The
shasht (thumb) in archery is the thumb-shield used on the left hand, as the
zih-gīr (string-grip), the archer’s ring, is on the right-hand thumb.
It is useful to remember, when reading accounts of shooting with the Turkī (Turkish) bow, that the arrows (aūq) had notches so gripping the string that they kept in place until released with the string.
636
sar-i-sabz gosha gīr. The gosha-gīr is an implement for remedying the warp of a bow-tip and string-notch. For further particulars see Appendix C.
The term sar-i-sabz, lit. green-head, occurs in the sense of ‘quite young’ or ‘new,’ in the proverb, ‘The red tongue loses the green head,’ quoted in the T̤abaqāt-i-akbarī account of Bābur’s death. Applied here, it points to the gosha-gīr as part of the recent gift made by Aḥmad to Bābur.
637
Taṃbal aīkāndūr. By this tense I understand that Bābur was not at first sure of the identity of the pseudo-sentries, partly because of their distance, partly, it may be presumed, because of concealment of identity by armour.
638
dūwulgha būrkī; i. e. the soft cap worn under the iron helm.
639
Nūyān’s sword dealt the blow (f. 97b). Gul-badan also tells the story (f. 77) à propos of a similar incident in Humāyūn’s career. Bābur repeats the story on f. 234.
640
yāldāghlāmāī dūr aīdīm. The Second W. – i-B. has taken this as from yāltūrmāq, to cause to glisten, and adds the gloss that the sword was rusty (I.O. 217 f. 70b).
641
The text here seems to say that the three men were on foot, but this is negatived by the context.
642
Amongst the various uses of the verb tūshmak, to descend in any way, the B.N. does not allow of ‘falling (death) in battle.’ When I made the index of the Ḥai. MS. facsimile, this was not known to me; I therefore erroneously entered the men enumerated here as killed at this time.
643
Elph. MS. yakhshī. Zenker explains bakhshī (pay-master) as meaning also a Court-physician.
644
The Ḥai. Elph. and Kehr’s MS. all have pūchqāq tāqmāq or it may be pūḥqāq tāqmāq. T. būkhāq means bandage, pūchāq, rind of fruit, but the word clear in the three Turkī MSS. means, skin of a fox’s leg.
645
The daryā here mentioned seems to be the Kāsān-water; the route taken from Bīshkhārān to Pāp is shewn on the Fr. map to lead past modern Tūpa-qūrghān. Pāp is not marked, but was, I think, at the cross-roads east of Touss (Karnān).
646
Presumably Jahāngīr’s.
647
Here his father was killed (f. 6b). Cf. App. A.
648
‘Alī-dost’s son (f. 79b).
649
The sobriquet Khīz may mean Leaper, or Impetuous.
650
kūīlāk, syn. kūnglāk, a shirt not opening at the breast. It will have been a short garment since the under-vest was visible.
651
i. e. when Bābur was writing in Hindūstān. Exactly at what date he made this entry is not sure. ‘Alī was in Koel in 933 AH. (f. 315) and then taken prisoner, but Bābur does not say he was killed, – as he well might say of a marked man, and, as the captor was himself taken shortly after, ‘Alī may have been released, and may have been in Koel again. So that the statement ‘now in Koel’ may refer to a time later than his capture. The interest of the point is in its relation to the date of composition of the Bābur-nāma.
No record of ‘Alī’s bravery in Aūsh has been preserved. The reference here made to it may indicate something attempted in 908 AH. after Bābur’s adventure in Karnān (f. 118b) or in 909 AH. from Sūkh. Cf. Translator’s note f. 118b.
652
aūpchīnlīk. Vambéry, gepanzert; Shaw, four horse-shoes and their nails; Steingass, aūpcha-khāna, a guard-house.
653
Sang is a ferry-station (Kostenko, i, 213). Pāp may well have been regretted (f. 109b and f. 112b)! The well-marked features of the French map of 1904 allows Bābur’s flight to be followed.
654
In the Turkī text this saying is in Persian; in the Kehr-Ilminsky, in Turkī, as though it had gone over with its Persian context of the W. – i-B. from which the K. – I. text here is believed to be a translation.
655
Cf. f. 96b and Fr. Map for route over the Kīndīr-tau.
656
This account of Muḥ. Bāqir reads like one given later to Bābur; he may have had some part in Bābur’s rescue (cf. Translator’s Note to f. 118b).
657
Perhaps reeds for a raft. Sh. N. p. 258, Sāl aūchūn bār qāmīsh, reeds are there also for rafts.
658
Here the Turkī text breaks off, as it might through loss of pages, causing a blank of narrative extending over some 16 months. Cf. App. D. for a passage, supposedly spurious, found with the Ḥaidarābād Codex and the Kehr-Ilminsky text, purporting to tell how Bābur was rescued from the risk in which the lacuna here leaves him.
659
As in the Farghāna Section, so here, reliance is on the Elphinstone and Ḥaidarābād MSS. The Kehr-Ilminsky text still appears to be a retranslation from the Wāqi‘āt-i-bāburī and verbally departs much from the true text; moreover, in this Section it has been helped out, where its archetype was illegible or has lost fragmentary passages, from the Leyden and Erskine Memoirs. It may be mentioned, as between the First and the Second Wāqi‘āt-i-bāburī, that several obscure passages in this Section are more explicit in the First (Pāyanda-ḥasan’s) than in its successor (‘Abdu-r-raḥīm’s).
660
Elph. MS. f. 90b; W. – i-B. I.O. 215, f. 96b and 217, f. 79; Mems. p. 127. “In 1504 AD. Ferdinand the Catholic drove the French out of Naples” (Erskine). In England, Henry VII was pushing forward a commercial treaty, the Intercursus malus, with the Flemings and growing in wealth by the exactions of Empson and Dudley.
661
presumably the pastures of the “Ilak” Valley. The route from Sūkh would be over the ‘Alā‘u’d-dīn-pass, into the Qīzīl-sū valley, down to Āb-i-garm and on to the Aīlāq-valley, Khwāja ‘Imād, the Kāfirnigān, Qabādīān, and Aūbāj on the Amū. See T.R. p. 175 and Farghāna Section, p. 184, as to the character of the journey.
662
Amongst the Turkī tribes, the time of first applying the razor to the face is celebrated by a great entertainment. Bābur’s miserable circumstances would not admit of this (Erskine).
The text is ambiguous here, reading either that Sūkh was left or that Aīlāq-yīlāq was reached in Muḥarram. As the birthday was on the 8th, the journey very arduous and, for a party mostly on foot, slow, it seems safest to suppose that the start was made from Sūkh at the end of 909 AH. and not in Muḥarram, 910 AH.
663
chārūq, rough boots of untanned leather, formed like a moccasin with the lower leather drawn up round the foot; they are worn by Khīrghīz mountaineers and caravan-men on journeys (Shaw).
