[2255] “Each beaked promontory” (Lycidas). Our name “Selsey-bill” is an English instance of Bābur’s (not infrequent) tūmshūq, beak, bill of a bird.
[2256] No order about this Chār-bāgh is in existing annals of 934 AH. Such order is likely to have been given after Bābur’s return from his operations against the Afghāns, in his account of which the annals of 934 AH. break off.
[2257] The fort-hill at the northern end is 300 ft. high, at the southern end, 274 ft.; its length from north to south is 1-3/4 m.; its breadth varies from 600 ft. opposite the main entrance (Hātī-pūl) to 2,800 ft. in the middle opposite the great temple (Sās-bhao). Cf. Cunningham p. 330 and Appendix R, in loco, for his Plan of Gūālīār.
[2258] This Arabic plural may have been prompted by the greatness and distinction of Mān-sing’s constructions. Cf. Index s.nn. begāt and bāghāt.
[2259] A translation point concerning the (Arabic) word ‘imārat is that the words “palace”, “palais”, and “residence” used for it respectively by Erskine, de Courteille, and, previous to the Hindūstān Section, by myself, are too limited in meaning to serve for Bābur’s uses of it in Hindūstān; and this (1) because he uses it throughout his writings for buildings under palatial rank (e.g. those of high and low in Chandīrī); (2) because he uses it in Hindūstān for non-residential buildings (e.g. for the Bādalgarh outwork, f. 341b, and a Hindū temple ib.); and (3) because he uses it for the word “building” in the term building-stone, f. 335b and f. 339b. Building is the comprehensive word under which all his uses of it group. For labouring this point a truism pleads my excuse, namely, that a man’s vocabulary being characteristic of himself, for a translator to increase or diminish it is to intrude on his personality, and this the more when an autobiography is concerned. Hence my search here (as elsewhere) for an English grouping word is part of an endeavour to restrict the vocabulary of my translation to the limits of my author’s.
[2260] Jalāl Ḥiṣārī describes “Khwāja Raḥīm-dād” as a paternal-nephew of Mahdī Khwāja. Neither man has been introduced by Bābur, as it is his rule to introduce when he first mentions a person of importance, by particulars of family, etc. Both men became disloyal in 935 AH. (1529 AD.) as will be found referred to by Bābur. Jalāl Ḥiṣārī supplements Bābur’s brief account of their misconduct and Shaikh Muḥammad Ghaus̤' mediation in 936 AH. For knowledge of his contribution I am indebted to my husband’s perusal of the Tārīkh-i-Gwālīāwar.
[2261] Erskine notes that Indians and Persians regard moonshine as cold but this only faintly expresses the wide-spread fear of moon-stroke expressed in the Psalm (121 v. 6), “The Sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the Moon by night.”
[2262] Agarcha lūk balūk u bī sīyāq. Ilminsky [p. 441] has balūk balūk but without textual warrant and perhaps following Erskine, as he says, speaking generally, that he has done in case of need (Ilminsky’s Preface). Both Erskine and de Courteille, working, it must be remembered, without the help of detailed modern descriptions and pictures, took the above words to say that the buildings were scattered and without symmetry, but they are not scattered and certainly Mān-sing’s has symmetry. I surmise that the words quoted above do not refer to the buildings themselves but to the stones of which they are made. T. lūk means heavy, and T. balūk [? block] means a thing divided off, here a block of stone. Such blocks might be bī sīyāq, i.e. irregular in size. To take the words in this way does not contradict known circumstances, and is verbally correct.
[2263] The Rājas’ buildings Bābur could compare were Rāja Karna (or Kirtī)’s [who ruled from 1454 to 1479 AD.], Rāja Mān-sing’s [1486 to 1516 AD.], and Rāja Bikramājīt’s [1516 to 1526 AD. when he was killed at Panīpat].
[2264] The height of the eastern face is 100 ft. and of the western 60 ft. The total length from north to south of the outside wall is 300 ft.; the breadth of the residence from east to west 160 ft. The 300 ft. of length appears to be that of the residence and service-courtyard (Cunningham p. 347 and Plate lxxxvii).