[91] postīn pesh b:r:h. This obscure Persian phrase has been taken in the following ways:—
(a) W.-i-B. I.O. 215 and 217 (i.e. both versions) reproduce the phrase.
(b) W.-i-B. MS., quoted by Erskine, p. 6 note, (postīn-i mīsh burra).
(c) Leyden’s MS. Trs., a sheepskin mantle of five lambskins.
(d) Mems., Erskine, p. 6, a mantle of five lambskins.
(e) The Persian annotator of the Elph. MS., underlining pesh, writes, panj, five.
(f) Klaproth (Archives, p. 109), pustini pisch breh, d.h. gieb den vorderen Pelz.
(g) Kehr, p. 12 (Ilminsky p. 6) postin bīsh b:r:h.
(h) De. C, i, 9, fourrure d’agneau de la première qualité.
The “lambskins” of L. and E. carry on a notion of comfort started by their having read sayāh, shelter, for Turkī sā’ī, torrent-bed; de C. also lays stress on fur and warmth, but would not the flowery border of a mountain stream prompt rather a phrase bespeaking ornament and beauty than one expressing warmth and textile softness? If the phrase might be read as postīn pesh perā, what adorns the front of a coat, or as postīn pesh bar rah, the fine front of the coat, the phrase would recall the gay embroidered front of some leathern postins.
[92] Var. tabarkhūn. The explanation best suiting its uses, enumerated here, is Redhouse’s second, the Red Willow. My husband thinks it may be the Hyrcanian Willow.
[93] Steingass describes this as “an arrow without wing or point” (barb?) and tapering at both ends; it may be the practising arrow, t‘alīm aūqī, often headless.
[94] tabarraklūq. Cf. f. 48b foot, for the same use of the word.
[95] yabrūju’ṣ-ṣannam. The books referred to by Bābur may well be the Rauzatu’ṣ-ṣafā and the Ḥabību’s-siyār, as both mention the plant.
[96] The Turkī word āyīq is explained by Redhouse as awake and alert; and by Meninski and de Meynard as sobered and as a return to right senses. It may be used here as a equivalent of mihr in mihr-giyāh, the plant of love.
[97] Mr. Ney Elias has discussed the position of this group of seven villages. (Cf. T. R. p. 180 n.) Arrowsmith’s map places it (as Iti-kint) approximately where Mr. Th. Radloff describes seeing it i.e. on the Farghāna slope of the Kurāma range. (Cf. Réceuil d’Itinéraires p. 188.) Mr. Th. Radloff came into Yītī-kīnt after crossing the Kīndīrlīk Pass from Tāshkīnt and he enumerates the seven villages as traversed by him before reaching the Sīr. It is hardly necessary to say that the actual villages he names may not be those of Bābur’s Yītī-kint. Wherever the word is used in the Bābur-nāma and the Tārīkh-i-rashīdī, it appears from the context allowable to accept Mr. Radloff’s location but it should be borne in mind that the name Yītī-kīnt (Seven villages or towns) might be found as an occasional name of Altī-shahr (Six towns). See T.R. s.n. Altī-shahr.
[98] kīshī, person, here manifestly fighting men.