[1869] This name, with its usual form tāḍī (toddy), is used for the fermented sap of the date, coco, and mhār palms also (cf. Yule’s H.J. s.n. toddy).
[1870] Bābur writes of the long leaf-stalk as a branch (shākh); he also seems to have taken each spike of the fan-leaf to represent a separate leaf. [For two omissions from my trs. see Appendix O.]
[1871] Most of the fruits Bābur describes as orange-like are named in the following classified list, taken from Watts’ Economic Products of India:—“Citrus aurantium, narangi, sangtara, amrit-phal; C. decumana, pumelo, shaddock, forbidden-fruit, sada-phal; C. medica proper, turunj, limu; C. medica limonum, jambhira, karna-nebu.” Under C. aurantium Brandis enters both the sweet and the Seville oranges (nārangī); this Bābur appears to do also.
[1872] kīndīklīk, explained in the Elph. Codex by nāfwār (f. 238). This detail is omitted by the Persian translation. Firminger’s description (p. 221) of Aurangābād oranges suggests that they also are navel-oranges. At the present time one of the best oranges had in England is the navel one of California.
[1873] Useful addition is made to earlier notes on the variability of the yīghāch, a variability depending on time taken to cover the ground, by the following passage from Henderson and Hume’s Lahor to Yarkand (p. 120), which shews that even in the last century the farsang (the P. word used in the Persian translation of the Bābur-nāma for T. yīghāch) was computed by time. “All the way from Kargallik (Qārghalīq) to Yarkand, there were tall wooden mile-posts along the roads, at intervals of about 5 miles, or rather one hour’s journey, apart. On a board at the top of each post, or farsang as it is called, the distances were very legibly written in Turki.”
[1874] ma‘rib, Elph. MS. magharrib; (cf. f. 285b note).
[1875] i.e. nārang (Sans. nārangā) has been changed to nāranj in the ‘Arab mouth. What is probably one of Humāyūn’s notes preserved by the Elph. Codex (f. 238), appears to say—it is mutilated—that nārang has been corrupted into nāranj.
[1876] The Elph. Codex has a note—mutilated in early binding—which is attested by its scribe as copied from Humāyūn’s hand-writing, and is to the effect that once on his way from the Hot-bath, he saw people who had taken poison and restored them by giving lime-juice.
Erskine here notes that the same antidotal quality is ascribed to the citron by Virgil:—
Media fert tristes succos. tardumque saporem