and the tail of the domestic yak are articles of commerce, and where, as also probably in Kabul, he will have known of the same class of yak as a saddle-animal and as a beast of burden into Kashmir and other border-lands of sufficient altitude to allow its survival. A part of its wide Central Asian habitat abutting on Kashmir is Little Tibet, through which flows the upper Indus and in which tame yak are largely bred, Skardo being a place specially mentioned by travellers as having them plentifully. This suggests that the term bahri qutds is due to the great river (bahr) and that those of which Babur wrote in Hindustan were from Little Tibet and its great river. But bahri may apply to another region where also the domestic yak abounds, that of the great lakes, inland seas such as Pangong, whence the yak comes and goes between e.g. Yarkand and the Hindustan border.
The second suggestion, viz. that " bahri qutds " refers to the habitat of the domestic yak in lake and marsh lands of high altitude (the wild yak also but, as Tibetan, it is less likely to be concerned here) has support in Dozy's account of the bahri falcon, a bird mentioned also by Abu'1-fazl amongst sporting birds (Ayin-i-akbari, Blochmann's trs. p.295) -. "Bahri, espece defaucon le meilleur pour les oiseaux de marais. Ce renseignment explique peut-etre I'origine du mot. Marguerite en donne la mime etymologic que Tashmend it le Pere Guagix. Selon lui ce faucon aurait ete appele ainsi parce qriil vient de Vautre cdte de la mer, mais peut-etre deriva-t-il de bahri dans le sens de marais, flaque, etang."
Dr. E. Denisoh Ross Polyglot List of Birds {Memoirs of the Asiatic Society of Bengal ii, 289) gives to the Qard Qlrglidwal (Black pheasant) the synonym " Sea-pheasant", this being the literal translation of its Chinese name, and quotes from the Manchu-Chinese " Mirror" the remark that this is a black pheasant but called " sea-pheasant " to distinguish it from other black ones.
It may be observed that Babur writes of the yak once only and then of the bahri qutds so that there is no warrant from him for taking the term to apply to the wild yak. His cousin and
