The coins classed in the B.M. Catalogues as of Bābur’s vassalage, offer a point of difficulty to readers of his own writings, inasmuch as neither the “Sult̤ān Muḥammad” of No. 652 (gold), nor the “Sult̤ān Bābur Bahādur” of the silver coins enables confident acceptance of them as names he himself would use.
I.—ON THE WEEPING-WILLOWS OF f. 190b.
The passage omitted from f. 190b, which seems to describe something decorative done with weeping willows, (bed-i-mawallah) has been difficult to all translators. This may be due to inaccurate pointing in Bābur’s original MS. or may be what a traveller seeing other willows at another feast could explain.
The first Persian translation omits the passage (I.O. 215 f. 154b); the second varies from the Turkī, notably by changing sāch and sāj to shākh throughout (I.O. 217 f. 150b). The English and French translations differ much (Memoirs p. 206, Mémoires i, 414), the latter taking the mawallah to be mūla, a hut, against which much is clear in the various MSS.
Three Turkī sources[2791] agree in reading as follows:—
Mawallahlār-nī (or muwallah Ḥai. MS.) kīltūrdīlār. Bīlmān sāchlārī-nīng yā ‘amlī sāchlārī-nīng ārālārīgha k:msān-nī (Ilminsky, kamān) shākh-nīng (Ḥai. MS. șākh) aūzūnlūghī bīla aīnjīga aīnjīga kīsīb, qūīūb tūrlār.
The English and French translations differ from the Turkī and from one another:—
(Memoirs, p. 206) They brought in branching willow-trees. I do not know if they were in the natural state of the tree, or if the branches were formed artificially, but they had small twigs cut the length of the ears of a bow and inserted between them.
(Mémoires i, 434) On façonna des huttes (mouleh). Ils les établissent en taillant des baguettes minces, de la longeur du bout recourbé de l’arc, qu’on place entre des branches naturelles ou façonnées artificiellement, je l’ignore.
The construction of the sentence appears to be thus:—Mawal-lahlār-nī kīltūrdīlār, they brought weeping-willows; k:msān-nī qūīūbtūrlār, they had put k:msān-nī; aīnjīga aīnjīga kīsīb, cut very fine (or slender); shākh (or șākh)-nīng aūzūnlūghī, of the length of a shākh, bow, or șākh ...; bīlmān sāchlārī-nīng yā ‘amlī sāchlārī-nīng ārālārīgha, to (or at) the spaces of the sāchlār whether their (i.e. the willows') own or artificial sāchlār.