935 AH. SEP. 15TH 1528 TO SEP. 5th 1529 AD. 643
to the Shah I ; and Chapuq 2 was joined with the Auzbeg envoys and sent to the Auzbeg khans and sultans.
We moved from Abapur while 4 garis of the night remained (4.30a.m.). After passing Chandawar at the top of the dawn, I got into a boat. I landed in front of RaprI and at the Bed-time Prayer got to the camp which was at Fathpur.3
{Feb. ^th and 5th) Having stayed one day {Friday) at Fathpur, we got to horse on Saturday {26th) after making ablution {wazu) at dawn. We went through the Morning Prayer in assembly near RaprI, Maulana Muhammad of Farab beingtheleader(?>««w). At sun-rise I got into a boat below the great crook 4 of RaprI.
Today I put together a line-marker {mistar) of eleven lines s in order to write the mixed hands of the translation.6 Today
1 This higher title for Tahmasp, which first appears here in the B.N., BMty be an early slip in the Turk! text, since it occurs in many MSS. and also because " Shah -zada " reappears on f. 359.
2 Slash-face, balafri; perhaps Ibrahim Begchik (Index s.n.), but it is long since he was mentioned by Babur, at least by name. He may however have come, at this time of reunion in Agra, with MIrza Beg Tagbal (his uncle or brother ?), father-in-law of Kamran.
3 The army will have kept to the main road connecting the larger tpwns mentioned and avoiding the ravine district of the Jumna. What the boat-journey will have been between high banks and round remarkable bends can be learned from the G. of I. and Neave's District Gazetteer of Mainpurt. RaprI is on thl road from FIruzabad to the ferry for Bateswar, where a large fair is held annually. (It is misplaced further east in the I.S. Map of 1900.) There are two Fathpurs, n.e. of RaprI.
4 auliigh tugkalning tubi. Here it suits to take the TurkI word tughai to mean bend of a river, and as referring to the one shaped (on the map) like a soda-water bottle, its neck close to RaprI. Babur avoided it by taking boat below its mouth. In neither Persian translation has tughai been read to mean a bend of a river ; the first has az payan ruia Rapri, perhaps referring to the important ford (payan); the second has az zir bulandi kalan Rapri, perhaps referring to a height at the meeting of the bank of the ravine down which the road to the ford comes, with the high bank of the river. Three examples of tughai or tiiqai [a synonym given by Dictionaries], can be seen in Abu'l-ghazl's Shajrat-i-Turk, Fraehn's imprint, pp. 106, 107, 119 (Desmaisons' trs. pp. 204, 205, 230). In each instance De"smaisons renders it by eoude, elbow, but one of the examples may need reconsideration, since the word has the further meanings of wood, dense forest by the side of a river (Vambe'ry), prairie (Zenker), and reedy plain (Shaw).
5 Blochmann describes the apparatus for marking lines to guide writing (A.-i-A. trs. p. 52 n. 5): On a card of the size of the page to be written on, two vertical lines are drawn within an inch of the edges ; along these lines small holes are pierced at jugular intervals, and through these a string is laced backwards and forwards, care being taken that the horizontal strings are parallel. Over the lines of string the pages are placed and pressed down ; the strings then mark the paper sufficiently to guide the writing.
tarkib (mug) khati' bila tarjnma bitir auchun. The Rampur Diwan may supply the explanation of the uncertain words tarkib khati. The "translation" (tarjnma), Mentioned in the passage quoted above, is the Walidiyyah-risala, the first item of the Diwan, in which it is entered on crowded pages, specially insufficient for the larger hand of the chapter-headings. The number of lines per page is 13 ; Babur now
