I have not lighted on this name in botanical books or explained by dictionaries. Perhaps it is a Cis-oxanian name for the sax-aol of Transoxania. As its uses are enumerated by some travellers, it might be Haloxylon ammodendron, ta-ghas etc. and sax-aol (Aitchison, p. 102).
842
f. 135b note to Ghūr-bund.
843
I understand that wild-goats, wild-sheep and deer (āhū) were not localized, but that the dun-sheep migrated through. Antelope (āhū) was scarce in Elphinstone’s time.
844
qīzīl kīyik which, taken with its alternative name, arqārghalcha, allows it to be the dun-sheep of Wood’s Journey p. 241. From its second name it may be Ovis amnon (Raos), or O. argalī.
845
tusqāwal, var. tutqāwal, tus̱aqāwal and tūshqāwal, a word which has given trouble to scribes and translators. As a sporting-term it is equivalent to shikār-i-nihilam; in one or other of its forms I find it explained as Weg-hüter, Fahnen-hüter, Zahl-meister, Schlucht, Gefahrlicher-weg and Schmaler-weg. It recurs in the B.N. on f. 197b l. 5 and l. 6 and there might mean either a narrow road or a Weg-hüter. If its Turkī root be tūs, the act of stopping, all the above meanings can follow, but there may be two separate roots, the second, tūsh, the act of descent (JRAS 1900 p. 137, H. Beveridge’s art. On the word nihilam).
846
qūshlīk, aītlīk. Elphinstone writes (i, 191) of the excellent greyhounds and hawking birds of the region; here the bird may be the charkh, which works with the dogs, fastening on the head of the game (Von Schwarz, p. 117, for the same use of eagles).
847
An antelope resembling the usual one of Hindūstān is common south of Ghaznī (Vigne, p. 110); what is not found may be some classes of wild-sheep, frequent further north, at higher elevation, and in places more familiar to Bābur.
848
The Parwān or Hindū-kush pass, concerning the winds of which see f. 128.
849
tūrnā u qarqara; the second of which is the Hindī būglā, heron, egret ardea gazetta, the furnisher of the aigrette of commerce.
850
The aūqār is ardea cinerea, the grey heron; the qarqara is ardea gazetta, the egret. Qūt̤ān is explained in the Elph. Codex (f. 110) by khawāsil, goldfinch, but the context concerns large birds; Scully (Shaw’s Voc.) has qodan, water-hen, which suits better.
851
giz, the short-flight arrow.
852
a small, round-headed nail with which a whip-handle is decorated (Vambéry). Such a stud would keep the cord from slipping through the fingers and would not check the arrow-release.
853
It has been understood (Mems. p. 158 and Méms. i, 313) that the arrow was flung by hand but if this were so, something heavier than the giz would carry the cord better, since it certainly would be difficult to direct a missile so light as an arrow without the added energy of the bow. The arrow itself will often have found its billet in the closely-flying flock; the cord would retrieve the bird. The verb used in the text is aītmāq, the one common to express the discharge of arrows etc.
854
For Tīmūrids who may have immigrated the fowlers see Raverty’s Notes p. 579 and his Appendix p. 22.
855
milwāh; this has been read by all earlier translators, and also by the Persian annotator of the Elph. Codex, to mean shākh, bough. For decoy-ducks see Bellew’s Notes on Afghānistān p. 404.
856
qūlān qūyirūghī. Amongst the many plants used to drug fish I have not found this one mentioned. Khār-zāhra and khār-fāq approach it in verbal meaning; the first describes colocynth, the second, wild rue. See Watts’ Economic Products of India iii, 366 and Bellew’s Notes pp. 182, 471 and 478.
857
Much trouble would have been spared to himself and his translators, if Bābur had known a lobster-pot.
858
The fish, it is to be inferred, came down the fall into the pond.
859
Burnes and Vigne describe a fall 20 miles from Kābul, at “Tangī Gharoi”, [below where the Tag-aū joins the Bārān-water,] to which in their day, Kābulīs went out for the amusement of catching fish as they try to leap up the fall. Were these migrants seeking upper waters or were they captives in a fish-pond?
860
Elph. MS. f. 111; W. – i-B. I.O. 215 f. 116b and 217 f. 97b; Mems. p. 155; Méms. i, 318.
861
mihmān-beglār, an expression first used by Bābur here, and due, presumably, to accessions from Khusrau Shāh’s following. A parallel case is given in Max Müller’s Science of Language i, 348 ed. 1871, “Turkmān tribes … call themselves, not subjects, but guests of the Uzbeg Khāns.”
862
tiyūl-dīk in all the Turkī MSS. Ilminsky, de Courteille and Zenker, yitūl-dīk, Turkī, a fief.
863
Wilāyat khūd hech bīrīlmādī; W. – i-B. 215 f. 116b, Wilāyat dāda na shuda and 217 f. 97b, Wilāyat khūd hech dāda na shud. By this I understand that he kept the lands of Kābul itself in his own hands. He mentions (f. 350) and Gul-badan mentions (H.N. f. 40b) his resolve so to keep Kābul. I think he kept not only the fort but all lands constituting the Kābul tūmān (f. 135b and note).
864
Saifī dūr, qalamī aīmās, i. e. tax is taken by force, not paid on a written assessment.
865
khar-wār, about 700 lbs Averdupois (Erskine). Cf. Āyīn-i-akbarī (Jarrett, ii, 394).
866
Niz̤āmu’d-dīn Aḥmad and Badāyūnī both mention this script and say that in it Bābur transcribed a copy of the Qorān for presentation to Makka. Badāyūnī says it was unknown in his day, the reign of Akbar (T̤abaqāt-i-akbarī, lith. ed. p. 193, and Muntakhabu’t-tawārīkh Bib. Ind. ed. iii, 273).
867
Bābur’s route, taken with one given by Raverty (Notes p. 691), allows these Hazāras, about whose location Mr. Erskine was uncertain, to be located between the Takht-pass (Arghandī-Maidān-Unai road), on their east, and the Sang-lākh mountains, on their west.
868
The Takht-pass, one on which from times immemorial, toll (nirkh) has been taken.
869
khāt̤ir-khwāh chāpīlmādī, which perhaps implies mutual discontent, Bābur’s with his gains, the Hazāras’ with their losses. As the second Persian translation omits the negative, the Memoirs does the same.
870
Bhīra being in Shāhpūr, this Khān’s daryā will be the Jehlam.
