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Ch. 3: Hindustan

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592
HINDUSTAN
{Jan. i8tli) We waited a day in Kachwa in order to appoint active overseers and a mass of spadesmen to level the road and cut jungle down, so that the carts and mortar r might pass alon" it easily. Between Kachwa and Chandirl the country is jungly.
{Jan. igth RabV II. 26th) After leaving Kachwa we halted one night, passed the Burhanpur-water (BhuranpQr) 2 and dismounted within 3 kurohs (6 m.) of Chandirl.
{i. Chandirl and its capture.)
The citadel of Chandlri stands on a hill ; below it are the town {shahr) and outer-fort {tash-qilrghan), and below these is the level road along which carts pass.3 When we left Burhanpur {Jan. iotli) we marched for a kuroh below Chandirl for the convenience of the carts.4
{Jan. 21 st) After one night's halt we dismounted beside Bahjat Khan's tank 5 on the top of its dam, on Tuesday the 28th of the month.
{Jan. 22nd RabT II. 29th) Riding out at dawn, we assigned post after post {buljar, buljar),6 round the walled town {qurghdn)
1 qazan. There seems to have been one only; how few Babur had is snewn again on f. 337.
* Indian Atlas, Sheet 52N. E. near a tributary of the Belwa, the Or, which appears to be Babur's Burhanpur-water.
3  The bed of the Betwa opposite Chandirl is 1050 ft. above the sea ; the walledtown (qurghan) of Chandirl is on a table-land 250 ft. higher, and its citadel is 230 ft. higher again (Cunningham's Archeological Survey Report, 1871 A.D, ii, 404).
4  The plan of Chandiri illustrating Cunningham's Report (see last note) allows surmise about the road taken by Babur, surmise which could become knowledge if the names of tanks he gives were still known. The courtesy of the Government of India allows me to reproduce that plan [Appendix R, Chandirl and Gwallav>ar\
s He is said to have been Governor of Chandiri in 1513 AD
6 Here and in similar passages the word m:ljar or m:lchar is found in MSS. where the meaning is that of T. buljar. It is not in any dictionary I have seen ; Mr. Irvine found it " obscure " and surmised it to mean "approach by trenches", but this does not suit its uses in the Babur-nama of a military post, and a rendezvous. This surmise, containing, as it does, a notion of protection, links m:ljdr in sense with Ar. malja\ The word needs expert consideration, in order to decide whether it is to be received into dictionaries, or to be rejected because explicable as the outcome of unfamiliarity in Persian scribes with T. buljar or, more Persico with narrowed vowels, buljar. Shaw in his Vocabulary enters buljiiq (buljarl), "astation for troops, a rendezvous, see mat/a'," thus indicating, it would seem, that he was aware of difficulty about m.ijar and biiljaq (buljar^). There appears no doubt of the existence of a Turki word buljar with the meanings Shaw gives to buljaq ; it could well be formed from the root bftl, being, whence follows, being in a place, posted. Malja has the meaning of a standing-place, as well as those of a refuge and an asylum ; both meanings seem combined in the m.ijar of f. 336^, where for matchlockmen a m:ljar was ordered "raised". (Cf. Irvine's Army of the Indian Ataghuh p. 278.)
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