Page:Babur-nama Vol 1.djvu/81

899 AH.-OCT. 12TH. 1493 TO OCT. 2ND. 1494 II In the mountains round Farghāna are excellent summerpastures (yīlāq). There, and nowhere else, the tabalghu¹ grows, a tree (yighach) with red bark; they make staves of it; they Fol. 56. make bird-cages of it; they scrape it into arrows; 2 it is an excellent wood (yighach) and is carried as a rarity³ to distant places. Some books write that the mandrake is found in these mountains but for this long time past nothing has been heard of it. A plant called Ayiq autiб and having the qualities of the mandrake (mihr-giyah), is heard of in Yītī-kint; it seems to be (a) W.-i-B. I.O. 215 and 217 (i.e. both versions) reproduce the phrase. (b) W.-i-B. MS., quoted by Erskine, p. 6 note, postin-i mish burra. (c) Leyden's MS. Trs., a sheepskin mantle of five lambskins. (d) Mems., Erskine, p. 6, a mantle of five lambskins. (e) The Persian annotator of the Elph. MS., underlining pesh, writes, panj, five. (f) Klaproth (Archives, p. 109), pustini pisch breh, d.h. gieb den vorderen Pelz. (g) Kehr, p. 12 (Ilminsky p. 6) postin bish b:v:h. (h) De. C., i, 9, fourrure d'agneau de la première qualité. The "lambskins" of L. and E. carry on a notion of comfort started by their having read sayāh, shelter, for Turki'sā'i, torrent-bed; de C. also lays stress on fur and warmth, but would not the flowery border of a mountain stream prompt rather a phrase bespeaking ornament and beauty than one expressing warmth and textile softness? If the phrase might be read as postin pesh perā, what adorns the front of a coat, or as postin pesh bar rah, the fine front of the coat, the phrase would recall the gay embroidered front of some leathern postins. 1 Var. tabarkhun. The explanation best suiting its uses, enumerated here, is Redhouse's second, the Red Willow. My husband thinks it may be the Hyrcanian Willow. 2 Steingass describes this as "an arrow without wing or point" (barb?) and tapering at both ends; it may be the practising arrow, t'alim auqi, often headless. 3 tabarrakluq. Cf. f. 486 foot, for the same use of the word. 4 yabruju's-sannam. The books referred to by Babur may well be the Rauzatu's-safa and the Habibu's-siyar, as both mention the plant. It may 5 The Turki word ayiq is explained by Redhouse as awake and alert; and by Meninski and de Meynard as sobered and as a return to right senses. be used here as a equivalent of mihr in mihr-giyāh, the plant of love. 6 Mr. Ney Elias has discussed the position of this group of seven villages. (Cf. T. R. p. 180 n.) Arrowsmith's map places it (as Iti-kint) approximately where Mr. Th. Radloff describes seeing it i.e. on the Farghāna slope of the Kurāma range. (Cf. Réceuil d'Itinéraires p. 188.) Mr. Th. Radloff came into Yiti-kint after crossing the Kindirlik Pass from Tāshkint and he enumerates the seven villages as traversed by him before reaching the Sir. It is hardly necessary to say that the actual villages he names may not be those of Bābur's Yiti-kint. Wherever the word is used in the Bābur-nāma and the Tārīkh-i-rashīdī, it appears from the context allowable to accept Mr. Radloff's location but it should be borne in mind that the name Yiti-kint (Seven