A translation matter falls to mention here:—After saying that the aūqār (grey heron), qarqara (egret), and qūtān (cormorant) are taken with the cord, Bābur says that this method of bird-catching is unique (bū nūḥ qūsh tūtmāq ghair muqarrar dūr) and describes it. The Persian text omits to translate the tūtmāq (by P. giriftan); hence Erskine (Mems. p. 153) writes, “The last mentioned fowl” (i.e. the qūt̤ān) “is rare,” notwithstanding Bābur’s statement that all three of the birds he names are caught in masses. De Courteille (p. 313) writes, as though only of the qūtān, “ces derniers toutefois ne se prennent qu’accidentelment,” perhaps led to do so by knowledge of the circumstance that Pelicanus onocrotatus is rare in India.
O.—NOTES BY HUMĀYŪN ON SOME HINDŪSTĀN FRUITS.
The following notes, which may be accepted as made by Humāyūn and in the margin of the archetype of the Elphinstone Codex, are composed in Turkī which differs in diction from his father’s but is far closer to that classic model than is that of the producer [Jahāngīr?] of the “Fragments” (Index s.n.). Various circumstances make the notes difficult to decipher verbatim and, unfortunately, when writing in Jan. 1917, I am unable to collate with its original in the Advocates Library, the copy I made of them in 1910.
a. On the kadhil, jack-fruit, Artocarpus integrifolia (f. 283b, p. 506; Elphinstone MS. f. 235b).[2811]
The contents of the note are that the strange-looking pumpkin (qar‘, which is also Ibn Batuta’s word for the fruit), yields excellent white juice, that the best fruit grows from the roots of the tree,[2812] that many such grow in Bengal, and that in Bengal and Dihli there grows a kadhil-tree covered with hairs (Artocarpus hirsuta?).
b. On the amrit-phal, mandarin-orange, Citrus aurantium (f. 287, p. 512; Elphinstone Codex, f. 238b, l. 12).
The interest of this note lies in its reference to Bābur.
A Persian version of it is entered, without indication of what it is or of who was its translator, in one of the volumes of Mr. Erskine’s manuscript remains, now in the British Museum (Add. 26,605, p. 88). Presumably it was made by his Turkish munshi for his note in the Memoirs (p. 329).
Various difficulties oppose the translation of the Turkī note; it is written into the text of the Elphinstone Codex in two instalments, neither of them in place, the first being interpolated in the account of the amil-bīd fruit, the second in that of the jāsūn flower; and there are verbal difficulties also. The Persian translation is not literal and in some particulars Mr. Erskine’s rendering of this differs from what the Turkī appears to state.
The note is, tentatively, as follows:[2813]—“His honoured Majesty Firdaus-makān[2814]—may God make his proof clear!—did not favour the amrit-phal;[2815] as he considered it insipid,[2816] he likened it to the mild-flavoured[2817] orange and did not make choice of it. So much was the mild-flavoured orange despised that if any person had disgusted (him) by insipid flattery(?) he used to say, ‘He is like orange-juice.’”[2818]