shepherds. Their sheep are reckoned at 40,000. We dismounted at the houses of the peasants in the village; I stayed in a head-man's house. He was old, 70 or 80, but his mother was still alive. She wa»t woman on whom much,life had been bestowed for she was 111 years old. Some relation of hers may have gone, (as was said), with Tlmur Beg's army to Hindustan j1 she had this in her mind and used to tell the tale. In Dikh-kat alone were 96 of her descendants, hers and her grandchildren, great-grandchildren and grandchildren's grandchildren. Counting in the dead, 2 )0 of her descendants were reckoned up. Her grandchild's grandson was a strong young man of 25 or 26, with full black beard. While in Dikh-kat, I constantly made excursions amongst the mountains round about. Generally I went bare-foot and, from doing this so much, my feet became so that rock and stone made no difference to them.2 Once in one of these wanderings, a cow was seen, between the Afternoon and Evening prayers, going down by a narrow, ill-defined road. Said I, ' I wonder which way that road will be going; keep your eye on that cow; don't lose the cow till you know where the road comes out.' Khwaja Asadu'1-lah made his joke, ' If the cow loses her way,' he said, ' what becomes of us ?'
In the winter several of our soldiers asked for leave to Andijan because they could make no raids with us.8 Qasim Beg said, with much insistance, ' As these men are going, send something special of your own wear by them to Jahanglr Mirza.' I se^nt my ermine cap. Again he urged, ' What harm would there be if you sent something for Tambal also ?' Though I was very unwilling, yet as he urged it, I sent Tambal a large broad-sword which Nuyan Kukuldash had had made for himself in Samarkand. This very sword it was which, as will
1 Tlmur took Dihll in 801 ah. (Dec. 1398), i.e. 103 solar and 106 lunar years earlier. The ancient dame would then have been under 5 years old. It is not surprising therefore that in repeating her story Babur should use a tense betokening hear-say matter (barib Ikdn dur).
3 The anecdote here following, has been analysed in JRAS 1908, p. 87, in order to show warrant for the opinion that parts of .the Kehr-Ilminsky text are letranslations from the Persiarj W.-i-B.
3 Amongst those thus leaving seem to have been Qambar-'all (f. 996).
