[1694] i.e. from the Deccan of which ‘Alāu’u’d-dīn is said to have been the first Muḥammadan invader. An account of this diamond, identified as the Koh-i-nūr, is given in Hobson Jobson but its full history is not told by Yule or by Streeter’s Great Diamonds of the World, neither mentioning the presentation of the diamond by Humāyūn to Taḥmāsp of which Abū’l-faẓl writes, dwelling on its overplus of payment for all that Humāyūn in exile received from his Persian host (Akbar-nāma trs. i, 349 and note; Asiatic Quarterly Review, April 1899 H. Beveridge’s art. Bābur’s diamond; was it the Koh-i-nūr?).
[1695] 320 ratīs (Erskine). The ratī is 2.171 Troy grains, or in picturesque primitive equivalents, is 8 grains of rice, or 64 mustard seeds, or 512 poppy-seeds,—uncertain weights which Akbar fixed in cat’s-eye stones.
[1696] Bābur’s plurals allow the supposition that the three men’s lives were spared. Malik Dād served him thenceforth.
[1697] Erskine estimated these as dams and worth about £1750, but this may be an underestimate (H. of I. i, App. E.).
[1698] “These begs of his” (or hers) may be the three written of above.
[1699] These will include cousins and his half-brothers Jahāngīr and Nāṣir as opposing before he took action in 925 AH. (1519 AD.). The time between 910 AH. and 925 AH. at which he would most desire Hindūstān is after 920 AH. in which year he returned defeated from Transoxiana.
[1700] kīchīk karīm, which here seems to make contrast between the ruling birth of members of his own family and the lower birth of even great begs still with him. Where the phrase occurs on f. 295, Erskine renders it by “down to the dregs”, and de Courteille (ii, 235) by “de toutes les bouches” but neither translation appears to me to suit Bābur’s uses of the term, inasmuch as both seem to go too low (cf. f. 270b).
[1701] aīūrūshūb, Pers. trs. chaspīda, stuck to.
[1702] The first expedition is fixed by the preceding passage as in 925 AH. which was indeed the first time a passage of the Indus is recorded. Three others are found recorded, those of 926, 930 and 932 AH. Perhaps the fifth was not led by Bābur in person, and may be that of his troops accompanying ‘Ālam Khān in 931 AH. But he may count into the set of five, the one made in 910 AH. which he himself meant to cross the Indus. Various opinions are found expressed by European writers as to the dates of the five.
[1703] Muḥammad died 632 AD. (11 AH.).