[26] Tūrhā. The corresponding passage in the Iqbāl-nāma, p. 67, last line, shows that jewels are meant. The text omits the preposition ba before Begamān. [↑]
[27] K͟hūn-pāra, ‘congestion of blood’; pāra or bāra is used to mean a collection or gathering. See Maʾās̤iru-l-umarā, ii, 221, where we have bāra yaʿnī jamʿī. Erskine, in spite of his MS., reads chūn pāra and translates ‘as quicksilver.’ [↑]
[28] Ās̤ār, which, according to Forbes, is a sir weight. [↑]
[29] Perhaps it was only what is called a chār-jāma and not an enclosed howdah. [↑]
[30] The reference is to the Messiah as the restorer to life by His breath. For baguẕar, ‘pass by,’ Erskine had in his MS. maguẕar, ‘pass not.’ Apparently the verse means that it is more meritorious for the Messiah to restore one man to life than it is for another to slay a hundred infidels. [↑]
[31] ʿAlī Aḥmad died suddenly two years before this, unless indeed the passage at p. 169 refers to the mimic and not to ʿAlī Aḥmad. Probably the meaning is that ʿAlī Aḥmad had made this couplet on some previous occasion, and that one of the courtiers now quoted it. His verse about the hundred murders may contain a play on the word k͟hūn, ‘blood,’ and refer to the spilling of the blood-like wine. It is difficult to understand how Jahāngīr came to introduce the verse into his Memoirs here. It does not seem to have any connection with the account of the Raja of Kumaon. Jahāngīr says it was quoted ‘incidentally,’ bā taqarrubī. Perhaps the word here means ‘by way of parody,’ or ‘by way of paraphrase.’ In the MS. used by Erskine the words of the first line seem to be Maguẕar Masīḥ bar sar-i-mā, and so Erskine translates “Pass not, O Messiah, over the heads of us victims of love.” Perhaps maguẕar means ‘do not pass by.’ [↑]
[32] This is the Dakhanī chief mentioned previously at p. 192. [↑]
[33] Blochmann, p. 485. He acted in Kashmir for his brother Hās͟him. [↑]
[34] The kaṭāra was a long, narrow dagger. See Blochmann’s Āyīn, pl. xli, fig. 9. But the word phūl (flower) is obscure. Perhaps it means the knot or crochet of jewels called by Chardin, iv, 164, ed. Rouen, “une enseigne ronde de pierreries,” and which, he says, the Persians called ‘rose de Poignard.’ [↑]
[35] He must have remained more than four days, for he got the news of Salīma’s death while in the garden. See infra. Perhaps the date 10th refers to Day and not to Ẕī-l-qaʿda. The Dahrah garden was in the environs of Agra. [↑]