with a foreign tribe and people; none knew their tongue, nor did they know ours :
A wandering band, with mind awander ; In the grip of a tribe, a tribe unfamiliar."
People estimated the army opposing us at 100,000 men ; Ibrahim's elephants and those of his amirs were said to be about 1000. In his hands was the treasure of two forbears.2 In Hindustan, when work such as this has to be done, it is customary to pay out money to hired retainers who are known as b:d-hindi? If it had occurred to Ibrahim to do this, he might have had another lak or two of troops. God brought it right! Ibrahim could neither content his braves, nor share out his treasure. How should he content his braves when he was ruled by avarice and had a craving insatiable to pile coin on coin ? He was an unproved brave4; he provided nothing for his military operations, he perfected nothing, nor stand, nor move, nor fight.
In the interval at Panl-pat during which the army was preparing defence on our every side with cart, ditch and branch, Darwlsh-i-muhammad Sarbdn had once said to me, "With such precautions taken, how is it possible for him to come ? " Said I, " Are you likening him to the Auzbeg khans and sultans ?
1 Pareshan jam^l u jamllpareshan ; Giriftar qauml u qauml '-a/'d'ib. These two lines do not translate easily without the context of their original place of occurrence. I have not found their source.
2 i.e. of his father and grandfather, Sikandar and Buhlul.
3 As to the form of this word the authoritative MSS. of the TurkI text agree and with them also numerous good ones of the Persian translation. I have made careful examination of the word because it is replaced or explained here and there in MSS. by s:hb:ndi, the origin of which is said to be obscure. The sense of b:d-hindl and of s: Ab: ndl is the same, i.e. irregular levy. The word as Babur wrote it must have been understood by earlier Indian scribes of both the TurkI and Persian texts of the Babur-nama. Some light on its correctness may be thought given by Hobson Jobson (Crooke's ed. p. 136) s.n. Byde or Bede Horse, where the word Byde is said to be an equivalent of pindari, lull, and qazzaq, raider, plunderer, so that Babur's word b:d-hindi may mean qazzaq of Hind. Wherever I have referred to the word in many MSS. it is pointed to read b:d, and not p:d, thus affording no warrant for understanding pad, foot, foot-man, infantry, and also negativing the spelling bid, i.e. with a long vowel as in Byde.
It may be noted here that Muh. Shlrazl (p. 174) substituted s:hb:ndl for Babur s word and that this led our friend the late William Irvine to attribute mistake to de Courteille who follows the Turki text (Army of the MughuU p. 66 and Mt'moires ii, 163).
4 bl tajarba ylglt aldl of which the sense may be that Babur ranked Ibrahim, as a soldier, with a brave who has not yet proved himself deserving of the rank of beg.
' It cannot mean that he was a youth [ylglt) without experience of battle.
