FOOTNOTES:
[682] K͟hafaqān, properly “palpitation of the heart.” The disease described under this name appears to be identical with the “Teyne” of the Boke of St. Albans and with the “Pantas” of other writers. Markham describes the latter as “A dangerous disease in hawks whereof few escape that are afflicted therewith; it proceeds from the lungs being as it were baked by excessive heat, that the hawk cannot draw her breath and when drawn cannot emit it again; and you may judge of the beginning of this evil by the hawk’s labouring much in the pannel, moving her train often up and down at each motion of her pannel, and many times she cannot mute nor slice off; if she does, she drops it fast by her. The same distemper is also perceived by the hawk’s frequent opening her clap and beak.”
[683] ʿAz̤m-i zawraqī, “the sternum.”
[684] Dum-līza: I do not know whether this is the “Pope’s nose,” or the feathers under the tail, the “brayles or brayle federis” of the Boke of St. Albans.
[685] Rūg͟han-i karchak is in m.c. “castor oil;” vide note [729], page 171.
[686] Marẓ-i k͟huskī, “dryness,” i.e, “costiveness.”
[687] Sunjad or sinjid, a sort of red wild plum, oblong in shape like the ʿunnab or jujube.
[688] Shāf or Shāfa is a stick with cotton-wool at the end; this is dipped in oil and used as an enema for children.
[689] By feeling the stomach and bowel with the fore-finger it is easy to tell whether the stomach is full or empty. Indian falconers, who have a hawk on the fist for many hours every day, can frequently tell by touch whether the hawk has “cast” or not. The “casting” apparently forms only a short time before being ejected and can be distinctly felt by an educated finger.
[690] Būrān, “a snow-storm,” a word not in the dictionaries.
[691] Parīdan, “to fly, i.e., to bate.”
[692] The usual punishment would, in Persia, be the bastinado. The author probably wrote in Baghdad where the bastinado is not used.
CHAPTER XLIX
THE SICKNESS CALLED KARAJ,[693] WHICH IS COSTIVENESS
The symptoms of this disease are, that the soft feathers under the tail and round the vent are soiled by the mutes; that when muting the hawk raises her tail higher than usual, mutes with difficulty, and is unable to cast the mutes clear to a distance.
Treatment: feed the hawk for some days on the flesh of a cockerel, sprinkling the flesh with the juice of the marsh-mallow;[694] feed her thus twice a day. Further, anoint the vent with almond or with olive oil. Item: vary her food, giving her pigeons and sparrows, and the larks called by the Arabs quṃburah. Apply the clyster-stick as already described, dipping the cotton-wool in oil of peach kernels, apricot kernels, and almonds; administer it before feeding her: give her also a pill of powdered sugar-candy[695] mixed in a pat of cow’s butter the size of two filberts. She will, please God, be cured. Keep water ever near her, that she may drink her fill. Item: take oil of apricot kernels, and powdered cummin seed,[696] a quantity equal to the size of a walnut. Sprinkle the powdered cummin seed on the vent; then anoint the vent and adjacent parts with the oil. Do this for three days in succession, and she shall be whole. This is the practice of the ancient falconers. Item: anoint her vent a few times with a mixture of oil of jasmine, white wax, and pitch.[697] Item: take marrow of the shin-bone of a goat and mix it with her food for a few days. If the goat be an old female, so much the better.