[1829] Daulat Khān Yūsuf-khail Lūdī in 929 AH. sent Bābur a gift of mangoes preserved in honey (in loco p. 440).
[1830] I have learned nothing more definite about the word kārdī than that it is the name of a superior kind of peach (Ghiyās̤u’l-lughat).
[1831] The preceding sentence is out of place in the Turkī text; it may therefore be a marginal note, perhaps not made by Bābur.
[1832] This sentence suggests that Bābur, writing in Āgra or Fatḥpūr did not there see fine mango-trees.
[1833] See Yule’s H.J. on the plantain, the banana of the West.
[1834] This word is a descendant of Sanscrit mocha, and parent of musa the botanical name of the fruit (Yule).
[1835] Shaikh Effendī (Kunos), Zenker and de Courteille say of this only that it is the name of a tree. Shaw gives a name that approaches it, ārman, a grass, a weed; Scully explains this as Artemisia vulgaris, wormwood, but Roxburgh gives no Artemisia having a leaf resembling the plantain’s. Scully has arāmadān, unexplained, which, like amān-qarā, may refer to comfort in shade. Bābur’s comparison will be with something known in Transoxiana. Maize has general resemblance with the plantain. So too have the names of the plants, since mocha and mauz stand for the plantain and (Hindī) mukā’ī for maize. These incidental resemblances bear, however lightly, on the question considered in the Ency. Br. (art. maize) whether maize was early in Asia or not; some writers hold that it was; if Bābur’s amān-qarā were maize, maize will have been familiar in Transoxiana in his day.
[1836] Abū’l-faẓl mentions that the plantain-tree bears no second crop unless cut down to the stump.
[1837] Bābur was fortunate not to have met with a seed-bearing plantain.
[1838] The ripe “dates” are called P. tamar-i Hind, whence our tamarind, and Tamarindus Indica.