The Bābur-nāma. Babur

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СКАЧАТЬ most villages and peopled places are. On these mountains kīyik and āhū843 are scarce. Across them, between its summer and winter quarters, the dun sheep,844 the arqārghalcha, have their regular track,845 to which braves go out with dogs and birds846 to take them. Towards Khūrd-kābul and the Sūrkh-rūd there is wild-ass, but there are no white kīyik at all; Ghaznī has both and in few other places are white kīyik found in such good condition.847

      In the heats the fowling-grounds of Kābul are crowded. The birds take their way along the Bārān-water. For why? It is because the river has mountains along it, east and west, and a great Hindū-kush pass in a line with it, by which the birds must cross since there is no other near.848 They cannot cross when the north wind blows, or if there is even a little cloud on Hindū-kush; at such times they alight on the level lands of the Bārān-water and are taken in great numbers by the local people. Towards the end of winter, dense flocks of mallards (aūrdūq) reach the banks of the Bārān in very good condition. Follow these the cranes and herons,849 great birds, in large flocks and countless numbers.

      (j. Bird-catching.)

      Along the Bārān people take masses of cranes (tūrna) with the cord; masses of aūqār, qarqara and qūt̤ān also.850 This method of bird-catching is unique. They twist a cord as long as the arrow’s851 flight, tie the arrow at one end and a bīldūrga852 at the other, and wind it up, from the arrow-end, on a piece of wood, span-long and wrist-thick, right up to the bīldūrga. They then pull out the piece of wood, leaving just the hole it was in. The bīldūrga being held fast in the hand, the arrow is shot off853 towards the coming flock. If the cord twists round a neck or wing, it brings the bird down. On the Bārān everyone takes birds in this way; it is difficult; it must be done on rainy nights, because on such nights the birds do not alight, but fly continually and fly low till dawn, in fear of ravening beasts of prey. Through the night the flowing river is their road, its moving water showing through the dark; then it is, while they come and go, up and down the river, that the cord is shot. One night I shot it; it broke in drawing in; both bird and cord were brought in to me next day. By this device Bārān people catch the many herons from which they take the turban-aigrettes sent from Kābul for sale in Khurāsān.

      Of bird-catchers there is also the band of slave-fowlers, two or three hundred households, whom some descendant of Tīmūr Beg made migrate from near Multān to the Bārān.854 Bird-catching is their trade; they dig tanks, set decoy-birds855 on them, put a net over the middle, and in this way take all sorts of birds. Not fowlers only catch birds, but every dweller on the Bārān does it, whether by shooting the cord, setting the springe, or in various other ways.

      (k. Fishing.)

      The fish of the Bārān migrate at the same seasons as birds. At those times many are netted, and many are taken on wattles (chīgh) fixed in the water. In autumn when the plant known as wild-ass-tail856 has come to maturity, flowered and seeded, people take 10-20 loads (of seed?) and 20-30 of green branches (gūk-shībāk) to some head of water, break it up small and cast it in. Then going into the water, they can at once pick up drugged fish. At some convenient place lower down, in a hole below a fall, they will have fixed before-hand a wattle of finger-thick willow-withes, making it firm by piling stones on its sides. The water goes rushing and dashing through the wattle, but leaves on it any fish that may have come floating down. This way of catching fish is practised in Gul-bahār, Parwān and Istālīf.

      Fish are had in winter in the Lamghānāt by this curious device: – People dig a pit to the depth of a house, in the bed of a stream, below a fall, line it with stones like a cooking-place, and build up stones round it above, leaving one opening only, under water. Except by this one opening, the fish have no inlet or outlet, but the water finds its way through the stones. This makes a sort of fish-pond from which, when wanted in winter, fish can be taken, 30-40 together. Except at the opening, left where convenient, the sides of the fish-pond are made fast with rice-straw, kept in place by stones. A piece of wicker-work is pulled into the said opening by its edges, gathered together, and into this a second piece, (a tube,) is inserted, fitting it at the mouth but reaching half-way into it only.857 The fish go through the smaller piece into the larger one, out from which they cannot get. The second narrows towards its inner mouth, its pointed ends being drawn so close that the fish, once entered, cannot turn, but must go on, one by one, into the larger piece. Out of that they cannot return because of the pointed ends of the inner, narrow mouth. The wicker-work fixed and the rice-straw making the pond fast, whatever fish are inside can be taken out;858 any also which, trying to escape may have gone into the wicker-work, are taken in it, because they have no way out. This method of catching fish we have seen nowhere else.859

HISTORICAL NARRATIVE RESUMED.860

      (a. Departure of Muqīm and allotment of lands.)

      A few days after the taking of Kābul, Muqīm asked leave to set off for Qandahār. As he had come out of the town on terms and conditions, he was allowed to go to his father (Ẕu’n-nūn) and his elder brother (Shāh Beg), with all his various people, his goods and his valuables, safe and sound.

      Directly he had gone, the Kābul-country was shared out to the Mīrzās and the guest-begs.861 To Jahāngīr Mīrzā was given Ghaznī with its dependencies and appurtenancies; to Nāṣir Mīrzā, the Nīngnahār tūmān, Mandrāwar, Nūr-valley, Kūnār, Nūr-gal (Rock-village?) and Chīghān-sarāī. To some of the begs who had been with us in the guerilla-times and had come to Kābul with us, were given villages, fief-fashion.862 Wilāyat itself was not given at all.863 It was not only then that I looked with more favour on guest-begs and stranger-begs than I did on old servants and Andijānīs; this I have always done whenever the Most High God has shown me His favour; yet it is remarkable that, spite of this, people have blamed me constantly as though I had favoured none but old servants and Andijānīs. There is a proverb, (Turkī) “What will a foe not say? what enters not into dream?” and (Persian) “A town-gate can be shut, a foe’s mouth never.”

      (b. A levy in grain.)

      Many clans and hordes had come from Samarkand, Ḥiṣār and Qūndūz into the Kābul-country. Kābul is a small country; it is also of the sword, not of the pen;864 to take in money from it for all these tribesmen was impossible. It therefore seemed advisable to take in grain, provision for the families of these clans so that their men could ride on forays with the army. Accordingly it was decided to levy 30,000 ass-loads865 of grain on Kābul, Ghaznī and their dependencies; we knew nothing at that time about the harvests and incomings; the impost was excessive, and under it the country suffered very grievously.

      In those days I devised the Bāburī script.866

      (c. Foray СКАЧАТЬ