[1665] i.e. of his father and grandfather, Sikandar and Buhlūl.
[1666] As to the form of this word the authoritative MSS. of the Turkī text agree and with them also numerous good ones of the Persian translation. I have made careful examination of the word because it is replaced or explained here and there in MSS. by s:hb:ndī, the origin of which is said to be obscure. The sense of b:d-hindī and of s:hb:ndī is the same, i.e. irregular levy. The word as Bābur wrote it must have been understood by earlier Indian scribes of both the Turkī and Persian texts of the Bābur-nāma. Some light on its correctness may be thought given by Hobson Jobson (Crooke’s ed. p. 136) s.n. Byde or Bede Horse, where the word Byde is said to be an equivalent of pindārī, lūtī, and qāzzāq, raider, plunderer, so that Bābur’s word b:d-hindī may mean qāzzāq of Hind. Wherever I have referred to the word in many MSS. it is pointed to read b:d, and not p:d, thus affording no warrant for understanding pad, foot, foot-man, infantry, and also negativing the spelling bīd, i.e. with a long vowel as in Byde.
It may be noted here that Muḥ. Shīrāzī (p. 174) substituted s:hb:ndī for Bābur’s word and that this led our friend the late William Irvine to attribute mistake to de Courteille who follows the Turkī text (Army of the Mughūls p. 66 and Mémoires ii, 163).
[1667] bī tajarba yīgīt aīdī of which the sense may be that Bābur ranked Ibrāhīm, as a soldier, with a brave who has not yet proved himself deserving of the rank of beg. It cannot mean that he was a youth (yīgīt) without experience of battle.
[1668] Well-known are the three decisive historical battles fought near the town of Pānī-pat, viz. those of Bābur and Ibrāhīm in 1526, of Akbar and Hīmū in 1556, and of Aḥmad Abdālī with the Mahratta Confederacy in 1761. The following lesser particulars about the battle-field are not so frequently mentioned:—(i) that the scene of Bābur’s victory was long held to be haunted, Badāyūnī himself, passing it at dawn some 62 years later, heard with dismay the din of conflict and the shouts of the combatants; (ii) that Bābur built a (perhaps commemorative) mosque one mile to the n.e. of the town; (iii) that one of the unaccomplished desires of Sher Shāh Sūr, the conqueror of Bābur’s son Humāyūn, was to raise two monuments on the battle-field of Pānī-pat, one to Ibrāhīm, the other to those Chaghatāī sult̤āns whose martyrdom he himself had brought about; (iv) that in 1910 AD. the British Government placed a monument to mark the scene of Shāh Abdālī’s victory of 1761 AD. This monument would appear, from Sayyid Ghulām-i-‘alī’s Nigār-nāma-i-hind, to stand close to the scene of Bābur’s victory also, since the Mahrattas were entrenched as he was outside the town of Pānī-pat. (Cf. E. & D. viii, 401.)
[1669] This important date is omitted from the L. & E. Memoirs.
[1670] This wording will cover armour of man and horse.
[1671] ātlāndūk, Pers. trs. sūwār shudīm. Some later oriental writers locate Bābur’s battle at two or more miles from the town of Pānī-pat, and Bābur’s word ātlāndūk might imply that his cavalry rode forth and arrayed outside his defences, but his narrative allows of his delivering attack, through the wide sally-ports, after arraying behind the carts and mantelets which checked his adversary’s swift advance. The Mahrattas, who may have occupied the same ground as Bābur, fortified themselves more strongly than he did, as having powerful artillery against them. Aḥmad Shāh Abdālī’s defence against them was an ordinary ditch and abbattis, [Bābur’s ditch and branch,] mostly of dhāk trees (Butea frondosa), a local product Bābur also is likely to have used.
[1672] The preceding three words seem to distinguish this Shāh Ḥusain from several others of his name and may imply that he was the son of Yāragī Mughūl Ghānchī (Index and I.O. 217 f. 184b l. 7).
[1673] For Bābur’s terms vide f. 209b