The Bābur-nāma
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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.
2519
“Friday” here stands for Anglicé, Thursday after 6 p.m.; this, only, suiting Bābur’s next explicit date Sha‘bān 1st, Saturday.
2520
The march, beginning on the Jumna, is now along the united rivers.
2521
ẓarb-zanlīk arābalār. Here the carts are those carrying the guns.
2522
From the particulars Bābur gives about the Tūs (Tons) and Karmā-nāśā, it would seem that he had not passed them last year, an inference supported by what is known of his route in that year: – He came from Gūālīār to the Kanār-passage (f. 336), there crossed the Jumna and went direct to Qanauj (f. 335), above Qanauj bridged the Ganges, went on to Bangarmāu (f. 338), crossed the Gūmtī and went to near the junction of the Ghogrā and Sardā (f. 338b). The next indication of his route is that he is at Baksara, but whether he reached it by water down the Ghogrā, as his meeting with Muḥ. Ma‘rūf Farmūlī suggests (f. 377), or by land, nothing shews. From Baksara (f. 366) he went up-stream to Chausa (f. 365b), on perhaps to Sayyidpūr, 2m. from the mouth of the Gūmtī, and there left the Ganges for Jūnpūr (f. 365). I have found nothing about his return route to Āgra; it seems improbable that he would go so far south as to near Pīāg; a more northerly and direct road to Fatḥpūr and Sarāī Bāburpūr may have been taken. – Concerning Bābur’s acts in 934 AH. the following item, (met with since I was working on 934 AH.), continues his statement (f. 338b) that he spent a few days near Aūd (Ajōdhya) to settle its affairs. The D.G. of Fyzābāa (H. E. Nevill) p. 173 says “In 1528 AD. Bābur came to Ajodhya (Aūd) and halted a week. He destroyed the ancient temple” (marking the birth-place of Rāma) “and on its site built a mosque, still known as Bābur’s Mosque… It has two inscriptions, one on the outside, one on the pulpit; both are in Persian; and bear the date 935 AH.” This date may be that of the completion of the building. – (Corrigendum: – On f. 339 n. 1, I have too narrowly restricted the use of the name Sarjū. Bābur used it to describe what the maps of Arrowsmith and Johnson shew, and not only what the Gazetteer of India map of the United Provinces does. It applies to the Sardā (f. 339) as Bābur uses it when writing of the fords.)
2523
Here the lacuna of the Ḥai. Codex ends.
2524
Perhaps, where there is now the railway station of “Nulibai” (I.S. Map). The direct road on which the army moved, avoids the windings of the river.
2525
This has been read as T. kīnt, P. dih, Eng. village and Fr. village.
2526
“Nankunpur” lying to the north of Puhari railway-station suits the distance measured on maps.
2527
These will be the women-travellers.
2528
Perhaps jungle tracts lying in the curves of the river.
2529
jīrga, which here stands for the beaters’ incurving line, witness the exit of the buffalo at the end. Cf. f. 367b for a jīrga of boats.
2530
aūzūn aūzāgh, many miles and many hours?
2531
Bulloa? (I.S. Map).
2532
Anglicé, Sunday after 6 p.m.
2533
‘alufa u qunal (f. 359b).