The Bābur-nāma

1603

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

1604

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

1605

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

1606

Presumably he could not cut off supplies.

1607

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

1608

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

1609

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

1610

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

1611

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

1612

In the Beth Jalandhar dū-āb.

1613

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

1614

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

1615

dūn, f. 260 and note.

1616

These were both refugees from Harāt.

1617

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

1618

kūrūshūr waqt (Index s. n. kūrūsh).

1619

Bābur’s phrasing suggests beggary.

1620

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

1621

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

1622

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

1623

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

1624

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

1625

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

1626

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

1627

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

1628

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

1629

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

1630

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

1631

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

1632

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

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

1633

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

1634

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

1635

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

1636

yīghāch, which also means wood.

1637

f. 257.

1638

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

1639

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

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

1640

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

1641

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

1642

Elph. MS. Karnāl, obviously a clerical error.

1643

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

1644

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

1645

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

1646

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

1647

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

1648

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

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

1649

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

1650

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

1651

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

1652

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

1653

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

1654

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

1655

Is this the village of the Pānī Afghāns?

1656

Index s. n. arrow.

1657

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

1658

i. e. of his father and grandfather, Sikandar and Buhlūl.

1659

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

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

1660

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

1661

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

1662

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

1663

This wording will cover armour of man and horse.

1664

ātlāndūk, Pers. trs. sūwār shudīm. Some later oriental writers locate Bābur’s battle at two or more miles from the town of Pānī-pat, and Bābur’s word ātlāndūk might imply that his cavalry rode forth and arrayed outside his defences, but his narrative allows of his delivering attack, through the wide sally-ports, after arraying behind the carts and mantelets which checked his adversary’s swift advance. The Mahrattas, who may have occupied the same ground as Bābur, fortified themselves more strongly than he did, as having powerful artillery against them. Aḥmad Shāh Abdālī’s defence against them was an ordinary ditch and abbattis, [Bābur’s ditch and branch,] mostly of dhāk trees (Butea frondosa), a local product Bābur also is likely to have used.

1665

The preceding three words seem to distinguish this Shāh Ḥusain from several others of his name and may imply that he was the son of Yāragī Mughūl Ghānchī (Index and I.O. 217 f. 184b l. 7).

1666

For Bābur’s terms vide f. 209b

1667

This is Mīrzā Khān’s son, i. e. Wais Mīrān-shāhī’s.

1668

A dispute for this right-hand post of honour is recorded on f. 100b, as also in accounts of Culloden.

1669

tartīb u yāsāl, which may include, as Erskine took it to do, the carts and mantelets; of these however, Ibrāhīm can hardly have failed to hear before he rode out of camp.

1670

f. 217b and note; Irvine’s Army of the Indian Mughuls p. 133. Here Erskine notes (Mems. p. 306) “The size of these artillery at this time is very uncertain. The word firingī is now (1826 AD.) used in the Deccan for a swivel. At the present day, zarb-zan in common usage is a small species of swivel. Both words in Bābur’s time appear to have been used for field-cannon.” (For an account of guns, intermediate in date between Bābur and Erskine, see the Āyīn-i-akbarī. Cf. f. 264 n. on the carts (arāba).)

1671

Although the authority of the Tārīkh-i-salāt̤īn-i-afaghāna is not weighty its reproduction of Afghān opinion is worth consideration. It says that astrologers foretold Ibrāhīm’s defeat; that his men, though greatly outnumbering Bābur’s, were out-of-heart through his ill-treatment of them, and his amīrs in displeasure against him, but that never-the-less, the conflict at Pānī-pat was more desperate than had ever been seen. It states that Ibrāhīm fell where his tomb now is (i. e. in circa 1002 AH. -1594 AD.); that Bābur went to the spot and, prompted by his tender heart, lifted up the head of his dead adversary, and said, “Honour to your courage!”, ordered brocade and sweetmeats made ready, enjoined Dilāwar Khān and Khalīfa to bathe the corpse and to bury it where it lay (E. & D. v, 2). Naturally, part of the reverence shewn to the dead would be the burial together of head and trunk.

1672

f. 209b and App. H. section c. Bābā chuhra would be one of the corps of braves.

1673

He was a brother of Muḥibb-i-‘alī’s mother.

1674

To give Humāyūn the title Mīrzā may be a scribe’s lapse, but might also be a nuance of Bābur’s, made to shew, with other minutiae, that Humāyūn was in chief command. The other minute matters are that instead of Humāyūn’s name being the first of a simple series of commanders’ names with the enclitic accusative appended to the last one (here Walī), as is usual, Humāyūn’s name has its own enclitic nī; and, again, the phrase is “Humāyūn with” such and such begs, a turn of expression differentiating him from the rest. The same unusual variations occur again, just below, perhaps with the same intention of shewing chief command, there of Mahdī Khwāja.