The Bābur-nāma

2434

A tang is a small silver coin of the value of about a penny (Erskine).

2435

tānglāsī, lit. at its dawning. It is not always clear whether tānglāsī means, Anglicé, next dawn or day, which here would be Monday, or whether it stands for the dawn (daylight) of the Muḥammadan day which had begun at 6 p. m. on the previous evening, here Sunday. When Bābur records, e. g. a late audience, tānglāsī, following, will stand for the daylight of the day of audience. The point is of some importance as bearing on discrepancies of days, as these are stated in MSS., with European calendars; it is conspicuously so in Bābur’s diary sections.

2436

risālat t̤arīqī bīla; their special mission may have been to work for peace (f. 359b, n. 1).

2437

He may well be Kāmrān’s father-in-law Sl. ‘Alī Mīrzā T̤aghāī Begchīk.

2438

nīmcha u takband. The tak-band is a silk or woollen girdle fastening with a “hook and eye” (Steingass), perhaps with a buckle.

2439

This description is that of the contents of the “Rāmpūr Dīwān”; the tarjuma being the Wālidiyyah-risāla (f. 361 and n.). What is said here shows that four copies went to Kābul or further north. Cf. Appendix Q.

2440

Sar-khat̤ may mean “copies” set for Kāmrān to imitate.

2441

bīr pahr yāwūshūb aīdī; I.O. 215 f. 221, qarīb yak pās roz būd.

2442

ākhar, a word which may reveal a bad start and uncertainty as to when and where to halt.

2443

This, and not Chandwār (f. 331b), appears the correct form. Neither this place nor Ābāpūr is mentioned in the G. of I.’s Index or shewn in the I.S. Map of 1900 (cf. f. 331b n. 3). Chandawār lies s.w. of Fīrūzābād, and near a village called Ṣufīpūr.

2444

Anglicé, Wednesday after 6 p.m.

2445

or life-guardsman, body-guard.

2446

This higher title for T̤ahmāsp, which first appears here in the B.N., may be an early slip in the Turkī text, since it occurs in many MSS. and also because “Shāh-zāda” reappears on f. 359.

2447

Slash-face, balafré; perhaps Ibrāhīm Begchīk (Index s. n.), but it is long since he was mentioned by Bābur, at least by name. He may however have come, at this time of reunion in Āgra, with Mīrzā Beg T̤aghāī (his uncle or brother?), father-in-law of Kāmrān.

2448

The army will have kept to the main road connecting the larger towns mentioned and avoiding the ravine district of the Jumna. What the boat-journey will have been between high banks and round remarkable bends can be learned from the G. of I. and Neave’s District Gazetteer of Mainpūrī. Rāprī is on the road from Fīrūzābād to the ferry for Bateswar, where a large fair is held annually. (It is misplaced further east in the I.S. Map of 1900.) There are two Fatḥpūrs, n. e. of Rāprī.

2449

aūlūgh tūghāīnīng tūbī. Here it suits to take the Turkī word tūghāī to mean bend of a river, and as referring to the one shaped (on the map) like a soda-water bottle, its neck close to Rāprī. Bābur avoided it by taking boat below its mouth. – In neither Persian translation has tūghāī been read to mean a bend of a river; the first has az pāyān rūīa Rāprī, perhaps referring to the important ford (pāyān); the second has az zīr bulandī kalān Rāprī, perhaps referring to a height at the meeting of the bank of the ravine down which the road to the ford comes, with the high bank of the river. Three examples of tūghāī or tūqāī [a synonym given by Dictionaries], can be seen in Abū’l-ghāzī’s Shajrat-i-Turk, Fræhn’s imprint, pp. 106, 107, 119 (Désmaisons’ trs. pp. 204, 205, 230). In each instance Désmaisons renders it by coude, elbow, but one of the examples may need reconsideration, since the word has the further meanings of wood, dense forest by the side of a river (Vambéry), prairie (Zenker), and reedy plain (Shaw).

2450

Blochmann describes the apparatus for marking lines to guide writing (A. – i-A. trs. p. 52 n. 5): – On a card of the size of the page to be written on, two vertical lines are drawn within an inch of the edges; along these lines small holes are pierced at regular intervals, and through these a string is laced backwards and forwards, care being taken that the horizontal strings are parallel. Over the lines of string the pages are placed and pressed down; the strings then mark the paper sufficiently to guide the writing.

2451

tarkīb (nīng) khat̤ī bīla tarjuma bīlīr aūchūn. The Rāmpūr Dīwān may supply the explanation of the uncertain words tarkīb khat̤ī. The “translation” (tarjuma), mentioned in the passage quoted above, is the Wālidiyyah-risāla, the first item of the Dīwān, in which it is entered on crowded pages, specially insufficient for the larger hand of the chapter-headings. The number of lines per page is 13; Bābur now fashions a line-marker for 11. He has already despatched 4 copies of the translation (f. 357b); he will have judged them unsatisfactory; hence to give space for the mixture of hands (tarkīb khat̤ī), i. e. the smaller hand of the poem and the larger of the headings, he makes an 11 line marker.

2452

Perhaps Aḥrārī’s in the Wālidiyyah-risāla, perhaps those of Muḥammad. A quatrain in the Rāmpūr Dīwān connects with this admonishment [Plate xiva, 2nd quatrain].

2453

Jākhān (G. of Mainpūrī). The G. of Etāwa (Drake-Brockman) p. 213, gives this as some 18 m. n.w. of Etāwa and as lying amongst the ravines of the Jumna.

2454

f. 359b allows some of the particulars to be known.

2455

Mahdī may have come to invite Bābur to the luncheon he served shortly afterwards. The Ḥai. MS. gives him the honorific plural; either a second caller was with him or an early scribe has made a slip, since Bābur never so-honours Mahdī. This small point touches the larger one of how Bābur regarded him, and this in connection with the singular story Niz̤āmu’d-dīn Aḥmad tells in his T̤abaqāt-i-akbarī about Khalīfa’s wish to supplant Humāyūn by Mahdī Khwāja (Index s. nn.).

2456

yīgītlārnī shokhlūqgha sāldūq, perhaps set them to make fun. Cf. f. 366, yīgītlār bīr pāra shokhlūq qīldīlār. Muḥ. Shīrāzī (p. 323 foot) makes the startling addition of dar āb (andākhtīm), i. e. he says that the royal party flung the braves into the river.

2457

The Gazetteer of Etāwa (Drake-Brockman) p. 186, s. n. Bāburpūr, writes of two village sites [which from their position are Mūrī-and-Adūsa], as known by the name Sarāī Bāburpūr from having been Bābur’s halting-place. They are 24m. to the s.e. of Etāwa, on the old road for Kālpī. Near the name Bāburpūr in the Gazetteer Map there is Muhuri (Mūrī?); there is little or no doubt that Sarāī Bāburpūr represents the camping-ground Mūrī-and-Adūsa.

2458

This connects with Kītīn-qarā’s complaints of the frontier-begs (f. 361), and with the talk of peace (f. 356b).

2459

This injunction may connect with the desired peace; it will have been prompted by at least a doubt in Bābur’s mind as to Kāmrān’s behaviour perhaps e. g. in manifested dislike for a Shīa‘. Concerning the style Shāh-zāda see f. 358, p. 643, n. 1.

2460

Kāmrān’s mother Gul-rukh Begchīk will have been of the party who will have tried in Kābul to forward her son’s interests.

2461

f. 348, p. 624, n. 2.

2462

Kābul and Tramontana.

2463

Presumably that of Shamsu’d-dīn Muḥammad’s mission. One of Bābur’s couplets expresses longing for the fruits, and also for the “running waters”, of lands other than Hindūstān, with conceits recalling those of his English contemporaries in verse, as indeed do several others of his short poems (Rāmpūr Dīwān Plate xvii A.).

2464

Ḥai. MS. nā marbūt̤līghī; so too the 2nd Pers. trs. but the 1st writes wairānī u karābī which suits the matter of defence.

2465

qūrghān, walled-town; from the maẓbūt following, the defences are meant.

2466

viz. Governor Khwāja Kalān, on whose want of dominance his sovereign makes good-natured reflection.

2467

‘alūfa u qūnāl; cf. 364b.

2468

Following aīlchī (envoys) there is in the Ḥai. MS. and in I.O. 217 a doubtful word, būmla, yūmla; I.O. 215 (which contains a Persian trs. of the letter) is obscure, Ilminsky changes the wording slightly; Erskine has a free translation. Perhaps it is yaumī, daily, misplaced (see above).

2469

Perhaps, endow the Mosque so as to leave no right of property in its revenues to their donor, here Bābur. Cf. Hughes’ Dict. of Islām s.nn. sharī‘, masjid and waqf.

2470

f. 139. Khwāja Kalān himself had taken from Hindūstān the money for repairing this dam.

2471

sāpqūn ālīp; the 2nd Pers. trs. as if from sātqūn ālīp, kharīda, purchasing.

2472

naz̤ar-gāh, perhaps, theatre, as showing the play enacted at the ford. Cf. ff. 137, 236, 248b. Tūtūn-dara will be Masson’s Tūtām-dara. Erskine locates Tūtūn-dara some 8 kos (16 m.) n. w. of Hūpīān (Ūpīān). Masson shews that it was a charming place (Journeys in Biluchistan, Afghanistan and the Panj-āb, vol. iii, cap. vi and vii).

2473

jībachī. Bābur’s injunction seems to refer to the maintaining of the corps and the manufacture of armour rather than to care for the individual men involved.

2474

Either the armies in Nīl-āb, or the women in the Kābul-country (f. 375).

2475

Perhaps what Bābur means is, that both what he had said to ‘Abdu’l-lāh and what the quatrain expresses, are dissuasive from repentance. Erskine writes (Mems. p. 403) but without textual warrant, “I had resolution enough to persevere”; de Courteille (Mems. ii, 390), “Voici un quatrain qui exprime au juste les difficultés de ma position.”

2476

The surface retort seems connected with the jacket, perhaps with a request for the gift of it.

2477

Clearly what recalled this joke of Banāī’s long-silent, caustic tongue was that its point lay ostensibly in a baffled wish – in ‘Alī-sher’s professed desire to be generous and a professed impediment, which linked in thought with Bābur’s desire for wine, baffled by his abjuration. So much Banāī’s smart verbal retort shows, but beneath this is the double-entendre which cuts at the Beg as miserly and as physically impotent, a defect which gave point to another jeer at his expense, one chronicled by Sām Mīrzā and translated in Hammer-Purgstall’s Geschichte von schönen Redekünste Persiens, art. CLV. (Cf. f. 179-80.) – The word mādagī is used metaphorically for a button-hole; like nā-mardī, it carries secondary meanings, miserliness, impotence, etc. (Cf. Wollaston’s English-Persian Dictionary s. n. button-hole, where only we have found mādagī with this sense.)

2478

The 1st Pers. trs. expresses “all these jokes”, thus including with the double-meanings of mādagī, the jests of the quatrain.

2479

The 1st Pers. trs. fills out Bābur’s allusive phrase here with “of the Wālidiyyah”. His wording allows the inference that what he versified was a prose Turkī translation of a probably Arabic original.

2480

Erskine comments here on the non-translation into Persian of Bābur’s letters. Many MSS., however, contain a translation (f. 348, p. 624, n. 2 and E.’s n. f. 377b).

2481

Anglicé, Thursday after 6 p.m.

2482

What would suit measurement on maps and also Bābur’s route is “Jumoheen” which is marked where the Sarāī Bāburpūr-Atsu-Phaphand road turns south, east of Phaphand (I.S. Map of 1900, Sheet 68).

2483

var. Qabāq, Qatāk, Qanāk, to each of which a meaning might be attached. Bābur had written to Humāyūn about the frontier affair, as one touching the desired peace (f. 359).

2484

This will refer to the late arrival in Āgra of the envoy named, who was not with his younger brother at the feast of f. 351b (f. 357, p. 641, n. 2). – As to T̤ahmāsp’s style, see f. 354, f. 358.

2485

Shāh-qulī may be the ill-informed narrator of f. 354.

2486

Both are marked on the southward road from Jumoheen (Jumandnā?) for Auraiya.

2487

The old Kālpī pargana having been sub-divided, Dīrapūr is now in the district of Cawnpore (Kānhpūr).

2488

That this operation was not hair-cutting but head-shaving is shewn by the verbs T. qīrmāq and its Pers. trs. tarāsh kardan. To shave the head frequently is common in Central Asia.

2489

This will be Chaparghatta on the Dīrapūr-Bhognīpūr-Chaparghatta-Mūsanagar road, the affixes kada and ghatta both meaning house, temple, etc.

2490

Māhīm, and with her the child Gul-badan, came in advance of the main body of women. Bābur seems to refer again to her assumption of royal style by calling her Walī, Governor (f. 369 and n.). It is unusual that no march or halt is recorded on this day.

2491

or, Ārampūr. We have not succeeded in finding this place; it seems to have been on the west bank of the Jumna, since twice Bābur when on the east bank, writes of coming opposite to it (supra and f. 379). If no move was made on Tuesday, Jumāda II. 6th (cf. last note), the distance entered as done on Wednesday would locate the halting-place somewhere near the Akbarpūr of later name, which stands on a road and at a ferry. But if the army did a stage on Tuesday, of which Bābur omits mention, Wednesday’s march might well bring him opposite to Hamirpūr and to the “Rampur”-ferry. The verbal approximation of Ārampūr and “Rampur” arrests attention. – Local encroachment by the river, which is recorded in the District Gazetteers, may have something to do with the disappearance from these most useful books and from maps, of pargana Ādampūr (or, Ārampūr).

2492

tūshlāb. It suits best here, since solitude is the speciality of the excursion, to read tūshmāk as meaning to take the road, Fr. cheminer.

2493

da‘wī bīla; Mems. p. 404, challenge; Méms. ii, 391, il avait fait des façons, a truth probably, but one inferred only.

2494

This will be more to the south than Kūra Khaṣ, the headquarters of the large district; perhaps it is “Koora Khera” (? Kūra-khirāj) which suits the route (I.S. Map, Sheet 88).

2495

Perhaps Kunda Kanak, known also as “Kuria, Koria, Kura and Kunra Kanak” (D.G. of Fatḥpūr).

2496

Haswa or Hanswa. The conjoint name represents two villages some 6m. apart, and is today that of their railway-station.

2497

almost due east of Fatḥpūr, on the old King’s Highway (Bādshāhī Sar-rāh).

2498

His ancestors had ruled in Jūnpūr from 1394 to 1476 AD., his father Ḥusain Shāh having been conquered by Sl. Sikandar Lūdī at the latter date. He was one of three rivals for supremacy in the East (Sharq), the others being Jalālu’d-dīn Nūhānī and Maḥmūd Lūdī, – Afghāns all three. Cf. Erskine’s History of India, Bābur, i, 501.

2499

This name appears on the I.S. Map, Sheet 88, but too far north to suit Bābur’s distances, and also off the Sarāī Munda-Kusār-Karrah road. The position of Naubasta suits better.

2500

Sher Khān was associated with Dūdū Bībī in the charge of her son’s affairs. Bābur’s favours to him, his son Humāyūn’s future conqueror, will have been done during the Eastern campaign in 934 AH., of which so much record is missing. Cf. Tārīkh-i-sher-shāhī, E. & D.’s History of India, iv, 301 et seq. for particulars of Sher Khān (Farīd Khān Sūr Afghān).

2501

In writing “SL. MAḤMŪD”, Bābur is reporting his informant’s style, he himself calling Maḥmūd “Khān” only (f. 363 and f. 363b).

2502

This will be the more northerly of two Kusārs marked as in Karrah; even so, it is a very long 6 kurohs (12m.) from the Dugdugī of the I.S. Map (cf. n. supra).

2503

bīr pāra āsh u ta‘ām, words which suggest one of those complete meals served, each item on its separate small dish, and all dishes fitting like mosaic into one tray. T. āsh is cooked meat (f. 2 n. 1 and f. 343b); Ar. ta‘ām will be sweets, fruit, bread, perhaps rice also.

2504

The yaktāī, one-fold coat, contrasts with the dū-tāhī, two-fold (A. – i-A. Bib. Ind. ed., p. 101, and Blochmann’s trs. p. 88).

2505

This acknowledgement of right to the style Sult̤ān recognized also supremacy of the Sharqī claim to rule over that of the Nūḥānī and Lūdī competitors.

2506

mīndīn bītī tūrgān waqāī'. This passage Teufel used to support his view that Bābur’s title for his book was Waqāī‘, and not Bābur-nāma which, indeed, Teufel describes as the Kazaner Ausgabe adoptirte Titel. Bābur-nāma, however, is the title [or perhaps, merely scribe’s name] associated both with Kehr’s text and with the Ḥaidarābād Codex. – I have found no indication of the selection by Bābur of any title; he makes no mention of the matter and where he uses the word waqāī‘ or its congeners, it can be read as a common noun. In his colophon to the Rāmpūr Dīwān, it is a parallel of ash‘ār, poems. Judging from what is found in the Mubīn, it may be right to infer that, if he had lived to complete his book – now broken off s. a. 914 AH. (f. 216b) – he would have been explicit as to its title, perhaps also as to his grounds for choosing it. Such grounds would have found fitting mention in a preface to the now abrupt opening of the Bābur-nāma (f. 1b), and if the Malfūzāt-i-tīmūrī be Tīmūr’s authentic autobiography, this book might have been named as an ancestral example influencing Bābur to write his own. Nothing against the authenticity of the Malfūzāt can be inferred from the circumstance that Bābur does not name it, because the preface in which such mention would be in harmony with e. g. his Walidiyyah preface, was never written. It might accredit the Malfūzāt to collate passages having common topics, as they appear in the Bābur-nāma, Malfūzāt-i-tīmūrī and Z̤afar-nāma (cf. E. & D.’s H. of I. iv, 559 for a discussion by Dr. Sachau and Prof. Dowson on the Malfūzāt). (Cf. Z.D.M. xxxvii, p. 184, Teufel’s art. Bābur und Abū’l-faẓl; Smirnow’s Cat. of Manuscrits Turcs, p. 142; Index in loco s. nn. Mubīn and Title.)

2507

Koh-khirāj, Revenue-paying Koh (H. G. Nevill’s D. G. of Allāhābād, p. 261).

2508

kīma aīchīdā, which suggests a boat with a cabin, a bajrā (Hobson-Jobson s. n. budgerow).

2509

He had stayed behind his kinsman Khwāja Kalān. Both, as Bābur has said, were descendants of Khwāja ‘Ubaidu’l-lāh Aḥrārī. Khwāja Kalān was a grandson of Aḥrārī’s second son Yahyā; Khwāja ‘Abdu’sh-shahīd was the son of his fifth, Khwāja ‘Abdu’l-lāh (Khwājagān-khwāja). ‘Abdu’sh-shahīd returned to India under Akbar, received a fief, maintained 2,000 poor persons, left after 20 years, and died in Samarkand in 982 AH. -1574-5 AD. (A. – i-A., Blochmann’s trs. and notes, pp. 423, 539).

2510

f. 363, f. 363b.

2511

Not found on maps; OOjani or Ujahni about suits the measured distance.

2512

Prayāg, Ilāhābād, Allāhābād. Between the asterisk in my text (supra) and the one following “ford” before the foliation mark f. 364, the Ḥai. MS. has a lacuna which, as being preceded and followed by broken sentences, can hardly be due to a scribe’s skip, but may result from the loss of a folio. What I have entered above between the asterisks is translated from the Kehr-Ilminsky text; it is in the two Persian translations also. Close scrutiny of it suggests that down to the end of the swimming episode it is not in order and that the account of the swim across the Ganges may be a survival of the now missing record of 934 AH. (f. 339). It is singular that the Pers. trss. make no mention of Pīāg or of Sīr-auliya; their omission arouses speculation, as to in which text, the Turkī or Persian, it was first tried to fill what remains a gap in the Ḥai. Codex. A second seeming sign of disorder is the incomplete sentence yūrtgha kīlīb, which is noted below. A third is the crowd of incidents now standing under “Tuesday”. A fourth, and an important matter, is that on grounds noted at the end of the swimming passage (p. 655 n. 3) it is doubtful whether that passage is in its right place. – It may be that some-one, at an early date after Bābur’s death, tried to fill the lacuna discovered in his manuscript, with help from loose folios or parts of them. Cf. Index s. n. swimming, and f. 377b, p. 680 n. 2.

2513

The Chaghatāī sult̤āns will have been with ‘Askarī east of the Ganges.

2514

tūr hawālīk; Mems. p. 406, violence of the wind; Méms. ii, 398, une température très agréable.

2515

yūrtgha kīlīb, an incomplete sentence.

2516

ārāl bār aīkāndūr, phrasing implying uncertainty; there may have been an island, or such a peninsula as a narrow-mouthed bend of a river forms, or a spit or bluff projecting into the river. The word ārāl represents Aīkī-sū-ārāsī, Miyān-dū-āb, Entre-eaux, Twixt-two-streams, Mesopotamia.

2517

qūl; Pers. trss. dast andākhtan and dast. Presumably the 33 strokes carried the swimmer across the deep channel, or the Ganges was crossed higher than Pīāg.

2518

The above account of Bābur’s first swim across the Ganges which is entered under date Jumāda II. 27th, 935 AH. (March 8th, 1529 AD.), appears misplaced, since he mentions under date Rajab 25th, 935 AH. (April 4th, 1529 AD. f. 366b), that he had swum the Ganges at Baksara (Buxar) a year before, i. e. on or close to Rajab 25th, 934 AH. (April 15th, 1528 AD.). Nothing in his writings shews that he was near Pīāg (Allāhābād) in 934 AH.; nothing indisputably connects the swimming episode with the “Tuesday” below which it now stands; there is no help given by dates. One supposes Bābur would take his first chance to swim the Ganges; this was offered at Qanauj (f. 336), but nothing in the short record of that time touches the topic. The next chance would be after he was in Aūd, when, by an unascertained route, perhaps down the Ghogrā, he made his way to Baksara where he says (f. 366b) he swam the river. Taking into consideration the various testimony noted, [Index s. n. swimming] there seems warrant for supposing that this swimming passage is a survival of the missing record of 934 AH. (f. 339). Cf. f. 377b, p. 680 and n. 2 for another surmised survival of 934 AH.