[1248] Sih-kāna lies s.e. of Shorkach, and near Kharbīn. Sar-i-dih is about 25 or 30 miles s. of Ghaznī (Erskine). A name suiting the pastoral wealth of the tribe viz. Mesh-khail, Sheep-tribe, is shewn on maps somewhat s. from Kharbīn. Cf. Steingass s.n. Masht.
[1249] yāghrūn, whence yāghrūnchī, a diviner by help of the shoulder-blades of sheep. The defacer of the Elphinstone Codex has changed yāghrūn to yān, side, thus making Bābur turn his side and not his half-back to the north, altering his direction, and missing what looks like a jesting reference to his own divination of the road. The Pole Star was seen, presumably, before the night became quite black.
[1250] From the subsequent details of distance done, this must have been one of those good yīghāch of perhaps 5-6 miles, that are estimated by the ease of travel on level lands (Index s.v. yīghāch).
[1251] I am uncertain about the form of the word translated by “whim”. The Elph. and Ḥai. Codices read khūd d:lma (altered in the first to y:lma); Ilminsky (p. 257) reads khūd l:ma (de C. ii, 2 and note); Erskine has been misled by the Persian translation (215 f. 164b and 217 f. 139b). Whether khūd-dilma should be read, with the sense of “out of their own hearts” (spontaneously), or whether khūd-yalma, own pace (Turkī, yalma, pace) the contrast made by Bābur appears to be between an unpremeditated gallop and one premeditated for haste. Persian dalama, tarantula, also suggests itself.
[1252] chāpqūn, which is the word translated by gallop throughout the previous passage. The Turkī verb chāpmāq is one of those words-of-all-work for which it is difficult to find a single English equivalent. The verb qūīmāq is another; in its two occurrences here the first may be a metaphor from the pouring of molten metal; the second expresses that permission to gallop off for the raid without which to raid was forbidden. The root-notion of qūīmāq seems to be letting-go, that of chāpmāq, rapid motion.
[1253] i.e. on the raiders’ own road for Kābul.
[1254] f. 198b.
[1255] The Fifth taken was manifestly at the ruler’s disposition. In at least two places when dependants send gifts to Bābur the word [tassaduq] used might be rendered as “gifts for the poor”. Does this mean that the pādshāh in receiving this stands in the place of the Imām of the Qorān injunction which orders one-fifth of spoil to be given to the Imām for the poor, orphans, and travellers,—four-fifths being reserved for the troops? (Qorān, Sale’s ed. 1825, i, 212 and Hidāyat, Book ix).
[1256] This may be the sum of the separate items of sheep entered in account-books by the commissaries.
[1257] Here this comprehensive word will stand for deer, these being plentiful in the region.