difficulty, my husband suggests, was Alexander’s supposition that the Indus was the Nile. In books grouping round the Bābur-nāma, the name Nīl-āb is not applied to the Indus, but to the ferry-station on that river, said to owe its name to a spring of azure water on its eastern side. (Cf. Afẓal Khān Khattak, R.’s Notes p. 447.)
I find the name Nīl-āb applied to the Kābul-river: – 1. to its Arghandī affluent (Cunningham, p. 17, Map); 2. through its boatman class, the Nīl-ābīs of Lālpūra, Jalālābād and Kūnār (G. of I. 1907, art. Kābul); 3. inferentially to it as a tributary of the Indus (D’Herbélot); 4. to it near its confluence with the grey, silt-laden Indus, as blue by contrast (Sayyid Ghulām-i-muḥammad, R.’s Notes p. 34). (For Nīl-āb (Naulibis?) in Ghūr-bund see Cunningham, p. 32 and Masson, iii, 169.)
750
By one of two routes perhaps, – either by the Khaibar-Nīngnahār-Jagdālīk road, or along the north bank of the Kābul-river, through Goshṭa to the crossing where, in 1879, the 10th Hussars met with disaster. SeeS.A. War, Map 2 and p. 63; Leech’s Reports II and IV (Fords of the Indus); and R.’s Notes p. 44.
751
Hāru, Leech’s Harroon, apparently, 10 m. above Atak. The text might be read to mean that both rivers were forded near their confluence, but, finding no warrant for supposing the Kābul-river fordable below Jalālābād, I have guided the translation accordingly; this may be wrong and may conceal a change in the river.
752
Known also as Dhān-kot and as Mu‘az̤z̤am-nagar (Ma‘āṣiru’l-‘umrā i, 249 and A.N. trs. H.B. index s. n. Dhān-kot). It was on the east bank of the Indus, probably near modern Kālā-bāgh, and was washed away not before 956 AH. (1549 AD. H. Beveridge).
753
Chaupāra seems, from f. 148b, to be the Chapari of Survey Map 1889. Bābur’s Dasht is modern Dāman.
754
aīmāq, used usually of Mughūls, I think. It may be noted that Lieutenant Leech compiled a vocabulary of the tongue of the Mughūl Aīmāq in Qandahār and Harāt (JASB 1838, p. 785).
755
The Āyīn-i-akbarī account of Kābul both uses and supplements the Bābur-nāma.
756
viz. ‘Alī-shang, Alangār and Mandrāwar (the Lamghānāt proper), Nīngnahār (with its bulūk, Kāma), Kūnār-with-Nūr-gal, (and the two bulūks of Nūr-valley and Chaghān-sarāī).
757
See Appendix E, On Nagarahāra.
758
The name Adīnapūr is held to be descended from ancient Udyānapūra (Garden-town); its ancestral form however was applied to Nagarahāra, apparently, in the Bārān-Sūrkh-rūd dū-āb, and not to Bābur’s dārogha’s seat. The Sūrkh-rūd’s deltaic mouth was a land of gardens; when Masson visited Adīnapūr he went from Bālā-bāgh (High-garden); this appears to stand where Bābur locates his Bāgh-i-wafā, but he was shown a garden he took to be this one of Bābur’s, a mile higher up the Sūrkh-rūd. A later ruler made the Chār-bāgh of maps. It may be mentioned that Bālā-bāgh has become in some maps Rozābād (Garden-town). See Masson, i, 182 and iii, 186; R.’s Notes; and Wilson’s Ariana Antiqua, Masson’s art.
759
One of these tangī is now a literary asset in Mr. Kipling’s My Lord the Elephant. Bābur’s 13 y. represent some 82 miles; on f. 137b the Kābul-Ghaznī road of 14 y. represents some 85; in each case the yīghāch works out at over six miles (Index s. n.yīghāch and Vigne, p. 454). Sayyid Ghulām-i-muḥammad traces this route minutely (R.’s Notes pp. 57, 59).
760
Masson was shewn “Chaghatai castles”, attributed to Bābur (iii, 174).
761
Dark-turn, perhaps, as in Shibr-tū, Jāl-tū, etc. (f. 130b and note to Shibr-tū).
762
f. 145 where the change is described in identical words, as seen south of the Jagdālīk-pass. The Bādām-chashma pass appears to be a traverse of the eastern rampart of the Tīzīn-valley.
763
Appendix E, On Nagarahāra.
764
No record exists of the actual laying-out of the garden; the work may have been put in hand during the Mahmand expedition of 914 AH. (f. 216); the name given to it suggests a gathering there of loyalists when the stress was over of the bad Mughūl rebellion of that year (f. 216b where the narrative breaks off abruptly in 914 AH. and is followed by a gap down to 925 AH. -1519 AD.).
765
No annals of 930 AH. are known to exist; from Ṣafar 926 AH. to 932 AH. (Jan. 1520-Nov. 1525 AD.) there is a lacuna. Accounts of the expedition are given by Khāfī Khān, i, 47 and Firishta, lith. ed. p. 202.
766
Presumably to his son, Humāyūn, then governor in Badakhshān; Bukhārā also was under Bābur’s rule.
767
Here, qārī, yards. The dimensions 10 by 10, are those enjoined for places of ablution.
768
Presumably those of the tūqūz-rūd, supra. Cf. Appendix E, On Nagarahāra.
769
White-mountain; Pushtū, Spīn-ghur (or ghar).
770
i. e. the Lamghānāt proper. The range is variously named; in (Persian) Siyāh-koh (Black-mountain), which like Turkī Qarā-tāgh may mean non-snowy; by Tājīks, Bāgh-i-ātāka (Foster-father’s garden); by Afghāns, Kanda-ghur, and by Lamghānīs Koh-i-būlān, – Kanda and Būlān both being ferry-stations below it (Masson, iii, 189; also the Times Nov. 20th 1912 for a cognate illustration of diverse naming).
771
A comment made here by Mr. Erskine on changes of name is still appropriate, but some seeming changes may well be due to varied selection of land-marks. Of the three routes next described in the text, one crosses as for Mandrāwar; the second, as for ‘Alī-shang, a little below the outfall of the Tīzīn-water; the third may take off from the route, between Kābul and Tag-aū, marked in Col. Tanner’s map (PRGS 1881 p. 180). Cf. R’s Route 11; and for Aūlūgh-nūr, Appendix F, On the name Nūr.
772
The name of this pass has several variants. Its second component, whatever its form, is usually taken to mean pass, but to read it here as pass would be redundant, since Bābur writes “pass (kūtal) of Bād-i-pīch”. Pich occurs as a place name both east (Pīch) and west (Pīchghān) of the kūtal, but what would suit the bitter and even fatal winds of the pass would be to read the name as Whirling-wind (bād-i-pīch). Another explanation suggests itself from finding a considerable number of pass-names such as Shibr-tū, Jāi-tū, Qarā-tū, in which tū is a synonym of pīch, turn, twist; thus Bād-i-pīch may be the local form of Bād-tū, Windy-turn.
773
See Masson, iii, 197 and 289. Both in Pashāī and Lamghānī, lām means fort.
774
See Appendix F, On the name Dara-i-nūr.
775
ghair mukarrar. Bābur may allude to the remarkable change men have wrought in the valley-bottom (Appendix F, for Col. Tanner’s account of the valley).
