The Bābur-nāma
2216
Mallū Khān was a noble of Mālwā, who became ruler of Mālwā in 1532 or 1533 AD. [?], under the style of Qādir Shāh.
2217
i. e. paid direct to the royal treasury.
2218
This is the one concerning which bad news reached Bābur just before Chandīrī was taken.
2219
This presumably is the place offered to Medinī Rāo (f. 333b), and Bikramājīt (f. 343).
2220
Obviously for the bridge.
2221
m: ljār (see f. 333 n.). Here the word would mean befittingly a protected standing-place, a refuge, such as matchlockmen used (f. 217 and Index s. n. arāba).
2222
sīghīrūrdī, a vowel-variant, perhaps, of sūghūrūrdī.
2223
f. 331b. This passage shews that Bābur’s mortars were few.
2224
nufūr qūl-lār-dīn ham karka bīla rah rawā kīshī u āt aītīlār, a difficult sentence.
2225
Afghānlār kūprūk bāghlāmāq-nī istib‘ād qīlīb tamaskhur qīlūrlār aīkāndūr. The ridicule will have been at slow progress, not at the bridge-making itself, since pontoon-bridges were common (Irvine’s Army of the Indian Moghuls).
2226
tūīlāb; Pers. trs. uftān u khezān, limping, or falling and rising, a translation raising doubt, because such a mode of progression could hardly have allowed escape from pursuers.
2227
Anglicé, on Friday night.
2228
According to the Persian calendar, New-year’s-day is that on which the Sun enters Aries.
2229
so-spelled in the Ḥai. MS.; by de Courteille Banguermādū; the two forms may represent the same one of the Arabic script.
2230
or Gūī, from the context clearly the Gumti. Jarrett gives Godi as a name of the Gumti; Gūī and Godī may be the same word in the Arabic script.
2231
Some MSS. read that there was not much pain.
2232
I take this to be the Kali-Sarda-Chauka affluent of the Gogra and not its Sarju or Saru one. To so take it seems warranted by the context; there could be no need for the fords on the Sarju to be examined, and its position is not suitable.
2233
Unfortunately no record of the hunting-expedition survives.
2234
One historian, Aḥmad-i-yādgār states in his Tārīkh-i-salāt̤īn-i-afāghina that Bābur went to Lāhor immediately after his capture of Chandīrī, and on his return journey to Āgra suppressed in the Panj-āb a rising of the Mundāhar (or, Mandhar) Rājpūts. His date is discredited by Bābur’s existing narrative of 934 AH. as also by the absence in 935 AH. of allusion to either episode. My husband who has considered the matter, advises me that the Lāhor visit may have been made in 936 or early in 937 AH. [These are a period of which the record is lost or, less probably, was not written.]
2235
Elph. MS. f. 262; I. O. 215 f. 207b and 217 f. 234b; Mems. p. 382. Here the Elphinstone MS. recommences after a lacuna extending from Ḥai. MS. f. 312b.
2236
See Appendix S: —Concerning the dating of 935 AH.
2237
‘Askarī was now about 12 years old. He was succeeded in Multān by his elder brother Kāmrān, transferred from Qandahār [Index; JRAS. 1908 p. 829 para. (1)]. This transfer, it is safe to say, was due to Bābur’s resolve to keep Kābul in his own hands, a resolve which his letters to Humāyūn (f. 348), to Kāmrān (f. 359), and to Khwāja Kalān (f. 359) attest, as well as do the movements of his family at this time. What would make the stronger government of Kāmrān seem now more “for the good of Multān” than that of the child ‘Askarī are the Bīlūchī incursions, mentioned somewhat later (f. 355b) as having then occurred more than once.
2238
This will be his own house in the Garden-of-eight-paradises, the Chār-bāgh begun in 932 AH. (August 1526 AD.).
2239
To this name Khwānd-amīr adds Aḥmadu’l-ḥaqīrī, perhaps a pen-name; he also quotes verses of Shihāb’s (Ḥabību’s-siyar lith. ed. iii, 350).
2240
Khwānd-amīr’s account of his going into Hindūstān is that he left his “dear home” (Herāt) for Qandahār in mid-Shawwāl 933 AH. (mid-July 1527 AD.); that on Jumāda I. 10th 934 AH. (Feb. 1st 1528 AD.) he set out from Qandahār on the hazardous journey into Hindūstān; and that owing to the distance, heat, setting-in of the Rains, and breadth of rapid rivers, he was seven months on the way. He mentions no fellow-travellers, but he gives as the day of his arrival in Āgra the one on which Bābur says he presented himself at Court. (For an account of annoyances and misfortunes to which he was subjected under Aūzbeg rule in Herāt see Journal des Savans, July 1843, pp. 389, 393, Quatremère’s art.)
2241
Concerning Gūālīār see Cunningham’s Archeological Survey Reports vol. ii; Louis Rousselet’s L’Inde des Rajas; Lepel Griffin’s Famous Monuments of Central India, especially for its photographs; Gazetteer of India; Luard’s Gazetteer of Gwalior, text and photographs; Travels of Peter Mundy, Hakluyt Society ed. R. C. Temple, ii, 61, especially for its picture of the fort and note (p. 62) enumerating early writers on Gūālīār. Of Persian books there is Jalāl Ḥiṣārī’s Tārīkh-i-Gwālīāwar (B.M. Add. 16,859) and Hirāman’s (B.M. Add. 16,709) unacknowledged version of it, which is of the B.M. MSS. the more legible.
2242
Perhaps this stands for Gwālīāwar, the form seeming to be used by Jalāl Ḥiṣārī, and having good traditional support (Cunningham p. 373 and Luard p. 228).
2243
tūshlānīb, i. e. they took rest and food together at mid-day.
2244
This seems to be the conjoined Gambhīr and Bāngānga which is crossed by the Āgra-Dhūlpūr road (G. of I. Atlas, Sheet 34).
2245
aīchtūq, the plural of which shews that more than one partook of the powders (safūf).
2246
T. tālqān, Hindī sattu (Shaw). M. de Courteille’s variant translation may be due to his reading for tālqān, tālghāq, flot, agitation (his Dict. s. n.) and yīl, wind, for bīla, with.
2247
in 933 AH. f. 330b.
2248
“Each beaked promontory” (Lycidas). Our name “Selsey-bill” is an English instance of Bābur’s (not infrequent) tūmshūq, beak, bill of a bird.
2249
No order about this Chār-bāgh is in existing annals of 934 AH. Such order is likely to have been given after Bābur’s return from his operations against the Afghāns, in his account of which the annals of 934 AH. break off.
2250
The fort-hill at the northern end is 300 ft. high, at the southern end, 274 ft.; its length from north to south is 1-3/4 m.; its breadth varies from 600 ft. opposite the main entrance (Hātī-pūl) to 2,800 ft. in the middle opposite the great temple (Sās-bhao). Cf. Cunningham p. 330 and Appendix R, in loco, for his Plan of Gūālīār.
2251
This Arabic plural may have been prompted by the greatness and distinction of Mān-sing’s constructions. Cf. Index s. nn. begāt and bāghāt.
2252
A translation point concerning the (Arabic) word ‘imārat is that the words “palace”, “palais”, and “residence” used for it respectively by Erskine, de Courteille, and, previous to the Hindūstān Section, by myself, are too limited in meaning to serve for Bābur’s uses of it in Hindūstān; and this (1) because he uses it throughout his writings for buildings under palatial rank (e. g. those of high and low in Chandīrī); (2) because he uses it in Hindūstān for non-residential buildings (e. g. for the Bādalgarh outwork, f. 341b, and a Hindū temple ib.); and (3) because he uses it for the word “building” in the term building-stone, f. 335b and f. 339b. Building is the comprehensive word under which all his uses of it group. For labouring this point a truism pleads my excuse, namely, that a man’s vocabulary being characteristic of himself, for a translator to increase or diminish it is to intrude on his personality, and this the more when an autobiography is concerned. Hence my search here (as elsewhere) for an English grouping word is part of an endeavour to restrict the vocabulary of my translation to the limits of my author’s.
2253
Jalāl Ḥiṣārī describes “Khwāja Raḥīm-dād” as a paternal-nephew of Mahdī Khwāja. Neither man has been introduced by Bābur, as it is his rule to introduce when he first mentions a person of importance, by particulars of family, etc. Both men became disloyal in 935 AH. (1529 AD.) as will be found referred to by Bābur. Jalāl Ḥiṣārī supplements Bābur’s brief account of their misconduct and Shaikh Muḥammad Ghaus̤' mediation in 936 AH. For knowledge of his contribution I am indebted to my husband’s perusal of the Tārīkh-i-Gwālīāwar.
2254
Erskine notes that Indians and Persians regard moonshine as cold but this only faintly expresses the wide-spread fear of moon-stroke expressed in the Psalm (121 v. 6), “The Sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the Moon by night.”
2255
Agarcha lūk balūk u bī sīyāq. Ilminsky [p. 441] has balūk balūk but without textual warrant and perhaps following Erskine, as he says, speaking generally, that he has done in case of need (Ilminsky’s Preface). Both Erskine and de Courteille, working, it must be remembered, without the help of detailed modern descriptions and pictures, took the above words to say that the buildings were scattered and without symmetry, but they are not scattered and certainly Mān-sing’s has symmetry. I surmise that the words quoted above do not refer to the buildings themselves but to the stones of which they are made. T. lūk means heavy, and T. balūk [? block] means a thing divided off, here a block of stone. Such blocks might be bī sīyāq, i. e. irregular in size. To take the words in this way does not contradict known circumstances, and is verbally correct.
2256
The Rājas’ buildings Bābur could compare were Rāja Karna (or Kirtī)’s [who ruled from 1454 to 1479 AD.], Rāja Mān-sing’s [1486 to 1516 AD.], and Rāja Bikramājīt’s [1516 to 1526 AD. when he was killed at Panīpat].
2257
The height of the eastern face is 100 ft. and of the western 60 ft. The total length from north to south of the outside wall is 300 ft.; the breadth of the residence from east to west 160 ft. The 300 ft. of length appears to be that of the residence and service-courtyard (Cunningham p. 347 and Plate lxxxvii).
2258
kaj bīla āqārītīb. There can be little doubt that a white pediment would show up the coloured tiles of the upper part of the palace-walls more than would pale red sandstone. These tiles were so profuse as to name the building Chīt Mandīr (Painted Mandīr). Guided by Bābur’s statement, Cunningham sought for and found plaster in crevices of carved work; from which one surmises that the white coating approved itself to successors of Mān-sing. [It may be noted that the word Mandīr is in the same case for a translator as is ‘imārat (f. 339b n.) since it requires a grouping word to cover its uses for temple, palace, and less exalted buildings.]
2259
The lower two storeys are not only backed by solid ground but, except near the Hātī-pūl, have the rise of ground in front of them which led Bābur to say they were “even in a pit” (chūqūr).
2260
MSS. vary between har and bīr, every and one, in this sentence. It may be right to read bīr, and apply it only to the eastern façade as that on which there were most cupolas. There are fewer on the south side, which still stands (Luard’s photo. No. 37).
2261
The ground rises steeply from this Gate to an inner one, called Hawā-pūl from the rush of air (hawā) through it.
2262
Cunningham says the riders were the Rāja and a driver. Perhaps they were a mahout and his mate. The statue stood to the left on exit (chīqīsh).
2263
This window will have been close to the Gate where no mound interferes with outlook.
2264
Rooms opening on inner and open courts appear to form the third story of the residence.
2265
T. chūqūr, hollow, pit. This storey is dark and unventilated, a condition due to small windows, absence of through draught, and the adjacent mound. Cunningham comments on its disadvantages.
2266
Agarcha Hindūstānī takalluflār qīlīb tūrlār walī bī hawālīk-rāq yīrlār dūr. Perhaps amongst the pains taken were those demanded for punkhas. I regret that Erskine’s translation of this passage, so superior to my own in literary merit, does not suit the Turkī original. He worked from the Persian translation, and not only so, but with a less rigid rule of translation than binds me when working on Bābur’s ipsissima verba (Mems. p. 384; Cunningham p. 349; Luard p. 226).
2267
The words aūrtā dā make apt contrast between the outside position of Mān-sing’s buildings which helped to form the fort-wall, and Bikramājīt’s which were further in except perhaps one wall of his courtyard (see Cunningham’s Plate lxxxiii).
2268
Cunningham (p. 350) says this was originally a bāra-dūrī, a twelve-doored open hall, and must have been light. His “originally” points to the view that the hall had been altered before Bābur saw it but as it was only about 10 years old at that time, it was in its first form, presumably. Perhaps Bābur saw it in a bad light. The dimensions Cunningham gives of it suggest that the high dome must have been frequently ill-lighted.
2269
The word tālār, having various applications, is not easy to match with a single English word, nor can one be sure in all cases what it means, a platform, a hall, or etc. To find an equivalent for its diminutive tālār-ghina is still more difficult. Raḥīm-dād’s tālār-ette will have stood on the flat centre of the dome, raised on four pillars or perhaps with its roof only so-raised; one is sure there would be a roof as protection against sun or moon. It may be noted that the dome is not visible outside from below, but is hidden by the continuation upwards of walls which form a mean-looking parallelogram of masonry.
2270
T. tūr yūl. Concerning this hidden road see Cunningham p. 350 and Plate lxxxvii.
2271
bāghcha. The context shews that the garden was for flowers. For Bābur’s distinctions between bāghcha, bāgh and baghāt, see Index s. nn.
2272
shaft-ālū i. e. the rosy colour of peach-flowers, perhaps lip-red (Steingass). Bābur’s contrast seems to be between those red oleanders of Hindūstān that are rosy-red, and the deep red ones he found in Gūālīār.
2273
kul, any large sheet of water, natural or artificial (Bābur). This one will be the Sūraj-kund (Sun-tank).
2274
This is the Telī Mandīr, or Telingana Mandīr (Luard). Cf. Cunningham, p. 356 and Luard p. 227 for accounts of it; and G. of I. s. n. Telīagarhi for Telī Rājas.
2275
This is a large outwork reached from the Gate of the same name. Bābur may have gone there specially to see the Gūjarī Mandīr said by Cunningham to have been built by Mān-sing’s Gūjar wife Mṛiga-nayāna (fawn-eyed). Cf. Cunningham p. 351 and, for other work done by the same Queen, in the s. e. corner of the fort, p. 344; Luard p. 226. In this place “construction” would serve to translate ‘imārat (f. 340 n.).
2276
āb-duzd, a word conveying the notion of a stealthy taking of the water. The walls at the mouth of Urwā were built by Altamsh for the protection of its water for the fort. The date Bābur mentions (a few lines further) is presumably that of their erection.
2277
Cunningham, who gives 57 ft. as the height of this statue, says Bābur estimated it at 20 gaz, or 40 ft., but this is not so. Bābur’s word is not gaz a measure of 24 fingers-breadth, but qārī, the length from the tip of the shoulder to the fingers-ends; it is about 33 inches, not less, I understand. Thus stated in qārīs Bābur’s estimate of the height comes very near Cunningham’s, being a good 55 ft. to 57 ft. (I may note that I have usually translated qārī by “yard”, as the yard is its nearest English equivalent. The Pers. trs. of the B. N. translates by gaz, possibly a larger gaz than that of 24 fingers-breadth i. e. inches.)
2278
The statues were not broken up by Bābur’s agents; they were mutilated; their heads were restored with coloured plaster by the Jains (Cunningham p. 365; Luard p. 228).
2279
rozan [or, aūz:n] … tafarruj qīlīb. Neither Cunningham nor Luard mentions this window, perhaps because Erskine does not; nor is this name of a Gate found. It might be that of the Dhonda-paur (Cunningham, p. 339). The 1st Pers. trs. [I.O. 215 f. 210] omits the word rozan (or, auz:n); the 2nd [I.O. 217 f. 236b] renders it by jā’ī, place. Manifestly the Gate was opened by Bābur, but, presumably, not precisely at the time of his visit. I am inclined to understand that rozan … tafarruj karda means enjoying the window formerly used by Muḥammadan rulers. If aūz:n be the right reading, its sense is obscure.
2280
This will have occurred in the latter half of 934 AH. of which no record is now known.
2281
He is mentioned under the name Asūk Mal Rājpūt, as a servant of Rānā Sangā by the Mirāt-i-sikandarī, lith. ed. p. 161. In Bayley’s Translation p. 273 he is called Awāsūk, manifestly by clerical error, the sentence being az jānib-i-au Asūk Mal Rājpūt dar ān (qila‘) būda…
2282
ātā-līk, aūghūl-līk, i. e. he spoke to the son as a father, to the mother as a son.
2283
The Mirāt-i-sikandarī (lith. ed. p. 234, Bayley’s trs. p. 372) confirms Bābur’s statement that the precious things were at Bikramājīt’s disposition. Perhaps they had been in his mother’s charge during her husband’s life. They were given later to Bahādur Shāh of Gujrāt.
2284
The Telī Mandīr has not a cupola but a waggon-roof of South Indian style, whence it may be that it has the southern name Telingana, suggested by Col. Luard.
2285
See Luard’s Photo. No. 139 and P. Mundy’s sketch of the fort p. 62.
2286
This will be the Ghargarāj-gate which looks south though it is not at the south end of the fort-hill where there is only a postern approached by a flight of stone steps (Cunningham p. 332).
2287
The garden will have been on the lower ground at the foot of the ramp and not near the Hātī-pūl itself where the scarp is precipitous.
2288
Mūndīn kīchīkrāq ātlānīlghān aīkāndūr. This may imply that the distance mentioned to Bābur was found by him an over-estimate. Perhaps the fall was on the Mūrar-river.
2289
Rope (Shaw); corde qui sert à attacher le bagage sur les chameaux (de Courteille); a thread of 20 cubits long for weaving (Steingass); I have the impression that an arghamchī is a horse’s tether.
2290
For information about this opponent of Bābur in the battle of Kānwa, see the Asiatic Review, Nov. 1915, II. Beveridge’s art. Silhadī, and the Mirāt-i-sikandarī.
2291
Colonel Luard has suggested to us that the Bābur-nāma word Sūkhjana may stand for Salwai or Sukhalhari, the names of two villages near Gūālīār.
2292
Presumably of night, 6-9 p.m., of Saturday Muḥ. 18th-Oct. 2nd.
2293
f. 330b and f. 339b.
2294
Between the last explicit date in the text, viz. Sunday, Muḥ. 19th, and the one next following, viz. Saturday, Ṣafar 3rd, the diary of six days is wanting. The gap seems to be between the unfinished account of doings in Dhūlpūr and the incomplete one of those of the Monday of the party. For one of the intermediate days Bābur had made an appointment, when in Gūālīār (f. 343), with the envoys of Bikramājīt, the trysting-day being Muḥ. 23rd (i. e. 9 days after Muḥ. 14th). Bābur is likely to have gone to Bīāna as planned; that envoys met him there may be surmised from the circumstance that when negociations with Bikramājīt were renewed in Āgra (f. 345), two sets of envoys were present, a “former” one and a “later” one, and this although all envoys had been dismissed from Gūālīār. The “former” ones will have been those who went to Bīāna, were not given leave there, but were brought on to Āgra; the “later” ones may have come to Āgra direct from Ranthaṃbhor. It suits all round to take it that pages have been lost on which was the record of the end of the Dhūlpūr visit, of the journey to the, as yet unseen, fort of Bīāna, of tryst kept by the envoys, of other doings in Bīāna where, judging from the time taken to reach Sīkrī, it may be that the ma‘jūn party was held.
2295
Anglicé, Tuesday after 6 p.m.
2296
aghaz aīchīb nīma yīb, which words seem to imply the breaking of a fast.
2297
Doubtless the garden owes its name to the eight heavens or paradises mentioned in the Qurān (Hughes’ Dictionary of Islām s. n. Paradise). Bābur appears to have reached Āgra on the 1st of Ṣafar; the 2nd may well have been spent on the home affairs of a returned traveller.
2298
The great, or elder trio were daughters of Sl. Abū-sa‘īd Mīrzā, Bābur’s paternal-aunts therefore, of his dutiful attendance on whom, Gul-badan writes.
2299
“Lesser,” i. e. younger in age, lower in rank as not being the daughters of a sovereign Mīrzā, and held in less honour because of a younger generation.
2300
Gul-badan mentions the arrival in Hindūstān of a khānīm of this name, who was a daughter of Sl. Maḥmūd Khān Chaghatāī, Bābur’s maternal-uncle; to this maternal relationship the word chīcha (mother) may refer. Yīnkā, uncle’s or elder brother’s wife, has occurred before (ff. 192, 207), chīcha not till now.