932 AH. OCT. 18TH 1525 TO OCT. 8th 1526 AD. 513
After three years (in Hindustan), it was first seen to-day.1 They say a needle melts away if put inside it,2 either from its acidity or some other property. It is as acid, perhaps, as the citron and lemon (turunj and limit).'
{jn. Vegetable products of Hindustan : Flowers.)
In Hindustan there is great variety of flowers. One is the (D.) jdsun {Hibiscus rosa sinensis), which some Hindustanis call (Hindi) gaskalA *It is not a grass (giydli) ; its tree (is in stems like the bush of the red-rose ; it) is rather taller than the bush of the red-rose.5 * The flower of the Jdsun is fuller in colour than that of the pomegranate, and may be of the size of the red-rose, but, the red-rose, when its bud has grown, opens simply, whereas, when thejdsun-bud opens, a stem on which other petals grow, is seen like a heart amongst its expanded petals. Though the two are parts of the one flower, yet the outcome of the lengthening and thinning of that stem-like heart of the first-opened petals gives the semblance of two flowers.6 It is not a common matter. The beautifully coloured flowers look very well on the tree, but
Babur is writing of a fruit like an orange, the cane that bears an acid fruit, Calamus rotang, can be left aside in favour of Citrus medica acidissima. Of this fruit the solvent property Babur mentions, as well as the comrnonly-known service in cleansing metal, link it, by these uses, with the willow and suggest a ground for understanding, as Erskine did, that amal-bid meant acid-willow ; for willow-wood is used to rub rust off metal.
1 This statement shows that Babur was writing the Description of Hindustan in 935 Air. (1528-9 ad.), which is the date given for it by Shaikh Zain.
2 This story of the needle is believed in India of all the citron kind, which are hence called sui-gal (needle-melter) in the Dakhin (Erskine). Cf. Forbes, p. 489 s.n. Ht-gal.
3 Erskine here quotes information from AbQ'I-fazl (Ayin 28) about Akbar's encouragement of the cultivation of fruits.
4 Hindustani (Urdu) garhal. Many varieties of Hibiscus (syn. Althea) grow in India ; some thrive in Surrey gardens ; the jasiin by name and colour can be taken as what is known in Malayan, Tamil, etc., as the shoe-flower, from its use in darkening leather (Yule's H.J.).
s I surmise that what I have placed between asterisks here belongs to the next•following plant, the oleander. For though the branches of the jasiin grow vertically, the bush is a dense mass upon one stout trunk, or stout short stem. The words placed in parenthesis above are not with the Haidarabad but are with the Elphinstone Codex. There would seem to have been a scribe's skip from one " rose " to the other. As has been shewn repeatedly, this part of the Babur-nama has been much annotated; in the Elph. Codex, where only most of the notes are preserved, some are entered by the scribe pell-mell into Babur's text. The present instance may be a case of a marginal note, added to the text in a wrong place.
6 The peduncle supporting the plume of medial petals is clearly seen only when the flower opens first. The plumed Hibiscus is found in florists' catalogues described as " double".
