[2450] This, and not Chandwār (f. 331b), appears the correct form. Neither this place nor Ābāpūr is mentioned in the G. of I.’s Index or shewn in the I.S. Map of 1900 (cf. f. 331b n. 3). Chandawār lies s.w. of Fīrūzābād, and near a village called Ṣufīpūr.
[2451] Anglicé, Wednesday after 6 p.m.
[2452] or life-guardsman, body-guard.
[2453] This higher title for T̤ahmāsp, which first appears here in the B.N., may be an early slip in the Turkī text, since it occurs in many MSS. and also because “Shāh-zāda” reappears on f. 359.
[2454] Slash-face, balafré; perhaps Ibrāhīm Begchīk (Index s.n.), but it is long since he was mentioned by Bābur, at least by name. He may however have come, at this time of reunion in Āgra, with Mīrzā Beg T̤aghāī (his uncle or brother?), father-in-law of Kāmrān.
[2455] The army will have kept to the main road connecting the larger towns mentioned and avoiding the ravine district of the Jumna. What the boat-journey will have been between high banks and round remarkable bends can be learned from the G. of I. and Neave’s District Gazetteer of Mainpūrī. Rāprī is on the road from Fīrūzābād to the ferry for Bateswar, where a large fair is held annually. (It is misplaced further east in the I.S. Map of 1900.) There are two Fatḥpūrs, n. e. of Rāprī.
[2456] aūlūgh tūghāīnīng tūbī. Here it suits to take the Turkī word tūghāī to mean bend of a river, and as referring to the one shaped (on the map) like a soda-water bottle, its neck close to Rāprī. Bābur avoided it by taking boat below its mouth.—In neither Persian translation has tūghāī been read to mean a bend of a river; the first has az pāyān rūīa Rāprī, perhaps referring to the important ford (pāyān); the second has az zīr bulandī kalān Rāprī, perhaps referring to a height at the meeting of the bank of the ravine down which the road to the ford comes, with the high bank of the river. Three examples of tūghāī or tūqāī Shajrat-i-Turk, Fræhn’s imprint, pp. 106, 107, 119 (Désmaisons’ trs. pp. 204, 205, 230). In each instance Désmaisons renders it by coude, elbow, but one of the examples may need reconsideration, since the word has the further meanings of wood, dense forest by the side of a river (Vambéry), prairie (Zenker), and reedy plain (Shaw).
[2457] Blochmann describes the apparatus for marking lines to guide writing (A.-i-A. trs. p. 52 n. 5):—On a card of the size of the page to be written on, two vertical lines are drawn within an inch of the edges; along these lines small holes are pierced at regular intervals, and through these a string is laced backwards and forwards, care being taken that the horizontal strings are parallel. Over the lines of string the pages are placed and pressed down; the strings then mark the paper sufficiently to guide the writing.
[2458] tarkīb (nīng) khat̤ī bīla tarjuma bīlīr aūchūn. The Rāmpūr Dīwān may supply the explanation of the uncertain words tarkīb khat̤ī. The “translation” (tarjuma), mentioned in the passage quoted above, is the Wālidiyyah-risāla, the first item of the Dīwān, in which it is entered on crowded pages, specially insufficient for the larger hand of the chapter-headings. The number of lines per page is 13; Bābur now fashions a line-marker for 11. He has already despatched 4 copies of the translation (f. 357b); he will have judged them unsatisfactory; hence to give space for the mixture of hands (tarkīb khat̤ī), i.e. the smaller hand of the poem and the larger of the headings, he makes an 11 line marker.
[2459] Perhaps Aḥrārī’s in the Wālidiyyah-risāla, perhaps those of Muḥammad. A quatrain in the Rāmpūr Dīwān connects with this admonishment [Plate xiva, 2nd quatrain].