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is no other near.848 They cannot cross when the north wind blows, or if there is even a little cloud on Hindū-kush; at such times they alight on the level lands of the Bārān-water and are taken in great numbers by the local people. Towards the end of winter, dense flocks of mallards (aūrdūq) reach the banks of the Bārān in very good condition. Follow these the cranes and herons,849 great birds, in large flocks and countless numbers.

      (j. Bird-catching.)

      Along the Bārān people take masses of cranes (tūrna) with the cord; masses of aūqār, qarqara and qūt̤ān also.850 This method of bird-catching is unique. They twist a cord as long as the arrow’s851 flight, tie the arrow at one end and a bīldūrga852 at the other, and wind it up, from the arrow-end, on a piece of wood, span-long and wrist-thick, right up to the bīldūrga. They then pull out the piece of wood, leaving just the hole it was in. The bīldūrga being held fast in the hand, the arrow is shot off853 towards the coming flock. If the cord twists round a neck or wing, it brings the bird down. On the Bārān everyone takes birds in this way; it is difficult; it must be done on rainy nights, because on such nights the birds do not alight, but fly continually and fly low till dawn, in fear of ravening beasts of prey. Through the night the flowing river is their road, its moving water showing through the dark; then it is, while they come and go, up and down the river, that the cord is shot. One night I shot it; it broke in drawing in; both bird and cord were brought in to me next day. By this device Bārān people catch the many herons from which they take the turban-aigrettes sent from Kābul for sale in Khurāsān.

      Of bird-catchers there is also the band of slave-fowlers, two or three hundred households, whom some descendant of Tīmūr Beg made migrate from near Multān to the Bārān.854 Bird-catching is their trade; they dig tanks, set decoy-birds855 on them, put a net over the middle, and in this way take all sorts of birds. Not fowlers only catch birds, but every dweller on the Bārān does it, whether by shooting the cord, setting the springe, or in various other ways.

      (k. Fishing.)

      The fish of the Bārān migrate at the same seasons as birds. At those times many are netted, and many are taken on wattles (chīgh) fixed in the water. In autumn when the plant known as wild-ass-tail856 has come to maturity, flowered and seeded, people take 10-20 loads (of seed?) and 20-30 of green branches (gūk-shībāk) to some head of water, break it up small and cast it in. Then going into the water, they can at once pick up drugged fish. At some convenient place lower down, in a hole below a fall, they will have fixed before-hand a wattle of finger-thick willow-withes, making it firm by piling stones on its sides. The water goes rushing and dashing through the wattle, but leaves on it any fish that may have come floating down. This way of catching fish is practised in Gul-bahār, Parwān and Istālīf.

      Fish are had in winter in the Lamghānāt by this curious device: – People dig a pit to the depth of a house, in the bed of a stream, below a fall, line it with stones like a cooking-place, and build up stones round it above, leaving one opening only, under water. Except by this one opening, the fish have no inlet or outlet, but the water finds its way through the stones. This makes a sort of fish-pond from which, when wanted in winter, fish can be taken, 30-40 together. Except at the opening, left where convenient, the sides of the fish-pond are made fast with rice-straw, kept in place by stones. A piece of wicker-work is pulled into the said opening by its edges, gathered together, and into this a second piece, (a tube,) is inserted, fitting it at the mouth but reaching half-way into it only.857 The fish go through the smaller piece into the larger one, out from which they cannot get. The second narrows towards its inner mouth, its pointed ends being drawn so close that the fish, once entered, cannot turn, but must go on, one by one, into the larger piece. Out of that they cannot return because of the pointed ends of the inner, narrow mouth. The wicker-work fixed and the rice-straw making the pond fast, whatever fish are inside can be taken out;858 any also which, trying to escape may have gone into the wicker-work, are taken in it, because they have no way out. This method of catching fish we have seen nowhere else.859

HISTORICAL NARRATIVE RESUMED.860

      (a. Departure of Muqīm and allotment of lands.)

      A few days after the taking of Kābul, Muqīm asked leave to set off for Qandahār. As he had come out of the town on terms and conditions, he was allowed to go to his father (Ẕu’n-nūn) and his elder brother (Shāh Beg), with all his various people, his goods and his valuables, safe and sound.

      Directly he had gone, the Kābul-country was shared out to the Mīrzās and the guest-begs.861 To Jahāngīr Mīrzā was given Ghaznī with its dependencies and appurtenancies; to Nāṣir Mīrzā, the Nīngnahār tūmān, Mandrāwar, Nūr-valley, Kūnār, Nūr-gal (Rock-village?) and Chīghān-sarāī. To some of the begs who had been with us in the guerilla-times and had come to Kābul with us, were given villages, fief-fashion.862 Wilāyat itself was not given at all.863 It was not only then that I looked with more favour on guest-begs and stranger-begs than I did on old servants and Andijānīs; this I have always done whenever the Most High God has shown me His favour; yet it is remarkable that, spite of this, people have blamed me constantly as though I had favoured none but old servants and Andijānīs. There is a proverb, (Turkī) “What will a foe not say? what enters not into dream?” and (Persian) “A town-gate can be shut, a foe’s mouth never.”

      (b. A levy in grain.)

      Many clans and hordes had come from Samarkand, Ḥiṣār and Qūndūz into the Kābul-country. Kābul is a small country; it is also of the sword, not of the pen;864 to take in money from it for all these tribesmen was impossible. It therefore seemed advisable to take in grain, provision for the families of these clans so that their men could ride on forays with the army. Accordingly it was decided to levy 30,000 ass-loads865 of grain on Kābul, Ghaznī and their dependencies; we knew nothing at that time about the harvests and incomings; the impost was excessive, and under it the country suffered very grievously.

      In those days I devised the Bāburī script.866

      (c. Foray on the Hazāra.)

      A large tribute in horses and sheep had been laid on the Sult̤ān Mas‘ūdī Hazāras;867 word came a few days after collectors had gone to receive it, that the Hazāras were refractory and would not give their goods. As these same tribesmen had before that come down on the Ghaznī and Gīrdīz roads, we got to horse, meaning to take them by surprise. Riding by the Maidān-road, we crossed the Nirkh-pass868 by night and at the Morning-prayer fell upon them near Jāl-tū (var. Chā-tū). The incursion was not what was wished.869 We came back by the Tunnel-rock (Sang-i-sūrākh); Jahāngīr Mīrzā (there?) took leave for Ghaznī. On our reaching Kābul, Yār-i-ḥusain, son of Daryā Khān, coming in from Bhīra, waited on me.870

      (d. Bābur’s first start for Hindūstān.)

      When, a few days later, the army had been mustered, persons acquainted with the country were summoned and questioned about its every side and quarter. Some advised a march to the Plain (Dasht); Скачать книгу


<p>848</p>

The Parwān or Hindū-kush pass, concerning the winds of which see f. 128.

<p>849</p>

tūrnā u qarqara; the second of which is the Hindī būglā, heron, egret ardea gazetta, the furnisher of the aigrette of commerce.

<p>850</p>

The aūqār is ardea cinerea, the grey heron; the qarqara is ardea gazetta, the egret. Qūt̤ān is explained in the Elph. Codex (f. 110) by khawāsil, goldfinch, but the context concerns large birds; Scully (Shaw’s Voc.) has qodan, water-hen, which suits better.

<p>851</p>

giz, the short-flight arrow.

<p>852</p>

a small, round-headed nail with which a whip-handle is decorated (Vambéry). Such a stud would keep the cord from slipping through the fingers and would not check the arrow-release.

<p>853</p>

It has been understood (Mems. p. 158 and Méms. i, 313) that the arrow was flung by hand but if this were so, something heavier than the giz would carry the cord better, since it certainly would be difficult to direct a missile so light as an arrow without the added energy of the bow. The arrow itself will often have found its billet in the closely-flying flock; the cord would retrieve the bird. The verb used in the text is aītmāq, the one common to express the discharge of arrows etc.

<p>854</p>

For Tīmūrids who may have immigrated the fowlers see Raverty’s Notes p. 579 and his Appendix p. 22.

<p>855</p>

milwāh; this has been read by all earlier translators, and also by the Persian annotator of the Elph. Codex, to mean shākh, bough. For decoy-ducks see Bellew’s Notes on Afghānistān p. 404.

<p>856</p>

qūlān qūyirūghī. Amongst the many plants used to drug fish I have not found this one mentioned. Khār-zāhra and khār-fāq approach it in verbal meaning; the first describes colocynth, the second, wild rue. See Watts’ Economic Products of India iii, 366 and Bellew’s Notes pp. 182, 471 and 478.

<p>857</p>

Much trouble would have been spared to himself and his translators, if Bābur had known a lobster-pot.

<p>858</p>

The fish, it is to be inferred, came down the fall into the pond.

<p>859</p>

Burnes and Vigne describe a fall 20 miles from Kābul, at “Tangī Gharoi”, [below where the Tag-aū joins the Bārān-water,] to which in their day, Kābulīs went out for the amusement of catching fish as they try to leap up the fall. Were these migrants seeking upper waters or were they captives in a fish-pond?

<p>860</p>

Elph. MS. f. 111; W. – i-B. I.O. 215 f. 116b and 217 f. 97b; Mems. p. 155; Méms. i, 318.

<p>861</p>

mihmān-beglār, an expression first used by Bābur here, and due, presumably, to accessions from Khusrau Shāh’s following. A parallel case is given in Max Müller’s Science of Language i, 348 ed. 1871, “Turkmān tribes … call themselves, not subjects, but guests of the Uzbeg Khāns.”

<p>862</p>

tiyūl-dīk in all the Turkī MSS. Ilminsky, de Courteille and Zenker, yitūl-dīk, Turkī, a fief.

<p>863</p>

Wilāyat khūd hech bīrīlmādī; W. – i-B. 215 f. 116b, Wilāyat dāda na shuda and 217 f. 97b, Wilāyat khūd hech dāda na shud. By this I understand that he kept the lands of Kābul itself in his own hands. He mentions (f. 350) and Gul-badan mentions (H.N. f. 40b) his resolve so to keep Kābul. I think he kept not only the fort but all lands constituting the Kābul tūmān (f. 135b and note).

<p>864</p>

Saifī dūr, qalamī aīmās, i. e. tax is taken by force, not paid on a written assessment.

<p>865</p>

khar-wār, about 700 lbs Averdupois (Erskine). Cf. Āyīn-i-akbarī (Jarrett, ii, 394).

<p>866</p>

Niz̤āmu’d-dīn Aḥmad and Badāyūnī both mention this script and say that in it Bābur transcribed a copy of the Qorān for presentation to Makka. Badāyūnī says it was unknown in his day, the reign of Akbar (T̤abaqāt-i-akbarī, lith. ed. p. 193, and Muntakhabu’t-tawārīkh Bib. Ind. ed. iii, 273).

<p>867</p>

Bābur’s route, taken with one given by Raverty (Notes p. 691), allows these Hazāras, about whose location Mr. Erskine was uncertain, to be located between the Takht-pass (Arghandī-Maidān-Unai road), on their east, and the Sang-lākh mountains, on their west.

<p>868</p>

The Takht-pass, one on which from times immemorial, toll (nirkh) has been taken.

<p>869</p>

khāt̤ir-khwāh chāpīlmādī, which perhaps implies mutual discontent, Bābur’s with his gains, the Hazāras’ with their losses. As the second Persian translation omits the negative, the Memoirs does the same.

<p>870</p>

Bhīra being in Shāhpūr, this Khān’s daryā will be the Jehlam.