[2620] yūsūnlūq tūshī, Pers. trss. t̤arf khūd, i.e. their place in the array, a frequent phrase.
[2621] dastak bīla dosta-i-qāmīsh bīla. Cf. f. 363b and f. 366b, for passages and notes connected with swimming and dastak. Erskine twice translates dastak bīla by swimming; but here de Courteille changes from his earlier à la nage (f. 366b) to appuyés sur une pièce de bois. Perhaps the swift current was crossed by swimming with the support of a bundle of reeds, perhaps on rafts made of such bundles (cf. Illustrated London News, Sep. 16th, 1916, for a picture of Indian soldiers so crossing on rafts).
[2622] perhaps they were in the Burh-ganga channel, out of gun-fire.
[2623] If the Ghogrā flowed at this point in a narrow channel, it would be the swifter, and less easy to cross than where in an open bed.
[2624] chīrīk-aīlī, a frequent compound, but one of which the use is better defined in the latter than the earlier part of Bābur’s writings to represent what then answered to an Army Service Corps. This corps now crosses into Sāran and joins the fighting force.
[2625] This appears to refer to the crossing effected before the fight.
[2626] or Kūndbah. I have not succeeded in finding this name in the Nirhun pargana; it may have been at the southern end, near the “Domaigarh” of maps. In it was Tīr-mūhānī, perhaps a village (f. 377, f. 381).
[2627] This passage justifies Erskine’s surmise (Memoirs, p. 411, n. 4) that the Kharīd-country lay on both banks of the Ghogrā. His further surmise that, on the east bank of the Ghogrā, it extended to the Ganges would be correct also, since the Ganges flowed, in Bābur’s day, through the Burh-ganga (Old Ganges) channel along the southern edge of the present Kharīd, and thus joined the Ghogrā higher than it now does.
[2628] Bāyazīd and Ma‘rūf Farmūlī were brothers. Bāyazīd had taken service with Bābur in 932 AH. (1526 AD.), left him in 934 AH. (end of 1527 AD.) and opposed him near Qanūj. Ma‘rūf, long a rebel against Ibrāhīm Lūdī, had never joined Bābur; two of his sons did so; of the two, Muḥammad and Mūsa, the latter may be the one mentioned as at Qanūj, “Ma‘rūf’s son” (f. 336).—For an interesting sketch of Ma‘rūf’s character and for the location in Hindūstān of the Farmūlī clan, see the Wāqi‘āt-i-mushtāqī, E. & D.’s History of India, iv, 584.—In connection with Qanūj, the discursive remark may be allowable, that Bābur’s halt during the construction of the bridge of boats across the Ganges in 934 AH. is still commemorated by the name Bādshāh-nagar of a village between Bangarmau and Nānāmau (Elliot’s Onau, p. 45).
[2629] On f. 381 ‘Abdu’l-lāh’s starting-place is mentioned as Tīr-mūhānī.