[1674] This is Mīrzā Khān’s son, i.e. Wais Mīrān-shāhī’s.
[1675] A dispute for this right-hand post of honour is recorded on f. 100b, as also in accounts of Culloden.
[1676] tartīb u yāsāl, which may include, as Erskine took it to do, the carts and mantelets; of these however, Ibrāhīm can hardly have failed to hear before he rode out of camp.
[1677] f. 217b and note; Irvine’s Army of the Indian Mughuls p. 133. Here Erskine notes (Mems. p. 306) “The size of these artillery at this time is very uncertain. The word firingī is now (1826 AD.) used in the Deccan for a swivel. At the present day, zarb-zan in common usage is a small species of swivel. Both words in Bābur’s time appear to have been used for field-cannon.” (For an account of guns, intermediate in date between Bābur and Erskine, see the Āyīn-i-akbarī. Cf. f. 264 n. on the carts (arāba).)
[1678] Although the authority of the Tārīkh-i-salāt̤īn-i-afaghāna is not weighty its reproduction of Afghān opinion is worth consideration. It says that astrologers foretold Ibrāhīm’s defeat; that his men, though greatly outnumbering Bābur’s, were out-of-heart through his ill-treatment of them, and his amīrs in displeasure against him, but that never-the-less, the conflict at Pānī-pat was more desperate than had ever been seen. It states that Ibrāhīm fell where his tomb now is (i.e. in circa 1002 AH.-1594 AD.); that Bābur went to the spot and, prompted by his tender heart, lifted up the head of his dead adversary, and said, “Honour to your courage!”, ordered brocade and sweetmeats made ready, enjoined Dilāwar Khān and Khalīfa to bathe the corpse and to bury it where it lay (E. & D. v, 2). Naturally, part of the reverence shewn to the dead would be the burial together of head and trunk.
[1679] f. 209b and App. H. section c. Bābā chuhra would be one of the corps of braves.
[1680] He was a brother of Muḥibb-i-‘alī’s mother.
[1681] To give Humāyūn the title Mīrzā may be a scribe’s lapse, but might also be a nuance of Bābur’s, made to shew, with other minutiae, that Humāyūn was in chief command. The other minute matters are that instead of Humāyūn’s name being the first of a simple series of commanders’ names with the enclitic accusative appended to the last one (here Walī), as is usual, Humāyūn’s name has its own enclitic nī; and, again, the phrase is “Humāyūn with” such and such begs, a turn of expression differentiating him from the rest. The same unusual variations occur again, just below, perhaps with the same intention of shewing chief command, there of Mahdī Khwāja.
[1682] A small matter of wording attracts attention in the preceding two sentences. Bābur, who does not always avoid verbal repetition, here constructs two sentences which, except for the place-names Dihlī and Āgra, convey information of precisely the same action in entirely different words.
[1683] d. 1325 AD. The places Bābur visited near Dihlī are described in the Reports of the Indian Archæological Survey, in Sayyid Aḥmad’s As̤ār Sanādīd pp. 74-85, in Keene’s Hand-book to Dihlī and Murray’s Hand-book to Bengal etc. The last two quote much from the writings of Cunningham and Fergusson.