[2600] This passage presupposes that guns in Kharīd could hit the hostile camp in Sāran. If the river narrowed here as it does further north, the Ghāzī mortar, which seems to have been the only one Bābur had with him, would have carried across, since it threw a stone 1,600 paces (qadam, f. 309). Cf. Reid’s Report quoted above.
[2601] Anglicé, Saturday after 6p.m.
[2602] yaqīn būlghān fauj, var. ta‘īn būlghān fauj, the army appointed (to cross). The boats will be those collected at the Haldī-ferry, and the army ‘Askarī’s.
[2603] i.e. near ‘Alī-qulī’s emplacement.
[2604] Cf. f. 303, f. 309, f. 337 and n. 4.
[2605] “The yasāwal is an officer who carries the commands of the prince, and sees them enforced” (Erskine). Here he will have been the superintendent of coolies moving earth.
[2606] ma‘jūn-nāk which, in these days of Bābur’s return to obedience, it may be right to translate in harmony with his psychical outlook of self-reproach, by ma‘jūn-polluted. Though he had long ceased to drink wine, he still sought cheer and comfort, in his laborious days, from inspiriting and forbidden confections.
[2607] Probably owing to the less precise phrasing of his Persian archetype, Erskine here has reversed the statement, made in the Turkī, that Bābur slept in the Asāīsh (not the Farmāīsh).
[2608] aūstīdā tāshlār. An earlier reading of this, viz. that stones were thrown on the intruder is negatived by Bābur’s mention of wood as the weapon used.
[2609] sū sārī which, as the boats were between an island and the river’s bank, seems likely to mean that the man went off towards the main stream. Mems. p. 415, “made his escape in the river”; Méms. ii, 418, dans la direction du large.