Hi
APPENDICES.
with its original in the Advocates Library, the copy I made of them in 1910.
a. On the kadhil,jack-fruit,-Artocarpus integrifolia (f. 283^, p. 506;
Elphinstone MS. f.235^).1 The contents of the note are that the strange-looking pumpkin (gar*, which is also Ibn Batuta's word for the fruit), yields excellent white juice, that the best fruit grows from the roots of the tree,2 that many such grow in Bengal, and that in Bengal and Dihli there grows a kadhil-tree covered with hairs (Artocarpus hirsuta ?).
b. On the amrit-phal, mandarin-orange, Citrus aurantium (f. 287,
p. 512 ; Elphinstone Codex, f.2383, 1.12).
The interest of this ndte lies in its reference to Babur.
A Persian version of it is entered, without indication of what it is or of who was its translator, in one of the volumes of Mr. Erskine's manuscript remains, now in the British Museum (Add. 26,605, P- 88). Presumably it was made by his Turkish munshi for his note in the Memoirs (p. 329).
Various difficulties oppose the translation of the Turkl note ; it is written into the text of the Elphinstone Codex in two instalments, neither of them in place, the first being interpolated in the account of the amil-bid fruit, the second in that of the jdsun flower; and there are verbal difficulties also. The Persian translation is not literal and in some particulars Mr. Erskine's rendering of this differs from what the Turkl appears to state.
The note is, tentatively, as follows:3 " His honoured Majesty Firdaus-makan4 may God make his proof clear ! did not
1 By over-sight mention of this note was omitted from my article on the Elphinstone Codex (JRAS. 1907, p. 131).
2 Speede's Indian Hand-book (i,2l2) published in 184IAD. thus writes, "It is a curious circumstance that the finest and most esteemed fruit are produced from the roots below the surface of the ground, and are betrayed by the cracking of the earth above them, and the effluvia issuing from the fissure ; a high price is given by rich natives for fruit so produced."
3 In the margin of the Elphinstone Codex opposite the beginning of the note are the words, " This is a marginal note of Humayun Padshah's.".
* Every Emperor of Hindustan has an epithet given him aftel: his death to distinguish him, and prevent the necessity of repeating his name too familiarly. Thus Firdaus-makan (dweller-in-paradise) is Babur's ; Humayun's is Jannat-ashiyani, he whose nest is in Heaven ; Muhammad Shah's Firdaus-aramgah, he whose place of rest is Paradise ; etc. (Erskine).
