935 AH. SEP. 15TH 1528 to SEP. 5'fH 1529 AD. 66i
swimming (? dastak bila),1 some coming mounted on horses, some on camels. That day I had eaten opium.
(vu. Incidents of the military operations^)
{April 5tli) At Tuesday's dawn {26th), we sent out for news not under 200 effective braves led by Karlm-blrdl and Haidar the stirrup-holder's son Muhammad 'All and Baba Shaikh.
While we were on this ground, the Bengal envoy was commanded to set forth these three articles ■ 2
(April 6th) On Wednesday (27th) Yunas-i-'all who had been sent to gather Muhammad-i-zaman Mlrza's objections to Bihar, brought back rather a weak'answer.
Dutiful letters from the (Farmull) Shaikh-zadas of Bihar gave news that the enemy had abandoned the place and gone off.
(April yth) On Thursday (28th) as many as 2000 men of the Turk and Hind amirs and quiver-wearers were joined to Muhammad 'All Jang-jang's son Tardi-muhammad, and he was given leave to go, taking letters of royal encouragement to people in Bihar. He was joined also by Khwaja Murshid 'Iraqi who had been made Dlwan of Bihar.
(April 6'th (?)) Muhammad-i-zaman M. who had consented to go to Bihar, made representation of several matters through
1 yil-tur . . . Gang-sui-din min dastak bila autub, ba'zi at, ba'zi tiwah minib, kilib, sair qililib aid!. Some uncertainty as to the meaning of the phrase dastak bila autub is caused by finding that while here de Courteille agrees with Erskine in taking it to mean swimming, he varies later (f. 373b) to appuyis sur unepiice de bois. Taking the Persian translations of three passages about crossing water into consideration (p. 655 after f. 363*, f. 366* (here), f. 373*), and also the circumstances that E. and de C. are once in agreement and that Erskine worked with the help of Oriental munshis, I incline to think that dastak bila does express swimming. The question of its precise meaning bears on one concerning Babur's first swim across the Ganges (p. 655, n. 3). Perhaps I should say, however, that if the sentence quoted at the head of this note stood alone, without the extraneous circumstances supporting the reading of dastak bila to mean swimming, I should incline to read it as stating that Babur went on foot through the water, feeling his footing with a pole (dastak), and that his followers rode through the ford after him. Nothing in the quoted passage suggests that the horses and camels swam. But whether the Ganges was fordable at Baksara in Babur's time, is beyond surmise.
3 fad sos, which, manifestly, were to be laid before the envoy's master. The articles are nowhere specified ; one is summarized merely on f. 365 ■ The incomplete sentence °f the Turki text (supra) needs their specification at this place, and an explicit statewent of them would have made clearer the political relations of Babtfr with Nasrat Shah. A folio may have been lost from Babur's manuscript'; it might have specified ">e articles, and also have said something leading to the next topic of the diary, now needing preliminaries, viz. that of the Mirza's discontent with his new appointment, » matter not mentioned earlier.
