the meaning of the word has been unsuccessful, spite

of the long range _mūnāls_ in the Himālayas.

_c. Concerning the word chīūrtika, chourtka._

Jerdon's entry (ii, 549, 554) of the name _chourtka_ as a synonym of

_Tetraogallus himālayensis_ enables me to fill a gap I have left on f.

249 (p. 491 and n. 6),[2810] with the name Himālayan snow-cock, and to

allow Bābur's statement to be that he, in January 1520 AD. when coming

down from the _Bād-i-pīch_ pass, saw many snow-cocks. The _Memoirs_

(p.282) has "_chikors_", which in India is a synonym for _kabg-i-darī_;

the _Mémoires_ (ii, 122) has _sauterelles_, but this meaning of

_chīūrtika_ does not suit wintry January. That month would suit for the

descent from higher altitudes of snow-cocks. Griffith, a botanist who

travelled in Afghānistān _cir._ 1838 AD., saw myriads of _cicadæ_

between Qilat-i-ghilzai and Ghazni, but the month was July.

_d._ _On the qūṯān_ (f. 142, p. 224; _Memoirs_, p. 153; _Mémoires_ ii,

313).

Mr. Erskine for _qūṯān_ enters _khawāṣil_ [gold-finch] which he will

have seen interlined in the Elphinstone Codex (f. 109_b_) in explanation

of _qūṯān_.

Shaikh Effendi (Kunos' ed., p. 139) explains _qūṯān_ to be the

gold-finch, _Steiglitz_.

Ilminsky's _qūtān_ (p. 175) is translated by M. de Courteille as

_pélicane_ and certainly some copies of the 2nd Persian translation

[Muḥ. _Shīrāzi's_ p. 90] have _ḥawāṣil_, pelican.

The pelican would class better than the small finch with the

herons and egrets of Bābur's trio; it also would appear a more likely

bird to be caught "with the cord".

That Bābur's _qūṯān_ (_ḥawāṣil_) migrated in great numbers is however

against supposing it to be _Pelicanus onocrotatus_ which is seen in

India during the winter, because it appears there in moderate numbers

only, and Blanford with other ornithologists states that no western

pelican migrates largely into India.

Perhaps the _qūṯān_ was Linnæus' _Pelicanus carbo_ of which one synonym

is _Carbo comoranus_, the cormorant, a bird seen in India in large

numbers of both the large and small varieties. As cormorants are not

known to breed in that country, they will have migrated in the masses

Bābur mentions.

A translation matter falls to mention here:—After saying that the

_aūqār_ (grey heron), _qarqara_ (egret), and _qūtān_ (cormorant) are

taken with the cord, Bābur says that this method of bird-catching is

unique (_bū nūḥ qūsh tūtmāq ghair muqarrar dūr_) and describes it. The

Persian text omits to translate the _tūtmāq_ (by _P. giriftan_); hence

Erskine (_Mems._ p. 153) writes, "The last mentioned fowl" (_i.e._ the

_qūṯān_) "is rare," notwithstanding Bābur's statement that all three of

the birds he names are caught in masses. De Courteille (p. 313) writes,

as though only of the _qūtān_, "_ces derniers toutefois ne se prennent

qu'accidentelment_," perhaps led to do so by knowledge of the

circumstance that _Pelicanus onocrotatus_ is rare in India.

O.—NOTES BY HUMĀYŪN ON SOME HINDŪSTĀN FRUITS.

The following notes, which may be accepted as made by Humāyūn and in the

margin of the archetype of the Elphinstone Codex, are composed in Turkī

which differs in diction from his father's but is far closer to that

classic model than is that of the producer [Jahāngīr?] of the

"Fragments" (Index _s.n._). Various circumstances make the notes

difficult to decipher _verbatim_ and, unfortunately, when writing in

Jan. 1917, I am unable to collate with its original in the Advocates

Library, the copy I made of them in 1910.

_a._ _On the kadhil_, _jack-fruit_, _Artocarpus integrifolia_ (f.

283_b_, p. 506; Elphinstone MS. f. 235_b_).[2811]

The contents of the note are that the strange-looking pumpkin (_qar`_,

which is also Ibn Batuta's word for the fruit), yields excellent white

juice, that the best fruit grows from the roots of the tree,[2812] that

many such grow in Bengal, and that in Bengal and Dihli there grows a

_kadhil_-tree covered with hairs (_Artocarpus hirsuta_?).

_b._ _On the amrit-phal_, _mandarin-orange_, _Citrus aurantium_ (f. 287,

p. 512; Elphinstone Codex, f. 238_b_, l. 12).

The interest of this note lies in its reference to Bābur.

A Persian version of it is entered, without indication of what it is or

of who was its translator, in one of the volumes of Mr. Erskine's

manuscript remains, now in the British Museum (Add. 26,605, p. 88).

Presumably it was made by his Turkish _munshi_ for his note in the

Memoirs (p. 329).

Various difficulties oppose the translation of the Turkī note; it is

written into the text of the Elphinstone Codex in two instalments,

neither of them in place, the first being interpolated in the account of

the _amil-bīd_ fruit, the second in that of the _jāsūn_ flower; and

there are verbal difficulties also. The Persian translation is not

literal and in some particulars Mr. Erskine's rendering of this differs

from what the Turkī appears to state.

The note is, tentatively, as follows:[2813]—"His honoured Majesty

Firdaus-makān[2814]—may God make his proof clear!—did not

favour the _amrit-phal_;[2815] as he considered it insipid,[2816] he

likened it to the mild-flavoured[2817] orange and did not make choice of

it. So much was the mild-flavoured orange despised that if any person

had disgusted (him) by insipid flattery(?) he used to say, 'He is like

orange-juice.'"[2818]

"The _amrit-phal_ is one of the very good fruits. Though its juice is

not relishing (? _chūchūq_), it is extremely pleasant-drinking. Later

on, in my own time, its real merit became known. Its tartness may be

that of the orange (_nāranj_)and _lemu_."[2819]

The above passage is followed, in the text of the Elphinstone Codex, by

Bābur's account of the _jāsūn_ flower, and into this a further

instalment of Humāyūn's notes is interpolated, having opposite its first

line the marginal remark, "This extra note, seemingly made by Humāyūn

Pādshāh, the scribe has mistakenly written into the text." Whether its

first sentence refer to the _amrit-phal_ or to the _amil-bīd_ must be

left for decision to those well acquainted with the orange-tribe. It is

obscure in my copy and abbreviated in its Persian translation;

summarized it may state that when the fruit is unripe, its acidity is

harmful to the digestion, but that it is very good when ripe.—The note

then continues as below:—

_c. The kāmila, H. kauṅlā, the orange._[2820]

"There are in Bengal two other fruits of the acid kind. Though the

_amrit-phal_ be not agreeable, they have resemblance to it (?)."

"One is the _kāmila_ which may be as large as an orange (_nāranj_); some

took it to be a large _nārangī_ (orange) but it is much pleasanter

eating than the _nārangī_ and is understood not to have the skin of that

(fruit)."

_d. The samṯara._[2821]

"The other is the _samṯara_ which is larger than the orange (_nāranj_)

but is not tart; unlike the _amrit-phal_ it is not of poor flavour (_kam

maza_) or little relish (_chūchūk_). In short a better fruit is not

seen. It is good to see, good to eat, good to digest. One does not

forget it. If it be there, no other fruit is chosen. Its peel may be

taken off by the hand. However much of the fruit be eaten, the heart

craves for it again. Its juice does not soil the hand at all. Its skin

separates easily from its flesh. It may be taken during and after food.

In Bengal the _samṯara_ is rare (_ghārib_) (or excellent, _`asīz_). It

is understood to grow in one village Sanārgām (Sonargaon) and even

therein a special quarter. There seems to be no fruit so entirely good

as the _samṯara_ amongst fruits of its class or, rather, amongst fruits

of all kinds."

_Corrigendum_:—In my note on the _turunj bajāurī_ (p. 511, n. 3) for

_bijaurā_ read _bījaurā_; and on p. 510, l. 2, for _palm_ read

_fingers_.

_Addendum_:—p. 510, l. 5. After _yūsūnlūk_ add:—"The natives of

Hindūstān when not wearing their ear-rings, put into the large ear-ring

holes, slips of the palm-leaf bought in the bāzārs, ready for the

purpose. The trunk of this tree is handsomer and more stately than that

of the date."

P.—REMARKS ON BĀBUR'S REVENUE LIST (fol. 292).

_a. Concerning the date of the List._

The Revenue List is the last item of Bābur's account of Hindūstān and,

with that account, is found _s.a._ 932 AH., manifestly too early, (1)

because it includes districts and their revenues which did not come

under Bābur's authority until subdued in his Eastern campaigns of 934

and 935 AH., (2) because Bābur's statement is that the "countries" of

the List "are _now_ in my possession" (_in loco_ p. 520).

The List appears to be one of revenues realized in 936 or 937 AH. and

not one of assessment or estimated revenue, (1) because Bābur's wording

states as a fact that the revenue was 52 _krūrs_; (2) because the

Persian heading of the (Persian) List is translatable as "Revenue

(_jama`_)[2822] of Hindūstān from what has so far come under the

victorious standards".

_b. The entry of the List into European Literature._

Readers of the L. and E. _Memoirs of Bābur_ are aware that it does not

contain the Revenue List (p. 334). The omission is due to the absence of

the List from the Elphinstone Codex and from the `Abdu'r-raḥīm Persian

translation. Since the _Memoirs of Bābur_ was published in 1826 AD., the

List has come from the _Bābur-nāma_ into European literature by three

channels.

Of the three the one used earliest is Shaikh Zain's _T̤abaqāt-i-bāburī_

which is a Persian paraphrase of part of Bābur's Hindūstān section. This

work provided Mr. Erskine with what he placed in his _History of India_

(London 1854, i, 540, Appendix D), but his manuscript, now B.M. Add.

26,202, is not the best copy of Shaikh Zain's book, being of far less

importance than B.M. Or. 1999, [as to which more will be said.][2823]

The second channel is Dr. Ilminsky's imprint of the Turkī text (Kāsān

1857, p. 379), which is translated by the _Mémoires de Bāber_ (Paris

1871, ii, 230).

The third channel is the Ḥaidarābād Codex, in the English translation of

which [_in loco_] the List is on p. 521.

Shaikh Zain may have used Bābur's autograph manuscript for his

paraphrase and with it the Revenue List. His own autograph manuscript

was copied in 998 AH. (1589-90 AD.) by Khwānd-amīr's grandson

`Abdu'l-lāh who may be the scribe "Mīr `Abdu'l-lāh" of the

_Āyīn-i-akbarī_ (Blochmann's trs. p. 109). `Abdu'l-lāh's transcript

(from which a portion is now absent,) after having been in Sir Henry

Elliot's possession, has become B.M. Or. 1999. It is noticed briefly by

Professor Dowson (_l.c._ iv, 288), but he cannot have observed that the

"old, worm-eaten" little volume contains Bābur's Revenue List, since he

does not refer to it.

_c. Agreement and variation in copies of the List._

The figures in the two copies (Or. 1999 and Add. 26,202) of the

_T̤abaqāt-i-bāburī_ are in close agreement. They differ, however, from

those in the Ḥaidarābād Codex, not only in a negligible unit and a ten

of _tankas_ but in having 20,000 more _tankas_ from Oudh and Baraich and

30 _laks_ of _tankas_ more from Trans-sutlej.

The figures in the two copies of the _Bābur-nāma_, _viz._ the Ḥaidarābād

Codex and the Kehr-Ilminsky imprint are not in agreement throughout, but

are identical in opposition to the variants (20,000 _t._ and 30 _l._)

mentioned above. As the two are independent, being collateral

descendants of Bābur's original papers, the authority of the Ḥaidarābād

Codex in the matter of the List is still further enhanced.

_d. Varia._

(1) The place-names of the List are all traceable, whatever their varied

forms. About the entry L:knū [or L:knūr] and B:ks:r [or M:ks:r] a

difficulty has been created by its variation in manuscripts, not only in

the List but where the first name occurs _s.a._ 934 and 935 AH. In the

Ḥaidarābād List and in that of Or. 1999 L:knūr is clearly written and

may represent (approximately) modern Shahābād in Rāmpūr. Erskine and de

Courteille, however, have taken it to be Lakhnau in Oudh. [The

distinction of Lakhnaur from Lakhnau in the historical narrative is

discussed in Appendix T.]

(2) It may be noted, as of interest, that the name Sarwār is an

abbreviation of Sarjūpār which means "other side of Sarjū" (Sarū,

Goghrā; E. and D.'s H. of I. i, 56, n.4).

(3) Rūp-narā[:i]n (Deo or Dev) is mentioned in Ajodhya Prasad's short

history of Tirhut and Darbhanga, the _Gulzār-i-Bihār_ (Calcutta 1869,

Cap. v, 88) as the 9th of the Brahman rulers of Tirhut and as having

reigned for 25 years, from 917 to 942 _Faslī_(?). If the years were

Ḥijrī, 917-42 AH. would be 1511-1535.[2824]

(4) Concerning the _tanka_ the following modern description is quoted

from Mr. R. Shaw's _High Tartary_ (London 1871, p. 464) "The _tanga_"

(or _tanka_) "is a nominal coin, being composed of 25 little copper

cash, with holes pierced in them and called _dahcheen_. These are strung

together and the quantity of them required to make up the value of one

of these silver ingots" ("_kooroos_ or _yamboo_, value nearly _£_17")

"weighs a considerable amount. I once sent to get change for a

_kooroos_, and my servants were obliged to charter a donkey to bring it

home."

(5) The following interesting feature of Shaikh Zain's

_T̤abaqāt-i-bāburī_ has been mentioned to me by my husband:—Its author

occasionally reproduces Bābur's Turkī words instead of paraphrasing them

in Persian, and does this for the noticeable passage in which Bābur

records his dissatisfied view of Hindūstān (f. 290_b_, _in loco_ p.

518), prefacing his quotation with the remark that it is best and will

be nearest to accuracy not to attempt translation but to reproduce the

Pādshāh's own words. The main interest of the matter lies in the motive

for reproducing the _ipsissima verba_. Was that motive deferential? Did

the revelation of feeling and opinion made in the quoted passage clothe

it with privacy so that Shaikh Zain reserved its perusal from the larger

public of Hindūstān who might read Persian but not Turkī? Some such

motive would explain the insertion untranslated of Bābur's letters to

Humāyūn and to Khwāja Kalān which are left in Turkī by `Abdu'r-raḥīm

Mīrzā.[2825]

Q.—CONCERNING THE "RĀMPŪR DĪWĀN".

Pending the wide research work necessary to interpret Bābur's Hindūstān

poems which the Rāmpūr manuscript preserves, the following comments,

some tentative and open to correction, may carry further in making the

poems publicly known, what Dr. E. Denison Ross has effected by

publishing his Facsimile of the manuscript.[2826] It is legitimate to

associate comment on the poems with the _Bābur-nāma_ because many of

them are in it with their context of narrative; most, if not all,

connect with it; some without it, would be dull and vapid.

_a. An authorized English title._

The contents of the Rāmpūr MS. are precisely what Bābur describes

sending to four persons some three weeks after the date attached to the

manuscript,[2827] _viz._ "the Translation and whatnot of poems made on

coming to Hindūstān";[2828] and a similar description may be meant in

the curiously phrased first clause of the colophon, but without mention

of the Translation (of the _Wālidiyyah-risāla_).[2829] Hence, if the

poems, including the Translation, became known as the _Hindūstān Poems_

or _Poems made in Hindūstān_, such title would be justified by their

author's words. Bābur does not call the Hindūstān poems a _dīwān_ even

when, as in the above quotation, he speaks of them apart from his

versified translation of the Tract. In what has come down to us of his

autobiography, he applies the name _Dīwān_ to poems of his own once

only, this in 925 AH. (f. 237_b_) when he records sending "my _dīwān_"

to Pūlād Sl. _Aūzbeg_.

_b. The contents of the Rāmpūr MS._

There are three separate items of composition in the manuscript, marked

as distinct from one another by having each its ornamented frontispiece,

each its scribe's sign (_mīm_) of Finis, each its division from its

neighbour by a space without entry. The first and second sections bear

also the official sign [_ṣaḥ[h.]_] that the copy has been inspected and

found correct.

(1) The first section consists of Bābur's metrical translation of Khwāja

`Ubaidu'l-lāh _Aḥrārī's Parental Tract_ (_Wālidiyyah-risāla_), his

prologue in which are his reasons for versifying the Tract and his

epilogue which gives thanks for accomplishing the task. It ends with the

date 935 (Ḥai. MS. f. 346). Below this are _mīm_ and _ṣaḥ[h.]_, the

latter twice; they are in the scribe's handwriting, and thus make

against supposing that Bābur wrote down this copy of the Tract or its

archetype from which the official _ṣaḥ[h.]_ will have been copied.

Moreover, spite of bearing two vouchers of being a correct copy, the

Translation is emended, in a larger script which may be that of the

writer of the marginal quatrain on the last page of the [Rāmpūr] MS. and

there attested by Shāh-i-jahān as Bābur's autograph entry. His also may

have been the now expunged writing on the half-page left empty of text

at the end of the Tract. Expunged though it be, fragments of words are

visible.[2830]

(2) The second section has in its frontispiece an inscription illegible

(to me) in the Facsimile. It opens with a _masnawī_ of 41 couplets which

is followed by a _ghazel_ and numerous poems in several measures, down

to a triad of rhymed couplets (_matla`_?), the whole answering to

descriptions of a _Dīwān_ without formal arrangement. After the last

couplet are _mīm_ and _ṣaḥ[h.]_ in the scribe's hand-writing, and a

blank quarter-page. Mistakes in this section have been left uncorrected,

which supports the view that its _ṣaḥ[h.]_ avouches the accuracy of its

archetype and not its own.[2831]

(3) The third section shows no inscription on its frontispiece. It opens

with the _masnawī_ of eight couplets, found also in the _Bābur-nāma_ (f.

312), one of earlier date than many of the poems in the second section.

It is followed by three _rubā`ī_ which complete the collection of poems

made in Hindūstān. A prose passage comes next, describing the

composition and transposition-in-metre of a couplet of 16 feet, with

examples in three measures, the last of which ends in l. 4 of the

photograph.—While fixing the date of this metrical game, Bābur

incidentally allows that of his _Treatise on Prosody_ to be inferred

from the following allusive words:—"When going to Saṃbhal (f. 330_b_) in

the year (933 AH.) after the conquest of Hindūstān (932 AH.), two years

after writing the _`Arūẓ_, I composed a couplet of 16 feet."—From this

the date of the Treatise is seen to be 931 AH., some two years later

than that of the _Mubīn_. The above metrical exercise was done about the

same time as another concerning which a Treatise was written, viz. that

mentioned on f. 330_b_, when a couplet was transposed into 504 measures

(Section _f_, p. lxv).—The Facsimile, it will be noticed, shows

something unusual in the last line of the prose passage on Plate XVIII

B, where the scattering of the words suggests that the scribe was trying

to copy page _per_ page.

The colophon (which begins on l. 5 of the photograph) is curiously

worded, as though the frequent fate of last pages had befallen its

archetype, that of being mutilated and difficult for a scribe to make

good; it suggests too that the archetype was verse.[2832] Its first

clause, even if read as _Hind-stān jānibī `azīmat qīlghānī_ (i.e. not

_qīlghālī_, as it can be read), has an indirectness unlike Bābur's

corresponding "after coming to Hindūstān" (f. 357_b_), and is not

definite; (2) _bū aīrdī_ (these were) is not the complement suiting _aūl

dūrūr_ (those are); (3) Bābur does not use the form _dūrūr_ in prose;

(4) the undue space after _dūrūr_ suggests connection with verse; (5)

there is no final verb such as prose needs. The meaning, however, may be

as follows:—The poems made after resolving on (the)

[Illustration]

Hindūstān parts (_jānibī_?) were these I have written down (_taḥrīr

qīldīm_), and past events are those I have narrated (_taqrīr_) in the

way that (_nī-chūk kīm_) (has been) written in these folios (_aūrāq_)

and recorded in those sections (_ajzā'_).—From this it would appear that

sections of the _Bābur-nāma_ (f. 376_b_, p. 678) accompanied the

Hindūstān poems to the recipient of the message conveyed by the

colophon.

Close under the colophon stands _Ḥarara-hu Bābur_ and the date Monday,

Rabī` II. 15th 935 (Monday, December 27th 1528 AD.), the whole

presumably brought over from the archetype. To the question whether a

signature in the above form would be copied by a scribe, the Elphinstone

Codex gives an affirmative answer by providing several examples of

notes, made by Humāyūn in its archetype, so-signed and brought over

either into its margin or interpolated in its text. Some others of

Humāyūn's notes are not so-signed, the scribe merely saying they are

Humāyūn Pādshāh's.—It makes against taking the above entry of Bābur's

name to be an autograph signature, (1) that it is enclosed in an

ornamented border, as indeed is the case wherever it occurs throughout

the manuscript; (2) that it is followed by the scribe's _mīm_. [See end

of following section.]

_c. The marginal entries shown in the photograph._

The marginal note written length-wise by the side of the text is signed

by Shāh-i-jahān and attests that the _rubā`ī_ and the signature to which

it makes reference are in Bābur's autograph hand-writing. His note

translates as follows:—This quatrain and blessed name are in the actual

hand-writing of that Majesty (_ān ḥaẓrat_) _Firdaus-makānī_ Bābur

Pādshāh _Ghāzī_—May God make his proof clear!—Signed (_Ḥararā-hu_),

Shāh-i-jahān son of Jahāngīr Pādshāh son of Akbar Pādshāh son of Humāyūn

Pādshāh son of Bābur Pādshāh.[2833]

The second marginal entry is the curiously placed _rubā`ī_, which is now

the only one on the page, and now has no signature attaching to it. It

has the character of a personal message to the recipient of one of more

books having identical contents. That these two entries are there while

the text seems so clearly to be written by a scribe, is open to the

explanation that when (as said about the colophon, p. lx) the rectangle

of text was made good from a mutilated archetype, the original margin

was placed round the _rifacimento_? This superposition would explain the

entries and seal-like circles, discernible against a strong light, on

the reverse of the margin only, through the _rifacimento_ page. The

upper edge of the rectangle shows sign that the margin has been adjusted

to it [so far as one can judge from a photograph]. Nothing on the face

of the margin hints that the text itself is autograph; the words of the

colophon, _taḥrīr qīldīm_ (_i.e._ I have written down) cannot hold good

against the cumulative testimony that a scribe copied the whole

manuscript.—The position of the last syllable [_nī_] of the _rubā`ī_

shows that the signature below the colophon was on the margin before the

diagonal couplet of the _rubā`ī_ was written,—therefore when the margin

was fitted, as it looks to have been fitted, to the _rifacimento_. If

this be the order of the two entries [_i.e._ the small-hand signature

and the diagonal couplet], Shāh-i-jahān's "blessed name" may represent

the small-hand signature which certainly shows minute differences from

the writing of the text of the MS. in the name Bābur (_q.v. passim_ in

the Rāmpūr MS.).

_d. The Bāburī-khat̤t̤_ (_Bābūr's script_).

So early as 910 AH. the year of his conquest of Kābul, Bābur devised

what was probably a variety of _nakhsh_, and called it the

_Bāburī-khat̤t̤_ (f. 144_b_), a name used later by Ḥaidar Mīrzā,

Niẕāmu'd-dīn Aḥmad and `Abdu'l-qādir _Badāyūnī_. He writes of it again

(f. 179) _s.a._ 911 AH. when describing an interview had in 912 AH. with

one of the Harāt Qāẓīs, at which the script was discussed, its

specialities (_mufradāt_) exhibited to, and read by the Qāẓī who there

and then wrote in it.[2834] In what remains to us of the _Bābur-nāma_

it is not mentioned again till 935 AH. (fol. 357_b_) but at some

intermediate date Bābur made in it a copy of the Qorān which he sent to

Makka.[2835] In 935 AH. (f. 357_b_) it is mentioned in significant

association with the despatch to each of four persons of a copy of the

Translation (of the _Wālidiyyah-risāla_) and the Hindūstān poems, the

significance of the association being that the simultaneous despatch

with these copies of specimens of the _Bāburī-khat̤t̤_ points to its use

in the manuscripts, and at least in Hind-āl's case, to help given for

reading novel forms in their text. The above are the only instances now

found in the _Bābur-nāma_ of mention of the script.

The little we have met with—we have made no search—about the character

of the script comes from the _Abūshqa_, _s.n._ _sīghnāq_, in the

following entry:—

_Sīghnāq ber nū`ah khat̤t̤ der Chaghatāīda khat̤t̤ Bāburī u ghairī kibī

ki Bābur Mīrzā ash`ār'nda kīlūr bait_

_Khūblār khat̤t̤ī naṣīb'ng būlmāsā Bābur nī tāng?_

_Bāburī khat̤t̤ī aīmās dūr khat̤t̤ sīghnāqī mū dūr?_[2836]

The old Osmanli-Turkish prose part of this appears to mean:—"_Sīghnāq_

is a sort of hand-writing, in Chaghatāī the _Bāburī-khat̤t̤_ and others

resembling it, as appears in Bābur Mīrzā's poems. Couplet":—

Without knowing the context of the couplet I make no attempt

to translate it because its words _khat̤t̤_ or _khaṭ_ and _sīghnāq_

lend themselves to the kind of pun (_īhām_) "which consists

in the employment of a word or phrase having more than one appropriate

meaning, whereby the reader is often left in doubt as to the real

significance of the passage."[2837] The rest of the _rubā`ī_ may be

given [together with the six other quotations of Bābur's verse now known

only through the _Abūshqa_], in early _Taẕkirātu 'sh-shu`āra_ of date

earlier than 967 AH.

The root of the word _sīghnāq_ will be _sīq_, pressed together, crowded,

included, _etc._; taking with this notion of compression, the

explanations _feine Schrift_ of Shaikh Effendi (Kunos) and Vambéry's

_pétite écriture_, the Sīghnāqī and Bāburī Scripts are allowed to have

been what that of the Rāmpūr MS. is, a small, compact, elegant

hand-writing.—A town in the Caucasus named Sīghnākh, "_située à peu près

à 800 mètres d'altitude, commença par être une forteresse et un lieu de

refuge, car telle est la signification de son nom tartare_."[2838]

_Sīghnāqī_ is given by de Courteille (Dict. p. 368) as meaning a place

of refuge or shelter.

The _Bāburī-khat̤t̤_ will be only one of the several hands Bābur is

reputed to have practised; its description matches it with other

niceties he took pleasure in, fine distinctions of eye and ear in

measure and music.

_e. Is the Rāmpūr MS. an example of the Bāburī-khat̤t̤?_

Though only those well-acquainted with Oriental manuscripts dating

before 910 AH. (1504 AD.) can judge whether novelties appear in the

script of the Rāmpūr MS. and this particularly in its head-lines, there

are certain grounds for thinking that though the manuscript be not

Bābur's autograph, it may be in his script and the work of a specially

trained scribe.

I set these grounds down because although the signs of a scribe's work

on the manuscript seem clear, it is "locally" held to be Bābur's

autograph. Has a tradition of its being in the _Bāburī-khat̤t̤_ glided

into its being in the _khat̤t̤-i-Bābur_? Several circumstances suggest

that it may be written in the _Bāburī-khat̤t̤:_—(1) the script is

specially associated with the four transcripts of the Hindūstān poems

(f. 357_b_), for though many letters must have gone to his sons, some

indeed are mentioned in the _Bābur-nāma_, it is only with the poems that

specimens of it are recorded as sent; (2) another matter shows his

personal interest in the arrangement of manuscripts, namely, that as he

himself about a month after the four books had gone off, made a new

ruler, particularly on account of the head-lines of the Translation, it

may be inferred that he had made or had adopted the one he superseded,

and that his plan of arranging the poems was the model for copyists; the

Rāmpūr MS. bearing, in the Translation section, corrections which may be

his own, bears also a date earlier than that at which the four gifts

started; it has its headlines ill-arranged and has throughout 13 lines

to the page; his new ruler had 11; (3) perhaps the words _taḥrīr qīldīm_

used in the colophon of the Rāmpūr MS. should be read with their full

connotation of careful and elegant writing, or, put modestly, as saying,

"I wrote down in my best manner," which for poems is likely to be in the

_Bāburī-khat̤t̤_.[2839]

Perhaps an example of Bābur's script exists in the colophon, if not in

the whole of the _Mubīn_ manuscript once owned by Berézine, by him used

for his _Chréstomathie Turque_, and described by him as "unique". If

this be the actual manuscript Bābur sent into Mā warā'u'n-nahr

(presumably to Khwāja Aḥrārī's family), its colophon which is a personal

message addressed to the recipients, is likely to be autograph.

_f. Metrical amusements._

(1) Of two instances of metrical amusements belonging to the end of 933

AH. and seeming to have been the distractions of illness, one is a

simple transposition "in the fashion of the circles" (_dawā'ir_) into

three measures (Rāmpūr MS. Facsimile, Plate XVIII and p. 22); the other

is difficult because of the high number of 504 into which Bābur says (f.

330_b_) he cut up the following couplet:—

_Gūz u qāsh u soz u tīlīnī mū dī?

Qad u khadd u saj u bīlīnī mū dī?_

All manuscripts agree in having 504, and Bābur wrote a tract (_risāla_)

upon the transpositions.[2840] None of the modern treatises on Oriental

Prosody allow a number so high to be practicable, but Maulānā Saifī of

Bukhārā, of Bābur's own time (f. 180_b_) makes 504 seem even moderate,

since after giving much detail about _rubā`ī_ measures, he observes,

"Some say there are 10,000" (_Arūẓ-i-Saifī_, Ranking's trs. p. 122).

Presumably similar possibilities were open for the couplet in question.

It looks like one made for the game, asks two foolish questions and

gives no reply, lends itself to poetic license, and, if permutation of

words have part in such a game, allows much without change of sense. Was

Bābur's cessation of effort at 504 capricious or enforced by the

exhaustion of possible changes? Is the arithmetical statement 9 × 8 × 7

= 504 the formula of the practicable permutations?

(2) To improvise verse having a given rhyme and topic must have demanded

quick wits and much practice. Bābur gives at least one example of it (f.

252_b_) but Jahāngīr gives a fuller and more interesting one, not only

because a _rubā`ī_ of Bābur's was the model but from the circumstances

of the game:[2841]—It was in 1024 AH. (1615 AD.) that a letter reached

him from Māwarā'u'n-nahr written by Khwāja Hāshim _Naqsh-bandī_ [who by

the story is shown to have been of Aḥrārī's line], and recounting the

long devotion of his family to Jahāngīr's ancestors. He sent gifts and

enclosed in his letter a copy of one of Bābur's quatrains which he said

Ḥaẓrat Firdaus-makānī had written for Ḥaẓrat Khwājagī (Aḥrārī's eldest

son; f. 36_b_, p. 62 n. 2). Jahāngīr quotes a final hemistich only,

"_Khwājagīra mānda'īm, Khwājagīrā banda'īm_" and thereafter made an

impromptu verse upon the one sent to him.

A curious thing is that the line he quotes is not part of the quatrain

he answered, but belongs to another not appropriate for a message

between _darwesh_ and _pādshāh_, though likely to have been sent by

Bābur to Khwājagī. I will quote both because the matter will come up

again for who works on the Hindūstān poems.[2842]

(1) The quatrain from the _Hindūstān Poems_ is:—

_Dar hawā'ī nafs gumrah `umr ẓāi` karda'īm_ [_kanda'īm_?];

_Pesh ahl-i-allāh az af`āl-i-khūd sharmanda'īm;

Yak naẕr bā mukhlaṣān-i-khasta-dil farmā ki mā

Khwājagīrā mānda'īm u Khwājagīrā banda'īm._

(2) That from the _Akbar-nāma_ is:—

_Darweshānrā agarcha nah as khweshānīm,

Lek az dil u jān mu`taqid eshānīm;

Dūr ast magū`ī shāhī az darweshī,

Shāhīm walī banda-i-darweshānīm._

The greater suitability of the second is seen from Jahāngīr's answering

impromptu for which by sense and rhyme it sets the model; the meaning,

however, of the fourth line in each may be identical, namely, "I remain

the ruler but am the servant of the _darwesh_." Jahāngīr's impromptu is

as follows:—

_Āī ānki marā mihr-i-tū besh az besh ast,

Az daulat yād-i-būdat āī darwesh ast;

Chandānki'z muẕẖ dahāt dilam shād shavad

Shadīm az ānki laṯif az ḥadd besh ast._

He then called on those who had a turn for verse to "speak one" _i.e._

to improvise on his own; it was done as follows:—

_Dārīm agarcha shaghal-i-shāhī dar pesh,

Har laḥẕa kunīm yād-i-darweshān besh;

Gar shād shavad'z mā dil-i-yak darwesh,

Ānra shumarīm ḥaṣil-i-shāhī khwesh._

R.—CHANDĪRĪ AND GŪĀLĪĀR.

The courtesy of the Government of India enables me to reproduce from the

_Archæological Survey Reports_ of 1871, Sir Alexander Cunningham's plans

of Chandīrī and Gūālīār, which illustrate Bābur's narrative on f. 333,

p. 592, and f. 340, p. 607.

[Illustration: MAP of the FORT and CITY of CHÂNDERI]

[Illustration: MAP of the FORT and CITY of CHÂNDERI]

[Illustration: FORTRESS OF GWALIOR]

S.—CONCERNING THE BĀBUR-NĀMA DATING OF 935 AH.

The dating of the diary of 935 AH. (f. 339 _et seq._) is several times

in opposition to what may be distinguished as the "book-rule" that the

12 lunar months of the Ḥijra year alternate in length between 30 and 29

days (intercalary years excepted), and that Muḥarram starts the

alternation with 30 days. An early book stating the rule is Gladwin's

_Bengal Revenue Accounts_; a recent one, Ranking's ed. of Platts'

_Persian Grammar_.

As to what day of the week was the initial day of some of the months in

935 AH. Bābur's days differ from Wüstenfeld's who gives the full list of

twelve, and from Cunningham's single one of Muḥarram 1st.