3. That (the) nine torrents issue from Safed-koh (f. 132b).
Of his first statement can be said, that he will have seen the book-name in histories he read, but will have heard Nīng-nahār, probably also have seen it in current letters and accounts.
Of his second,—that it bears and may be meant to bear two senses, (a) that the tūmān consisted of nine torrents,—their lands implied; just as he says “Asfara is four būlūks” (sub-divisions f. 3b)—(b) that tūqūz rūd translates nīng-nahār.
Of his third,—that in English its sense varies as it is read with or without the definite article Turkī rarely writes, but that either sense helps out his first and second, to mean that verbally and by its constituent units Nīng-nahār is nine-torrents; as verbally and by its constituents Panj-āb is five-waters.
e. Last words.
Detailed work on the Kābul section of the Bābur-nāma has stamped two impressions so deeply on me, that they claim mention, not as novel or as special to myself, but as set by the work.
The first is of extreme risk in swift decision on any problem of words arising in North Afghānistān, because of its local concourse of tongues, the varied utterance of its unlettered tribes resident or nomad, and the frequent translation of proper names in obedience to their verbal meanings. Names lie there too in strata, relics of successive occupation—Greek, Turkī, Hindī, Pushtū and tribes galore.
The second is that the region is an exceptionally fruitful field for first-hand observation of speech, the movent ocean of the uttered word, free of the desiccated symbolism of alphabets and books.
The following books, amongst others, have prompted the above note:—
Ghoswāra Inscription, Kittoe, JASB., 1848, and Kielhorn, Indian Antiquary, 1888, p. 311.