The K͟hān Aʿz̤am had himself prayed that the illustrious prince should be appointed to the campaign against the Rānā, yet, notwithstanding all kinds of encouragement and gratification on the part of my son (S͟hāh Jahān), he would not apply himself to the task, but proceeded to act in his own unworthy manner. When this was heard by me, I sent Ibrāhīm Ḥusain, who was one of my most trusty attendants, to him, and sent affectionate messages to him to say that when he was at Burhanpur he had daily begged this duty of me, as he considered it equivalent to the happiness of both worlds, and had said in meetings and assemblies that if he should be killed in this enterprise he would be a martyr, and if he prevailed, a g͟hāzī. I had given him whatever support and assistance of artillery he had asked for. After this he had written that without the movement of the royal standards to those regions the completion of the affair was not free of difficulty. By his counsel I had come to Ajmir, and this neighbourhood had been thus honoured and dignified. Now that he had himself prayed for the prince, and everything had been carried out according to his counsel, why did he withdraw his foot from the field of battle and enter the place of disagreement? To Bābā K͟hurram, from whom up till now I had never parted, and whom I sent in pure reliance on his (K͟hān Aʿz̤am’s) knowledge of affairs, he should show loyalty and approved good-will, and never be neglectful day or night of his duty to my son. If, contrariwise, he should draw back his foot from what he had agreed to, he must know that there would be mischief. Ibrāhīm Ḥusain went, and impressed these words on his mind in the same detailed way. It was of no avail, as he would not go back from his folly and determination. When Bābā K͟hurram saw that his being in the affair was a cause of disturbance, he kept him under observation and represented that his being there was in no way fitting, and he was acting thus and spoiling matters simply on account of the connection he had with K͟husrau.[29] I then ordered Mahābat K͟hān to go and bring him from Udaipur, and told Muḥammad Taqī, the diwan of buildings, to go to Mandesūr and bring his children and dependants to Ajmir.
On the 11th of the month news came that Dulīp, son of Rāy Singh, who was of a seditious and rebellious disposition, had been heavily defeated by his younger brother, Rāo Sūraj Singh, who had been sent against him, and that he was making disturbance in one of the districts of the Sarkar of Ḥiṣṣar. About this time Hāshim of K͟host, the faujdār, and the jagirdars of that neighbourhood seized him, and sent him as a prisoner to Court. As he had misbehaved repeatedly, he was capitally punished, and this was a warning to many of the seditious. In reward for this service an increase of 500 personal and 200 horse was made to the mansab of Rāo Sūraj Singh. On the 14th of the month a representation came from my son Bābā K͟hurram that the elephant ʿĀlam-gumān, of which the Rānā was very fond, together with seventeen other elephants, had fallen into the hands of the warriors of the victorious army, and that his master would also soon be captured.
[1] Zīn-i-muraṣṣaʿ kārī-i-Farangī. The MSS. in the B.M. seem to have zaram instead of zīn. [↑]
[2] Jahāngīr’s words seem to imply that he caused the fowl’s leg to be broken in order to try the experiment. Manucci, i, 55, has a good deal to say about mūmīyā, though he admits that he had not himself witnessed its effects. I do not find that Ḥājī Bābā descants on its virtues, though at the end of the first chapter he says that his mother gave him an unguent which she said would cure all fractures. The Persian translator, no doubt rightly, has rendered the word ‘unguent’ by mūmīyā. With regard to the derivation of the word, may it not be connected with mom, ‘wax’? Vullers has a long article on the word. [↑]
[3] The text has birādārī, ‘brotherhood,’ but the true reading, as shown by the B.M. MSS., is bar āwardī, بر آوردى, and this means either the establishment of ʿAbdu-llah or a list submitted by him. Perhaps ‘list’ is a better translation, the word āwardī being connected with the āwarda-nawīs of Wilson’s Glossary. [↑]
[4] The sentence is very obscure. MS. No. 181 I.O. has k͟hūn, ‘blood,’ instead of chūn, ‘as,’ and perhaps the meaning is blood in the breasts turns to milk on account of love for their cubs, and then the sucking by the latter increases the mother’s natural ferocity and the milk dries up. [↑]
[5] In the B.M. MSS. the words are manṣabdārān-i-rīzā-manṣab. These last two words are wanting in the text. [↑]