and
marāl appear to me to be used as
e. g. drake and duck are used.
Marāl and duck can both imply the female sex, but also both are generic, perhaps primarily so.
Cf. for further mention of
būghū-marāl f. 219 and f. 276. For uses of the word
marāl,
see the writings
e. g. of Atkinson, Kostenko (iii, 69), Lyddeker, Littledale, Selous, Ronaldshay, Church (Chinese Turkistan), Biddulph (Forsyth’s Mission).
77
Schuyler (ii, 3), 18 m.
78
Ḥai. MS. Hamesha bū deshttā yīl bār dūr. Marghīnānghā kīm sharqī dūr, hamesha mūndīn yīl bārūr; Khujandghā kīm gharībī dūr, dā’im mūndīn yīl kīlūr.
This is a puzzling passage. It seems to say that wind always goes east and west from the steppe as from a generating centre. E. and de C. have given it alternative directions, east or west, but there is little point in saying this of wind in a valley hemmed in on the north and the south. Bābur limits his statement to the steppe lying in the contracted mouth of the Farghāna valley (pace Schuyler ii, 51) where special climatic conditions exist such as (a) difference in temperature on the two sides of the Khujand narrows and currents resulting from this difference, – (b) the heating of the narrows by sun-heat reflected from the Mogol-tau, – and (c) the inrush of westerly wind over Mīrzā Rabāt̤. Local knowledge only can guide a translator safely but Bābur’s directness of speech compels belief in the significance of his words and this particularly when what he says is unexpected. He calls the Hā Darwesh a whirling wind and this it still is. Thinkable at least it is that a strong westerly current (the prevailing wind of Farghāna) entering over Mīrzā Rabāt̤ and becoming, as it does become, the whirlwind of Hā Darwesh on the hemmed-in steppe, – becoming so perhaps by conflict with the hotter indraught through the Gates of Khujand – might force that indraught back into the Khujand Narrows (in the way e. g. that one Nile in flood forces back the other), and at Khujand create an easterly current. All the manuscripts agree in writing to (ghā) Marghīnān and to (ghā) Khujand. It may be observed that, looking at the map, it appears somewhat strange that Bābur should take, for his wind objective, a place so distant from his (defined) Hā Darwesh and seemingly so screened by its near hills as is Marghīnān. But that westerly winds are prevalent in Marghīnān is seen e. g. in Middendorff’s Einblikke in den Farghāna Thal (p. 112). Cf. Réclus vi, 547; Schuyler ii, 51; Cahun’s Histoire du Khanat de Khokand p. 28 and Sven Hedin’s Durch Asien’s Wüsten s.n. būrān.
79
bādiya; a word perhaps selected as punning on bād, wind.
80
i. e. Akhsī Village. This word is sometimes spelled Akhsīkīs̤ but as the old name of the place was Akhsī-kīnt, it may be conjectured at least that the s̤ā’ī mas̤allas̤a of Akhsīkīs̤ represents the three points due for the nūn and tā of kīnt. Of those writing Akhsīkīt may be mentioned the Ḥai. and Kehr’s MSS. (the Elph. MS. here has a lacuna) the Z̤afar-nāma (Bib. Ind. i, 44) and Ibn Haukal (Ouseley p. 270); and of those writing the word with the s̤ā’ī muṣallas̤a (i. e. as Akhsīkīs̤), Yāqūt’s Dict, i, 162, Reinaud’s Abū’l-feda I. ii, 225-6, Ilminsky (p. 5) departing from his source, and I.O. Cat. (Ethé) No. 1029. It may be observed that Ibn Haukal (Ouseley p. 280) writes Banākaṣ for Banākat. For As̤īru’d-dīn Akhsīkītī, see Rieu ii, 563; Daulat Shāh (Browne) p. 121 and Ethé I.O. Cat. No. 1029.
81
Measured on the French military map of 1904, this may be 80 kil. i. e. 50 miles.
82
Concerning several difficult passages in the rest of Bābur’s account of Akhsī, see Appendix A.
83
The W. – i-B. here translates būghū-marāl by gazawn and the same word is entered, under-line, in the Ḥai. MS. Cf. f. 3b and note and f. 4 and note.
84
postīn pesh b: r: h. This obscure Persian phrase has been taken in the following ways: —
(a) W. – i-B. I.O. 215 and 217 (i. e. both versions) reproduce the phrase.
(b) W. – i-B. MS., quoted by Erskine, p. 6 note, (postīn-i mīsh burra).
(c) Leyden’s MS. Trs., a sheepskin mantle of five lambskins.
(d) Mems., Erskine, p. 6, a mantle of five lambskins.
(e) The Persian annotator of the Elph. MS., underlining pesh, writes, panj, five.
(f) Klaproth (Archives, p. 109), pustini pisch breh, d.h. gieb den vorderen Pelz.
(g) Kehr, p. 12 (Ilminsky p. 6) postin bīsh b: r:h.
(h) De. C, i, 9, fourrure d’agneau de la première qualité.
The “lambskins” of L. and E. carry on a notion of comfort started by their having read sayāh, shelter, for Turkī sā’ī, torrent-bed; de C. also lays stress on fur and warmth, but would not the flowery border of a mountain stream prompt rather a phrase bespeaking ornament and beauty than one expressing warmth and textile softness? If the phrase might be read as postīn pesh perā, what adorns the front of a coat, or as postīn pesh bar rah, the fine front of the coat, the phrase would recall the gay embroidered front of some leathern postins.
85
Var. tabarkhūn. The explanation best suiting its uses, enumerated here, is Redhouse’s second, the Red Willow. My husband thinks it may be the Hyrcanian Willow.
86
Steingass describes this as “an arrow without wing or point” (barb?) and tapering at both ends; it may be the practising arrow, t‘alīm aūqī, often headless.
87
tabarraklūq. Cf. f. 48b foot, for the same use of the word.
88
yabrūju’ṣ-ṣannam. The books referred to by Bābur may well be the Rauzatu’ṣ-ṣafā and the Ḥabību’s-siyār, as both mention the plant.
89
The Turkī word āyīq is explained by Redhouse as awake and alert; and by Meninski and de Meynard as sobered and as a return to right senses. It may be used here as a equivalent of mihr in mihr-giyāh, the plant of love.
90
Mr. Ney Elias has discussed the position of this group of seven villages. (Cf. T. R. p. 180 n.) Arrowsmith’s map places it (as Iti-kint) approximately where Mr. Th. Radloff describes seeing it i. e. on the Farghāna slope of the Kurāma range. (Cf. Réceuil d’Itinéraires p. 188.) Mr. Th. Radloff came into Yītī-kīnt after crossing the Kīndīrlīk Pass from Tāshkīnt and he enumerates the seven villages as traversed by him before reaching the Sīr. It is hardly necessary to say that the actual villages he names may not be those of Bābur’s Yītī-kint. Wherever the word is used in the Bābur-nāma and the Tārīkh-i-rashīdī, it appears from the context allowable to accept Mr. Radloff’s location but it should be borne in mind that the name Yītī-kīnt (Seven villages or towns) might be found as an occasional name of Altī-shahr (Six towns). See T.R. s. n. Altī-shahr.
91
kīshī, person, here manifestly fighting men.
