[521] —ki binā-yi marj u būlī kardan-i chark͟hā-yi shān ast. The word būlī is also bolī, bawlī, bavlī and bāvlī. Vide also note [523], page 123.
[522] Mik͟hlab.
[523] Dakl u bolī, “train”; in note [521] on page 122 marj u bolī. The author in a marginal note (page 117 of the text) gives dast-par as an equivalent for dakl. Dast-par or “hand-flight” can, however, refer only to a bird. Bā,ūlī is, in India, a train given either to a hawk or a greyhound, etc., etc.; it has a general application. Vide also page 141, note [614].
[524] The Chaʿb (properly Kaʿb) Arabs are a tribe inhabiting the southern portion of K͟huzistān.
[525] Muʿammara: the writer must mean Muḥammarah in K͟huzistān, 26 miles below Baṣrah: it is ruled by an Arab Sheikh.
[526] Tāzi-yi qūsh-shinās, a greyhound trained to hunt in company with a hawk. ʿĀrif, “knowing, intelligent.”
[527] An ambiguous sentence in the original: it may mean “flying at every kind of quarry.”
CHAPTER XXXV
ANOTHER METHOD OF TRAINING THE EYESS AND PASSAGE SAKERS TO GAZELLE
Another method of training Chark͟h AND Bālābān to Gazelle.—The people of the Fārs desert train the chark͟h and bālābān to gazelle by another method. In the early Autumn when the passage sakers are caught, they tame[528] one and lure it with the gazelle’s head. When thoroughly entered to this lure,[529] they tie it up in a dark place till its bones get set and strong, and its marrow becomes black,[530] and the bird itself fills out and grows stout and vigorous. Twenty days before the Naw-rūz[531] they take it up, and every morning and every evening lure it,[532] etc., with the gazelle head. Now in the hot climate of this desert, young gazelles are born from between ten to fifteen days before the Naw-rūz to ten to fifteen days after it. A “train”[533] of a small fawn is given, and the hawk is then flown in the desert at young fawns, which on account of their small size[534] are easily taken, and she is so flown till the young fawns begin to go about with their dams. After the bālābān has taken seven or eight fawns, she will readily single out the young fawn from the dam. When in this manner she has singled out and taken seven or eight[535] fawn at foot, it is considered sufficient; the weather, too, has grown too hot to go out into the country: the hawks are therefore of necessity set down to moult.
After being taken up out of the moult, they are, next season, given two or three “trains”[536] before being flown at a large wild gazelle.