FOOTNOTES:
[489] From the Gulistān: Chapter I, St. 40.
[490] Kavāzha, in modern colloquial, “clamour.”
[491] The late Sirdār Sher ʿAlī, the exiled Wālī of Qandahar, told the translator that in Afghanistan he used to fly eyess chark͟hs at gazelle, and he considered those nestlings the best that were taken from nests either on the ground or close to the ground. His theory was that only bold birds dared to build close to the ground, and that their nestlings were, from the egg, accustomed to the sight of jackals and foxes.
[492] Chark͟h-i āshiyānī.
[493] Bālābān-i tūrī: tūrī from tūr, “net.”
[494] Passage sakers rarely, if ever, require to be given a “train” for this quarry, as they kill it in a wild state.
[495] Bād kardan. An hubara will not hesitate to attack a hawk on the ground, puffing itself up like a turkey cock and striking forwards with its feet. Sometimes several will combine in showing front to the enemy.
[496] The hubara will of course have a few flight-feathers plucked out or tied, to prevent it flying. If many feathers are plucked out it will not look formidable when it puffs itself out. Vide note [499], page 117.
[497] Bi-duzda raftan.
[498] Chashm rā bālā-bīn kardan.
[499] Though the hubara is a large and powerful bird the wild saker preys on it largely. The hubara is not a high-flying bird, and its flesh is palatable. After killing one or two, the most cowardly chark͟h becomes wedded to this quarry. When giving a “train,” it is preferable, in some cases imperative, to give a flying one. The saker, however, takes to the hubara with little or no entering.
[500] Bālābān-i tūrī.
[501] Bālābān-i ṣaḥrā,ī.
[502] The author means by open flight, for the hubara frequently escapes by doubling and hiding. It will squat on a perfectly open plain, the pursuing hawk alighting within five or six feet of it utterly puzzled as to what has become of its quarry. On the ground, an hubara does not at first seem afraid of a single saker or peregrine.
[503] Agar hubara jilav-i ū shikast va buland shud.
[504] Lābud hubara rā dar jilo andāk͟hta ʿaqab mī-kunad.
[505] Sakers are passionately fond of the hubara as a quarry: they will never relinquish a chase as long as there is any chance of success: they will fly the hubara even when they are not very hungry. The hubara, when put up with a hawk just behind it, flies faster than is commonly supposed, especially in the Spring when it is fat and in high condition. A passage saker intended for this quarry should not, I think, weigh less than 2 lbs. 4 oz. and should have been brought into hard condition by being exercised twice daily at the lure; twenty-five stoops at each exercise are sufficient. A wild saker seldom exceeds 2 lbs. 8 oz. in weight. A haggard of the editor’s that weighed when caught 2 lbs. 9½ oz., when killing hubara weighed 2 lbs. 6½ oz. (For kite 2 lbs. 3 oz. will be found a sufficient, and generally a suitable weight. For hare a weight of 2 lbs. is sufficient. Beginners should note these weights and so spare themselves much disappointment.)
[506] Only passage sakers are, in India, flown at hubara. They are usually flown out of the hood, but in districts full of ravines they are trained to “wait on.” The author, like most natives of India also, seems to think that hubara can be killed only on the ground. As already mentioned in the above note, to fly houbara successfully sakers must be in high condition, i.e., they must be kept well exercised and well fed, a simple fact that most Eastern falconers forget. I have seen Arab falconers stuffing their newly caught sakers with suet and skin. In Arabia Deserta by C. M. Doughty we read, “The Gate Arabs had robbed more than a dozen young falcons.... Their diet was small desert vermin, lizards, rats, insects ... on finding naught they maintain them with a little dough; in the nomad life they pluck for them those monstrous bluish blood-sucker ticks which cleave to the breasts of their camels.” The translator once gave a school-boy a trained lagaṛ: when pocket-money and meat failed, the boy fed it on boiled rice. Even after this treatment it flew and killed a wild raven.
[507] Wild hawks seldom if ever kill on the ground. They stoop at the hubara, knock it about and put it up. Many trained hawks even will not, when in high condition, bind to an hubara on the ground but stoop at it till the falconer flushes the quarry.
[508] Burrāq shuda. Burrāq is the long-haired “Persian” cat; gurba is the general term for a cat.
[509] Chalqūz or chalg͟hūz; excrement of birds only. “Mutes,” the technical term for the droppings of hawks. When the hubara is feeding on certain juicy crops, its excrement is thin and glutinous and has an offensive odour. Though the excrement is ejected through fear, it is a very effective weapon. A hawk that is smeared, is unable to fly properly, possibly because the wind strikes cold through the damp feathers. Some of the best hubara hawks, peregrines and sakers, always bind to the wing, and so escape being buffeted or befouled.
[510] Agar dast-i ustād-i k͟hūb bāshad dūr nīst dast-raw biyandāzī dar havā bi-gīrad.
[511] Sī dast.
[512] Az k͟hastagī rū-yi rū nishasta ast: exact meaning doubtful.
[513] Ahū-yi ṣaḥrā,ī.
[514] The author has not mentioned this flight.
[515] Charanda, lit. “grazers.”
[516] Du chār u du-lashma bi-shavam: lashm P. = smooth-bodied: du-lashma shudan is properly to wrestle together without either opponent getting a good grip.
[517] Bā hamchu narra khar-ī.
[518] Az sink͟h-i charanda nīst: sink͟h in m. c. = qism.
[519] Buzhnurd, the capital of a district of the same name, is about 180 miles from the river Atrek, which flows into the south-east corner of the Caspian.
[520] Si chār yak zaraʿ (m. c.) “about 3 or 4 ells”; zaraʿ (Pers. for Ar. zirāʿ) is the Persian ell of about 40 inches.
[521] —ki binā-yi marj u būlī kardan-i chark͟hā-yi shān ast. The word būlī is also bolī, bawlī, bavlī and bāvlī. Vide also note [523], page 123.
[522] Mik͟hlab.
[523] Dakl u bolī, “train”; in note [521] on page 122 marj u bolī. The author in a marginal note (page 117 of the text) gives dast-par as an equivalent for dakl. Dast-par or “hand-flight” can, however, refer only to a bird. Bā,ūlī is, in India, a train given either to a hawk or a greyhound, etc., etc.; it has a general application. Vide also page 141, note [614].
[524] The Chaʿb (properly Kaʿb) Arabs are a tribe inhabiting the southern portion of K͟huzistān.
[525] Muʿammara: the writer must mean Muḥammarah in K͟huzistān, 26 miles below Baṣrah: it is ruled by an Arab Sheikh.
[526] Tāzi-yi qūsh-shinās, a greyhound trained to hunt in company with a hawk. ʿĀrif, “knowing, intelligent.”
[527] An ambiguous sentence in the original: it may mean “flying at every kind of quarry.”
CHAPTER XXXV
ANOTHER METHOD OF TRAINING THE EYESS AND PASSAGE SAKERS TO GAZELLE
Another method of training Chark͟h AND Bālābān to Gazelle.—The people of the Fārs desert train the chark͟h and bālābān to gazelle by another method. In the early Autumn when the passage sakers are caught, they tame[528] one and lure it with the gazelle’s head. When thoroughly entered to this lure,[529] they tie it up in a dark place till its bones get set and strong, and its marrow becomes black,[530] and the bird itself fills out and grows stout and vigorous. Twenty days before the Naw-rūz[531] they take it up, and every morning and every evening lure it,[532] etc., with the gazelle head. Now in the hot climate of this desert, young gazelles are born from between ten to fifteen days before the Naw-rūz to ten to fifteen days after it. A “train”[533] of a small fawn is given, and the hawk is then flown in the desert at young fawns, which on account of their small size[534] are easily taken, and she is so flown till the young fawns begin to go about with their dams. After the bālābān has taken seven or eight fawns, she will readily single out the young fawn from the dam. When in this manner she has singled out and taken seven or eight[535] fawn at foot, it is considered sufficient; the weather, too, has grown too hot to go out into the country: the hawks are therefore of necessity set down to moult.
After being taken up out of the moult, they are, next season, given two or three “trains”[536] before being flown at a large wild gazelle.
If the falconer has the patience, this last method is, for the following reasons, the best. First; the hawk, when taken out of the moult, having not forgotten the six or seven fawns she killed in the Spring, will, when flown in the Autumn, single out the smallest quarry. Second; the long rest will have set and hardened her young bones so that she will not be liable to get swollen feet.[537] Third; she will have become domesticated, will have learnt wisdom, and will not be liable to get lost.
Do not be in the least afraid that your hawk, having been entered to fawns, will not tackle a horned buck[538] or a full-grown gazelle. If she is keen, you can fly her at two or three bucks that happen to be together without a female. These three bucks have not been cast in one mould: one is certain to be rather smaller than the others, and this one your hawk will single out. If you find a single buck, let it be even as big as the foal of an ass, she will tackle it all right. But if, one day, you fly her at an old buck, and the hounds not arriving she wears herself out and gets jostled or injured, you may rest assured that in the second moult she will not tackle an old buck. She will still, however, take does, or small young bucks that are only one or two years old.
A bālābān that has been trained by this last method is certainly better than one trained by either of the preceding methods.