FOOTNOTES:
[314] Qapāncha kardan, “to mail” a hawk: vide page 59, note [247].
[315] Pācha-band, “jesses.” In the Derajat, Panjab, the term is restricted to cotton or silk jesses, fitted with “varvels” (rings); vide page 18, note [83]. Shikār-band “leash;” but in the Derajat the thin leather thong that attaches the swivel to the jesses is so called: vide page 18, note [83]. For “halsband” vide page 3, note [31].
[316] Much stroking on the back is to be avoided, as it removes the oil that makes the back feathers impervious to rain.
[317] ʿAsr, that is two and a half hours before sunset; the time mid-way between noon and sunset.
[318] In countries under Muslim rule the watch is set daily at sunset, which is 12 o’clock.
[319] If a newly caught goshawk tear off bits of meat and cast them aside, she should be tried with a small bird with the feathers on.
[320] Bāla-bīn, adj.
[321] T̤ūla, vide p. 89, note [366].
[322] T̤uʿma-yi zinda hama rūz bi-dast-ash na-dihī tā pay-i kushta bi-dast-i tu bi-yāyad: I think the meaning of the author has been rendered. Kushta, the “pelt” or the dead quarry, especially when used as a lure.
[323] “Creance,” vide p. 38, note [162].
[324] Buna, “bush,” is used by the author for the quarry put into the bush. In Urdu Bāz ne buna kiyā = “the goshawk has put in the quarry,” and Buna uṭhā,o = “beat out the quarry that has been put in.” A bird has “put in” when it is forced to take refuge in a bush, covert, etc., etc.
[325] “Note, use to call her from the grounde furst, and that will make her fall at marke in the plaine felde otherwyse she will to a tree.”—A Perfect Booke for Kepinge of Sparhawkes: Edited by Harting. For “Fall at marke,” vide p. 92, note [388]. For remarks on “taking stand,” vide “Notes on the Falconidæ used in India in Falconry,” by Lieut.-Colonel E. Delmé Radcliffe (pp. 20-1). Natives of the Panjab do not consider “taking stand” a vice.
[326] Garm-i t̤alab.
[327] Rasānīdan, Tr.
[328] A tradition of the Prophet.
[329] Bāz-dūst nīst; kabk-k͟hwur ast.
[330] Rasīdan, Intr.
[331] Forty days: this is an axiom amongst Indian falconers also, who usually try and make out that the “watching” occupies forty days, and that they must therefore have extra assistants, blankets, oil, etc., etc.
[332] T̤uʿmah, Ar. “meat, meal, food, etc.;” this word is frequently used by the author for “casting,” t̤uʿma andāk͟htan, P. “to cast.” A “casting” is fur, feathers, etc., given to the hawk with its food.
[333] Shikār-chī-yi zard-chashm, “Ostringer.” “An ostringer or austringer, etc., one who keeps short-winged hawks, especially the Goshawk.”—Harting. In the Boke of St. Albans the term is confined to those that keep “Goshawkys or Tercellis,” while “Those that kepe Sperhawkys and musketys ben called Speruiteris.”
[334] Ishtihā dādan, “to give an appetite” is by the author always used for giving washed, or rather wetted, meat.
[335] Ṣalavāt firistādan, i.e., pass the time telling the beads while saying “Oh God, bless Muḥammad and the family of Muḥammad.”
[336] Āb-bāzī kardan, “to bathe.” Rug͟han-kashī kardan, “to oil the feathers.”
[337] This was the practice of a certain Panjab falconer who had a great reputation for training goshawks. He never went empty-handed to a goshawk to take her on the fist, even after she was trained: he always took with him a bit of meat, about the size of a pea, concealed in his palm.
[338] Eagles are late risers and do not leave their roosting places till the sun has warmed the air, that is in the winter not till after eight o’clock. Peregrines leave their roosts while it is still dark.
[339] Ching, “beak,” but chang, “claw, talons, fingers, etc.”: ching zadan, “to strike with the beak, peck, etc.”
[340] Kabk-i munāsib-ī; this is I presume the author’s meaning. Munāsib, “fitting, suitable,” often has the meaning, both in India and in Persia, of “medium-sized, of average size.”
[341] At dawn the doors of Heaven are open and the Angels descend to fix each man’s daily portion. Morning prayers are accepted by God.
[342] T̤ūla rā hay zadan.
[343] Yak sīna = the bag͟hal of Panjab falconers.
[344] Jurra qūsh; vide page 25, note [107].
[345] Garm shudan.
[346] Yak zūr bi-parīdan mi-āvarad.
[347] Bi-buna burdan or—rasānīdan.
[348] Vide note [322], page 80.
[349] Qūsh-i tavār. The female of the goshawk used to be dignified by the title “falcon”: vide also page 25, note [107].
[350] The females of all species of hawks and falcons are, I think, faster and better-winded than the males, though the latter are probably more adroit.
[351] Tūīt̤ug͟hlī T. is explained by the author in more than one marginal note as being the mīsh-murg͟h or “sheep-bird:” tuit̤uglī, ta,īt̤uglī, dūīdāg͟h and t̤ūī are other forms of the word. (Persians that are not sportsmen often call the Egyptian or White Scavenger Vulture mīsh-murg͟h.)
[352] T̤arlān u qizil.
[353] ʿAsr, the time between noon and sunset.
[354] A hawk in just proper condition, if underfed, will, if the night be very cold, become thin in one night. In the Indian Spring, when the nights are temperate, I have known a saker falcon go up two ounces in weight in one night, from a slight overfeed of hubara flesh.
[355] A good Indian falconer would carry his hawk after dark till she had “put over” completely, first allowing her an hour’s rest or more. “Carrying,” with its constant shifting of position, not only causes a hawk to “put over” quicker, but induces it to digest and empty the bowel: on the fist she will “mute” thrice for every twice on the perch. After a hard day’s work, water should be offered her at night, especially if she has been fed on the rich flesh of the hubara: after a feed on hubara flesh, I have known some sakers drink two or three times between nightfall and midnight. If a hawk has been fed late and is to be flown early next day, it should be taken on the fist before sunrise (a lamp being lit in the room) and “carried,” the hawk being made to change its position frequently: this induces it to “cast” earlier than it would otherwise do. When hubara-hawking all day long in the desert for ten or fifteen days at a stretch, my falconers would carry the hawks from 3 or 4 a.m. till daybreak, and the hawks (peregrines or sakers) would be ready to fly by 8 a.m. (A hawk “puts over” when it takes down any portion of the meat from its crop into its stomach). “Putting over” quickly is the sign of a good digestion.
[356] Ṣarf kardan is properly “to eat,” but by it the author evidently means either to “put over,” or “to digest,” I do not know which. Qūsh gūsht-ash mī-shikanad P. and ʿat̤īn āpārir T. are the ordinary expressions for “the hawk is ‘putting over’.”
[357] T̤uʿma andāk͟htan, “to cast,” i.e., to throw up the casting in the morning. Vide page 82, note [332].
[358] It must be recollected that the quarry is the chukor partridge which is usually found in the hills, and five flights might represent a lot of work. With the grey partridge of India five flights would be nothing for a good goshawk.
[359] For Falcons—peregrines or sakers—five flights at hubara are sufficient, two in the morning and three in the afternoon: at heron or kite one flight.
[360] Bāz-Nāma: many of these Persian MSS. exist both in Persia and India.
[361] The Boke of St. Albans gives the following “Medecyne for an hawke that has lost here corage”:—“Take Oyle of spayne and tempere it With clere Wine. and With the yolke of an egge and put therein befe. and thereof geue to youre hawke. v. morcellis. and then set hir in the sonne. and at euen fede hir With an old hote coluer. and if ye fede hir thꝰ iii tymys that hawke Was neuer so lusty nor so Joly before. as she Will be after and come to hir owne corege” (page 26). In Bert’s Treatise of Hawks and Hawking, 1619 (page 101 of Harting’s Edition; reprinted by Quaritch) there is a somewhat similar receipt for a “Hawke that hath lost her courage and ioyeth not, or is lowe in flesh.” For “turning tayle” and “to bring stomake,” A Perfect Booke for Kepinge of Sparhawkes or Goshawkes (written about 1575 and first printed from the original MS. by J. E. Harting in 1886), says, “stepe her meate in claret wyne and the yoke of an egg and nyp it drye and so give it, and it will bring her stomake.”
[362] Sawg͟hān kardan, “to train for a race.”
[363] “I haue knowne some of them likewise that would sooner catche a dogge in the field then a Partridge, and although she had flown a Partridge very well to marke, and sat well, yet so soone as a dog had but come in to the retroue, she would have had him by the face.”—Bert, Chap. V.
[364] The translator’s experience is that passage goshawks are particularly afraid of small children. Indian falconers account for this by saying that the hawk mistakes children for its jungle-enemies the monkeys.
[365] Qizil-i āshiyānī, “eyess goshawk:” qizil is the local race that breeds in Persia.
[366] T̤ūla is a hound, or any sporting dog except a tāzī or greyhound: sag (gen. term), any ordinary pariah or other breed of dog: sag-i īlātī, “a dog of the breed kept by wandering tribes;” it is large and fierce. T̤ūla also means “a pup.”
[367] The author probably means that the hawk should chase till the partridge puts in; that if she is fast and taught to take quarry quickly in the air, she will acquire the habit of only doing so, and will consequently give up whenever she sees that the quarry is fast enough to take her to a distance.
[368] Kabk u tīhū.
[369] In India geese and common cranes are, by means of a stalking bullock, sometimes stalked while feeding, and thus taken by a goshawk.
[370] Chāk͟hrūq, “stone-plover.”
[371] Bālābān, “passage saker.”
[372] Vide page 12, note [59].
[373] Buldurchīn T. “The Common Quail.” Anqūd, “The Ruddy Sheldrake.”
[374] Qarqāvul (Phaseanus colchicus).
[375] Durrāj, the Francolin or Black Partridge of India.
[376] Bi-yak sar du sar agar girift fa-bi-hā: sar, “attack, stoop, etc.”
[377] Māt shudan, is “to be astonished, perplexed; to become rigid from astonishment:” the author applies this idiom more than once to the goshawk, apparently in the last sense.
[378] Lieut.-Colonel E. Delmé Radcliffe states that a goshawk he owned and sent to a friend afterwards killed grouse on the Scottish moors. He also says that an exceptional goshawk tiercel he once had took “storks, white-necked storks (M. episcopus), bar-headed geese (A. indicus), sheldrakes (C. rutila), kestrels, rollers (C. indica), white-eyed buzzards (Poliornis teesa), on one occasion a merlin (L. chiquera), pigeons and other exceptional quarry without number, and yet was in the constant habit of catching partridges and small quarry;” (page 19).
[379] Tu sīna-yi qūsh ra bar sīna-yi bād bi-dih.
[380] “To bind,” is to seize and hold on to the quarry, especially in the air, while “to ruff” is to stoop at and hit the quarry, making the feathers fly: vide Bibliotheca Accipitraria, by Harting.
[381] T̤arlān rā māya-dār az bulandī mī-andāzī.
[382] —ki dimāg͟h-ash rā bi-bād dihad va rū bi-bād farār kunad.
[383] Nafas-i tāzī mī-sūzad.
[384] Bālā-yi bād.
[385] Garm bi-giriftan-i kabk u tīhū shud.
[386] Mis̤l-i āb-k͟hurdan, “as easy as drinking water.”
[387] Sar-i dimāg͟h būdan, “to be in the humour for, to be keen on.”
[388] “To fall at marke,” “to alight and there await the owner.”
[389] Āb-k͟hur kardan.
[390] With a new hawk it is a good thing to attract her attention by flicking the water in the cup with the finger.
[391] —tā bi-istirāḥat ṣarf bi-kunad.
[392] Place illegible.
[393] Kabk-i darī, Tetraogallus Caspius.
[394] —galla-yi kabk-i darī ki bi-qadar-i bīst si dāna būdand.
[395] Dast-raw dar havā girift.
[396] Qibla is the point to which Muslims turn in prayer. Applied to the Shāh it signifies that he is one to whom all bear their requests.
CHAPTER XXX
“RECLAIMING”[400] THE PASSAGE SAKER
Should a passage falcon with “seeled”[401] eyes come into your possession the first thing is to examine it carefully and classify it. Having decided on the race to which the falcon belongs, fit her with some suitable name such as Ṣult̤ān, Ẓarg͟hām, Fāris, Shabīb, Ḥabīb, Maḥbūb, Shahāb, Badrān, etc.[402] Next fit her with an old hood that is soft and easy, one that will not, by hurting her eyes, make her hood-shy.[403] Let her eyes remain seeled under the hood for three days. Every day when you feed her, call her name. On the third or fourth day, i.e., as soon as she has learnt to feed freely, which she will show by searching eagerly for food when you mention her name, unseel her eyes about two hours to sunset, and then rehood her. Call her name, and when she bends her hooded head in search of food, give her a mouthful or two. Then stroke her on the breast, the thighs, and the wings, and again remove the hood that she may see daylight, and quickly replace it. Continue this treatment till half an hour before sunset. Then set her down and leave her till after the evening prayer.[404] Then again take her on the fist and sit near the lamp, with your back to the wall, so that none may come behind you and your hawk. Again call her name, and when she lowers her head reward her with a mouthful. Stroke her as before. Carry her thus for three or four hours. After that, set her on her perch for the night, fastening the hood tight that she may not cast it during the night.
XVI
ARAB FALCONER WITH YOUNG SAKER ON PADDED AND SPIKED PERCH
Early next morning, before sunrise, take the hawk on your fist; sit with a few friends near a lamp or a fire sipping your tea or coffee, and perform your prayers. Every now and then remove the hood for about five seconds, and then rehood. For about three days feed her under the hood, calling her name. Now at early sunrise,[405] on the morning of the third or fourth day, take just sufficient meat for one meal; well wet your hawk under her wings,[406] wash her nostrils, letting a little water enter them, and set her perch[407] in a quiet place in the sun where none can disturb you, and seat yourself near on the ground. Now remove the hood and handle her a little, stroking her breast, head, and neck; then slowly carry your fist close to her perch and induce her to step on to the perch of her own accord.[408] Hold the leash in your hand, and occasionally draw it tight gently to induce her to “rouse.”[409] She is sure, after one of these rousings, to commence oiling her feathers.[410] When you see that she has carried her beak to the oil-bottle[411] near her tail, preparatory to oiling her feathers, you must sit absolutely still; do not pull the leash; keep a guard even over the way you breathe, and let her oil her feathers to her heart’s content.
If she oils her feathers very quickly and then rouses, it is a sign she is well-manned.[412] If after oiling and rousing, she a second time applies her beak to her oil-bottle, it is a sign that she is both well-manned and well-plucked.
Let her remain on the perch a little longer while she preens[410] and straightens[413] her feathers and again rouses with vigour. Immediately she rouses, take in your hand the meat you have ready, and calling her name, induce her to step on to your fist, and reward her as before. Do this a third time, but this time try and induce her to jump to your fist the length of her leash or less. Then call her name and reward her by a good feed. Now hood her and place her on the ground. Call her name and strike on the ground with your hand, in front of her.[414] If she advances even two finger breadths towards the sound, it is sufficient. Reward her by letting her pull and eat two or three mouthfuls of meat, and while she is eating pull off the hood and let her finish her meal and enjoy herself. She will by this means learn that no one wishes to harm her, and that being tame is not at all a bad thing. After feeding her take a small piece of wool, or cotton-wool, and clean her nostrils.[415] Then fasten the braces of the hood tight, and set her on her perch in the shade.[416]