[2315] The useful verb tībrāmāk which connotes agitation of mind with physical movement, will here indicate anxiety on the Khwāja’s part to fulfil his mission to Humāyūn.
[2316] Kāmrān’s messenger seems to repeat his master’s words, using the courteous imperative of the 3rd person plural.
[2317] Though Bābur not infrequently writes of e.g. Bengalīs and Aūzbegs and Turks in the singular, the Bengalī, the Aūzbeg, the Turk, he seems here to mean ‘Ubaidu’l-lāh, the then dominant Aūzbeg, although Kūchūm was Khāqān.
[2318] This muster preceded defeat near Jām of which Bābur heard some 19 days later.
[2319] Humāyūn’s wife was Bega Begīm, the later Ḥājī Begīm; Kāmrān’s bride was her cousin perhaps named Māh-afrūz (Gul-badan’s Humāyūn-nāma f. 64b). The hear-say tense used by the messenger allows the inference that he was not accredited to give the news but merely repeated the rumour of Kābul. The accredited bearer-of-good-tidings came later (f. 346b).
[2320] There are three enigmatic words in this section. The first is the Sayyid’s cognomen; was he daknī, rather dark of hue, or zaknī, one who knows, or ruknī, one who props, erects scaffolding, etc.? The second mentions his occupation; was he a ghaiba-gar, diviner (Erskine, water-finder), a jība-gar, cuirass-maker, or a jibā-gar, cistern-maker, which last suits with well-making? The third describes the kind of well he had in hand, perhaps the stone one of f. 353b; had it scaffolding, or was it for drinking-water only (khwāralīq); had it an arch, or was it chambered (khwāzalīq)? If Bābur’s orders for the work had been preserved,—they may be lost from f. 344b, trouble would have been saved to scribes and translators, as an example of whose uncertainty it may be mentioned that from the third word (khwāralīq?) Erskine extracted “jets d’eau and artificial water-works”, and de Courteille “taillé dans le roc vif”.
[2321] All Bābur’s datings in Ṣafar are inconsistent with his of Muḥarram, if a Muḥarram of 30 days [as given by Gladwin and others].
[2322] ḥarārat. This Erskine renders by “so violent an illness” (p. 388), de Courteille by “une inflammation d’entrailles” (ii, 357), both swayed perhaps by the earlier mention, on Muḥ. 10th, of Bābur’s medicinal quick-silver, a drug long in use in India for internal affections (Erskine). Some such ailment may have been recorded and the record lost (f. 345b and n. 8), but the heat, fever, and trembling in the illness of Ṣafar 23rd, taken with the reference to last’s year’s attack of fever, all point to climatic fever.
[2323] aīndīnī (or, āndīnī). Consistently with the readings quoted in the preceding note, E. and de C. date the onset of the fever as Sunday and translate aīndīnī to mean “two days after”. It cannot be necessary however to specify the interval between Friday and Sunday; the text is not explicit; it seems safe to surmise only that the cold fit was less severe on Sunday; the fever had ceased on the following Thursday.
[2324] Anglicé, Monday after 6 p.m.