[258] Badakhshan is a part of the grand province of Khurasan, and the city of Balkh is its metropolis, to the eastward of which is a chain of mountains celebrated for producing fine rubies.
[259] All Asiatic princes, like others nearer home, have spies, called "reporters of intelligence," who inform themselves of what passes in public. They are, as a matter of course, the pest of society, and generally corrupt.
[260] A miskal is four and a half mashas; our ounce contains twenty-four mashas. So the ruby weighed more than half an ounce.
[261] The word raja is the Hindu term for a prince or sovereign. In more recent times it has become a mere empty title, conferred upon rich Hindus by the Emperor of Delhi.
[262] Naishapur was once the richest and grandest city in the province of Khurasan. It was utterly destroyed by Tuli, the son of Jenghis Khan (or more correctly, Changis Ka,an), in A.D. 1221.
[263] Seven miskals are more than an ounce and a quarter.
[264] The term Farang, vulgarly Frank, was formerly applied to Christian Europe in general, with the exclusion of Russia.
[265] Literally, "kissed the ground of obeisance," a Persian phrase, expressive of profound respect.
[266] "The minister's daughter," afterwards called "the young merchant."
[267] The phrase pachas ek means "about fifty." It is strange that a certain critic on this work, (who has a prodigiously high opinion of himself,) should have rendered the above passage, "whose age was about forty or fifty years!" Most assuredly, the merest tyro in Hindustani can tell him that it cannot have such a latitude as to mean "about forty or fifty." He might just as correctly have said "about fifty or sixty." The phrase pachas ek, as I have stated, means simply "about fifty," i.e., it may be one year more or less.