[2006] Erskine locates this as 10 to 12 miles n.w. of Bīāna.
[2007] This phrase has not occurred in the B.N. before; presumably it expresses what has not yet been expressed; this Erskine’s rendering, “each according to the speed of his horse,” does also. The first Persian translation, which in this portion is by Muḥammad-qulī Mughūl Ḥiṣārī, translates by az daṃbal yak dīgar (I.O. 215, f. 205b); the second, ‘Abdu’r-rāḥīm’s, merely reproduces the phrase; De Courteille (ii, 272) appears to render it by (amirs) que je ne nomme pas. If my reading of T̤āhir-tibrī’s failure be correct (infra), Erskine’s translation suits the context.
[2008] The passage cut off by my asterisks has this outside interest that it forms the introduction to the so-called “Fragments”, that is, to certain Turkī matter not included in the standard Bābur-nāma, but preserved with the Kehr—Ilminsky—de Courteille text. As is well-known in Bāburiana, opinion has varied as to the genesis of this matter; there is now no doubt that it is a translation into Turkī from the (Persian) Akbar-nāma, prefaced by the above-asterisked passage of the Bābur-nāma and continuous (with slight omissions) from Bib. Ind. ed. i, 106 to 120 (trs. H. Beveridge i, 260 to 282). It covers the time from before the battle of Kanwā to the end of Abū’l-faẓl’s description of Bābur’s death, attainments and Court; it has been made to seem Bābur’s own, down to his death-bed, by changing the third person of A.F.’s narrative into the autobiographical first person. (Cf. Ilminsky, p. 403 l. 4 and p. 494; Mémoires ii, 272 and 443 to 464; JRAS. 1908, p. 76.)
A minute point in the history of the B.N. manuscripts may be placed on record here; viz. that the variants from the true Bābur-nāma text which occur in the Kehr-Ilminsky one, occur also in the corrupt Turkī text of I.O. No. 214 (JRAS 1900, p. 455).
[2009] chāpār kūmak yītmās, perhaps implying that the speed of his horses was not equal to that of Muḥibb-i-'alī’s. Translators vary as to the meaning of the phrase.
[2010] Erskine and de Courteille both give Must̤afa the commendation the Turkī and Persian texts give to the carts.
[2011] According to Tod’s Rājastān, negotiations went on during the interval, having for their object the fixing of a frontier between the Rānā and Bābur. They were conducted by a “traitor” Ṣalaḥ’d-dīn Tūār the chief of Raisin, who moreover is said to have deserted to Bābur during the battle.
[2012] Cf. f. 89 for Bābur’s disastrous obedience to astrological warning.
[2013] For the reading of this second line, given by the good MSS. viz. Tauba ham bī maza nīst, bachash, Ilminsky (p. 405) has Tauba ham bī maza, mast bakhis, which de Courteille [II, 276] renders by, “O ivrogne insensé! que ne goûtes-tu aussi à la pénitence?” The Persian couplet seems likely to be a quotation and may yet be found elsewhere. It is not in the Rāmpūr Dīwān which contains the Turkī verses following it (E. D. Ross p. 21).
[2014] kīchmāklīk, to pass over (to exceed?), to ford or go through a river, whence to transgress. The same metaphor of crossing a stream occurs, in connection with drinking, on f. 189b.