910 AH. JUNE 14th 1504 TO JUNE 4TH 1505 AD. 225
method of bird-catching is unique. They twist a cord as long as the arrow's ' flight, tie the arrow at one end and a bildurga2 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 bildurga. They then pull out the piece of wood, leaving just the hole it was in. The bildurga being held fast in the hand, the arrow is shot off3 towards the coming flock. If the cord twist round a neck or wing, it brings the bird down. On the Baran 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 thisdevice Baran people catch the many herons from which they take the turban-aigrettes sent from Kabul for sale in Khurasan.
Of bird-catchers there is also the band of slave-fowlers, two or three hundred households, whom some descendant of Tlmur Beg made migrate from near Multan to the Baran.4 Bird-catching is their trade; they dig tanks, set decoy-birds 5 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 Baran does it, whether by shooting the cord, setting the springe, or in various other ways.
(k. Fishing.)
The fish of the Baran migrate at the same seasons as birds. At those times many are netted, and many are taken on wattles
1 giz, the short-flight arrow.
2 a small, round-headed nail with which a whip-handle is decorated (Vambery) Such a stud would keep the cord from slipping through the fingers and would not check the arrow-release.
3 It has been understood (Mems. p. 15S and Mans, i, 313) that the arrow was flung by hand but if this were so, something heavier than the giz would carry the cord ■letter, 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 billei in the closely-flying flock ; the cord would retrieve the bird. The verb used in the text is aitmiiq, the one common to express the discharge of arrows ete.
ror Tlmurids who may have immigrated the fowlers see Raverty's Notes p. 579 and his Appendix p. 22.
milwah ; this has been read by all earlier translators, and also by the Persian annotator of the Elph. Codex, to mean shakh, bough. For decoy-ducks see Bellew's Motes on Afghanistan p. 404.
