Kitabı oku: «The Bābur-nāma», sayfa 45
[APPENDICES TO THE KĀBUL SECTION.]
E. – NAGARAHĀR, AND NĪNG-NAHĀR
Those who consult books and maps about the riverain tract between the Safed-koh (Spīn-ghur) and (Anglicé) the Kābul-river find its name in several forms, the most common being Nangrahār and Nangnahār (with variant vowels). It would be useful to establish a European book-name for the district. As European opinion differs about the origin and meaning of the names now in use, and as a good deal of interesting circumstance gathers round the small problem of a correct form (there may be two), I offer about the matter what has come into the restricted field of my own work, premising that I do this merely as one who drops a casual pebble on the cairn of observation already long rising for scholarly examination.
a. The origin and meaning of the names.
I have met with three opinions about the origin and meaning of the names found now and earlier. To each one of them obvious objection can be made. They are: —
1. That all forms now in use are corruptions of the Sanscrit word Nagarahāra, the name of the Town-of-towns which in the dū-āb of the Bārān-sū and Sūrkh-rūd left the ruins Masson describes in Wilson’s Ariana Antigua. But if this is so, why is the Town-of-towns multiplied into the nine of Na-nagrahār (Nangrahār)?2766
2. That the names found represent Sanscrit nawā vihāra, nine monasteries, an opinion the Gazetteer of India of 1907 has adopted from Bellew. But why precisely nine monasteries? Nine appears an understatement.
3. That Nang (Ning or Nung) – nahār verbally means nine streams, (Bābur’s Tūqūz-rūd,) an interpretation of long standing (Section b infra). But whence nang, ning, nung, for nine? Such forms are not in Persian, Turkī or Pushtu dictionaries, and, as Sir G. A. Grierson assures me, do not come into the Linguistic Survey.
b. On nang, ning, nung for nine.
Spite of their absence from the natural homes of words, however, the above sounds have been heard and recorded as symbols of the number nine by careful men through a long space of time.
The following instances of the use of “Nangnahār” show this, and also show that behind the variant forms there may be not a single word but two of distinct origin and sense.
1. In Chinese annals two names appear as those of the district and town (I am not able to allocate their application with certainty). The first is Na-kie-lo-ho-lo, the second Nang-g-lo-ho-lo and these, I understand to represent Nagara-hāra and Nang-nahār, due allowance being made for Chinese idiosyncrasy.2767
2. Some 900 years later (1527-30 AD.) Bābur also gives two names, Nagarahār (as the book-name of his tūmān) and Nīng-nahār.2768 He says the first is found in several histories (B.N. f. 131b); the second will have been what he heard and also presumably what appeared in revenue accounts; of it he says, “it is nine torrents” (tūqūz-rūd).
3. Some 300 years after Bābur, Elphinstone gives two names for the district, neither of them being Bābur’s book-name, “Nangrahaur2769 or Nungnahaur, from the nine streams which issue from the Safed-koh, nung in Pushtoo signifying nine, and nahaura, a stream” (Caubul, i, 160).
4. In 1881 Colonel H. S. Tanner had heard, in Nūr-valley on the north side of the Kābul-water, that the name of the opposite district was Nīng-nahār and its meaning Nine-streams. He did not get a list of the nine and all he heard named do not flow from Safed-koh.
5. In 1884 Colonel H. G. McGregor gives two names with their explanation, “Ningrahar and Nungnihar; the former is a corruption of the latter word2770 which in the Afghān language signifies nine rivers or rivulets.” He names nine, but of them six only issue from Safed-koh.
6. I have come across the following instances in which the number nine is represented by other words than na (ni or nu); viz. the nenhan of the Chitrālī Kāfir and the noun of the Panjābi, recorded by Leech, – the nyon of the Khowārī and the huncha of the Boorishki, recorded by Colonel Biddulph.
The above instances allow opinion that in the region concerned and through a long period of time, nine has been expressed by nang (ning or nung) and other nasal or high palatal sounds, side by side with na (ni or nu). The whole matter may be one of nasal utterance,2771 but since a large number of tribesmen express nine by a word containing a nasal sound, should that word not find place in lists of recognized symbols of sounds?
c. Are there two names of distinct origin?
1. Certainly it makes a well-connected story of decay in the Sanscrit word Nagarahāra to suppose that tribesmen, prone by their organism to nasal utterance, pronounced that word Nangrahār, and by force of their numbers made this corruption current, – that this was recognized as the name of the town while the Town-of-towns was great or in men’s memory, and that when through the decay of the town its name became a meaningless husk, the wrong meaning of the Nine-streams should enter into possession.
But as another and better one can be put together, this fair-seeming story may be baseless. Its substitute has the advantage of explaining the double sequence of names shown in Section b.
The second story makes all the variant names represent one or other of two distinct originals. It leaves Nagrahār to represent Nagarahāra, the dead town; it makes the nine torrents of Safed-koh the primeval sponsors of Nīng-nahār, the name of the riverain tract. Both names, it makes contemporary in the relatively brief interlude of the life of the town. For the fertilizing streams will have been the dominant factors of settlement and of revenue from the earliest times of population and government. They arrest the eye where they and their ribbons of cultivation space the riverain waste; they are obvious units for grouping into a sub-government. Their name has a counterpart in adjacent Panj-āb; the two may have been given by one dominant power, how long ago, in what tongue matters not. The riverain tract, by virtue of its place on a highway of transit, must have been inhabited long before the town Nagarahāra was built, and must have been known by a name. What better one than Nine-streams can be thought of?
2. Bellew is quoted by the Gazetteer of India (ed. 1907) as saying, in his argument in favour of nawā vihāra, that no nine streams are found to stand sponsor, but modern maps shew nine outflows from Safed-koh to the Kābul-river between the Sūrkh-rūd and Daka, while if affluents to the former stream be reckoned, more than nine issue from the range.2772
Against Bellew’s view that there are not nine streams, is the long persistence of the number nine in the popular name (Sect. b).
It is also against his view that he supposes there were nine monasteries, because each of the nine must have had its fertilizing water.
Bābur says there were nine; there must have been nine of significance; he knew his tūmān not only by frequent transit but by his revenue accounts. A supporting point in those accounts is likely to have been that the individual names of the villages on the nine streams would appear, with each its payment of revenue.
3. In this also is some weight of circumstance against taking Nagarahāra to be the parent of Nīng-nahār: – An earlier name of the town is said to be Udyānapūra, Garden town.2773 Of this Bābur’s Adīnapūr is held to be a corruption; the same meaning of garden has survived on approximately the same ground in Bālā-bāgh and Roẓābād.
Nagarahāra is seen, therefore, to be a parenthetical name between others which are all derived from gardens. It may shew the promotion of a “Garden-town” to a “Chief-town”. If it did this, there was relapse of name when the Chief-town lost status. Was it ever applied beyond the delta? If it were, would it, when dead in the delta, persist along the riverain tract? If it were not, cadit quæstio; the suggestion of two names distinct in origin, is upheld.
Certainly the riverain tract would fall naturally under the government of any town flourishing in the delta, the richest and most populous part of the region. But for this very reason it must have had a name older than parenthetical Nagarahāra. That inevitable name would be appropriately Nīng-nahār (or Na-nahār) Nine-streams; and for a period Nagarahāra would be the Chief-town of the district of Na-nahār (Nine-streams).2774
d. Bābur’s statements about the name.
What the cautious Bābur says of his tūmān of Nīng-nahār has weight: —
1. That some histories write it Nagarahār (Ḥaidarābād Codex, f. 131b);
2. That Nīng-nahār is nine torrents, i. e. mountain streams, tūquz-rud;
3. That (the) nine torrents issue from Safed-koh (f. 132b).
Of his first statement can be said, that he will have seen the book-name in histories he read, but will have heard Nīng-nahār, probably also have seen it in current letters and accounts.
Of his second, – that it bears and may be meant to bear two senses, (a) that the tūmān consisted of nine torrents, – their lands implied; just as he says “Asfara is four būlūks” (sub-divisions f. 3b) – (b) that tūqūz rūd translates nīng-nahār.
Of his third, – that in English its sense varies as it is read with or without the definite article Turkī rarely writes, but that either sense helps out his first and second, to mean that verbally and by its constituent units Nīng-nahār is nine-torrents; as verbally and by its constituents Panj-āb is five-waters.
e. Last words.
Detailed work on the Kābul section of the Bābur-nāma has stamped two impressions so deeply on me, that they claim mention, not as novel or as special to myself, but as set by the work.
The first is of extreme risk in swift decision on any problem of words arising in North Afghānistān, because of its local concourse of tongues, the varied utterance of its unlettered tribes resident or nomad, and the frequent translation of proper names in obedience to their verbal meanings. Names lie there too in strata, relics of successive occupation – Greek, Turkī, Hindī, Pushtū and tribes galore.
The second is that the region is an exceptionally fruitful field for first-hand observation of speech, the movent ocean of the uttered word, free of the desiccated symbolism of alphabets and books.
The following books, amongst others, have prompted the above note: —
Ghoswāra Inscription, Kittoe, JASB., 1848, and Kielhorn, Indian Antiquary, 1888, p. 311.
H. Sastrī’s Rāmacārita, Introduction, p. 7 (ASB. Memoirs).
Cunningham’s Ancient India, vol. i.
Beal’s Buddhist Records, i, xxxiv, and cii, 91.
Leech’s Vocabularies, JASB., 1838.
The writings of Masson (Travels and Ariana Antiqua), Wood, Vigne, etc.
Raverty’s T̤abaqāt-i-nāsirī.
Jarrett’s Āyīn-i-akbarī.
P.R.G.S. for maps, 1879; Macnair on the Kafirs, 1884; Tanner’s On the Chugānī and neighbouring tribes of Kāfiristān, 1881.
Simpson’s Nagarahāra, JASB., xiii.
Biddulph’s Dialects of the Hindū-kush, JRAS.
Gazette of India, 1907, art. Jalalābād.
Bellew’s Races of Afghānistān.
F. – ON THE NAME DARA-I-NŪR
Some European writers have understood the name Dara-i-nūr to mean Valley of Light, but natural features and also the artificial one mentioned by Colonel H. G. Tanner (infra), make it better to read the component nūr, not as Persian nūr, light, but as Pushtū nūr, rock. Hence it translates as Valley of Rocks, or Rock-valley. The region in which the valley lies is rocky and boulder-strewn; its own waters flow to the Kābul-river east of the water of Chitrāl. It shews other names composed with nūr, in which nūr suits if it means rock, but is inexplicable if it means light, e. g. Nūr-lām (Nūr-fort), the master-fort in the mouth of Nūr-valley, standing high on a rock between two streams, as Bābur and Tanner have both described it from eye-witness, – Nūr-gal (village), a little to the north-west of the valley, – Aūlūgh-nūr (great rock), at a crossing mentioned by Bābur, higher up the Bārān-water, – and Koh-i-nūr (Rocky-mountains), which there is ground for taking as the correct form of the familiar “Kunar” of some European writers (Raverty’s Notes, p. 106). The dominant feature in these places dictates reading nūr as rock; so too the work done in Nūr-valley with boulders, of which Colonel H. G. Tanner’s interesting account is subjoined (P.R.G.S. 1881, p. 284).
“Some 10 miles from the source of the main stream of the Nur-valley the Dameneh stream enters, but the waters of the two never meet; they flow side by side about three-quarters of a mile apart for about 12 miles and empty themselves into the Kunar river by different mouths, each torrent hugging closely the foot of the hills at its own side of the valley. Now, except in countries where terracing has been practised continuously for thousands of years, such unnatural topography as exists in the valley of Nur is next to impossible. The forces which were sufficient to scoop out the valley in the first instance, would have kept a water-way at the lowest part, into which would have poured the drainage of the surrounding mountains; but in the Nur-valley long-continued terracing has gradually raised the centre of the valley high above the edges. The population has increased to its maximum limit and every available inch of ground is required for cultivation; the people, by means of terrace-walls built of ponderous boulders in the bed of the original single stream, have little by little pushed the waters out of their true course, until they run, where now found, in deep rocky cuttings at the foot of the hills on either side” (p. 280).
“I should like to go on and say a good deal more about boulders; and while I am about it I may as well mention one that lies back from a hamlet in Shulut, which is so big that a house is built in a fault or crack running across its face. Another pebble lies athwart the village and covers the whole of the houses from that side.”
G. – ON THE NAMES OF TWO DARA-I-NŪR WINES
From the two names, Arat-tāshī and Sūhān (Suhār) – tāshī, which Bābur gives as those of two wines of the Dara-i-nūr, it can be inferred that he read nūr to mean rock. For if in them Turkī tāsh, rock, be replaced by Pushtū nūr, rock, two place-names emerge, Arat (-nūrī) and Sūhān (-nūrī), known in the Nūr-valley.
These may be villages where the wines were grown, but it would be quite exceptional for Bābur to say that wines are called from their villages, or indeed by any name. He says here not where they grow but what they are called.
I surmise that he is repeating a joke, perhaps his own, perhaps a standing local one, made on the quality of the wines. For whether with tāsh or with nūr (rock), the names can be translated as Rock-saw and Rock-file, and may refer to the rough and acid quality of the wines, rasping and setting the teeth on edge as does iron on stone.
The villages themselves may owe their names to a serrated edge or splintered pinnacle of weathered granite, in which local people, known as good craftsmen, have seen resemblance to tools of their trade.
H. – ON THE COUNTERMARK BIH BŪD ON COINS
As coins of Sl. Ḥusain Mīrzā Bāī-qarā and other rulers do actually bear the words Bih būd, Bābur’s statement that the name of Bihbūd Beg was on the Mīrzā’s coins acquires a numismatic interest which may make serviceable the following particulars concerning the passage and the beg.2775
a. The Turkī passage (Elph. MS. f. 135b; Ḥaidarābād Codex f. 173b; Ilminsky p. 217).
For ease of reference the Turkī, Persian and English version are subjoined: —
(1) Yana Bihbūd Beg aīdī. Būrūnlār chuhra-jīrga-sī-dā khidmat qīlūr aīdī. Mīrzā-nīng qāzāqlīqlārīdā khidmatī bāqīb Bihbūd Beg-kā bū ‘ināyatnī qīlīb aīdī kīm tamghā u sikka-dā ānīng ātī aīdī.
(2) The Persian translation of ‘Abdu’r-raḥīm (Muḥ. Shīrāzī’s lith. ed. p. 110): —
Dīgar Bihbūd Beg būd. Auwalhā dar jīrga-i-chuhrahā khidmat mikard. Chūn dar qāzāqīhā Mīrzārā khidmat karda būd u ānrā mulāḥaẓa namūda, aīnrā ‘ināyat karda būd kah dar tamghānāt sikka 2776 nām-i-au būd.
(3) A literal English translation of the Turkī: —
Another was Bihbūd Beg. He served formerly in the chuhra-jīrga-sī (corps of braves). Looking to his service in the Mīrzā’s guerilla-times, the favour had been done to Bihbūd Beg that his name was on the stamp and coin.2777
b. Of Bihbūd Beg.
We have found little so far to add to what Bābur tells of Bihbūd Beg and what he tells we have not found elsewhere. The likely sources of his information are Daulat Shāh and Khwānd-amīr who have written at length of Ḥusain Bāī-qarā. Considerable search in the books of both men has failed to discover mention of signal service or public honour connected with the beg. Bābur may have heard what he tells in Harāt in 912 AH. (1506 AD.) when he would see Ḥusain’s coins presumably; but later opportunity to see them must have been frequent during his campaigns and visits north of Hindū-kush, notably in Balkh.
The sole mention we have found of Bihbūd Beg in the Ḥabību’s-siyar is that he was one of Ḥusain’s commanders at the battle of Chīkmān-sarāī which was fought with Sl. Maḥmūd Mīrzā Mīrānshāhī in Muḥarram 876 AH. (June-July 1471 AD.).2778 His place in the list shews him to have had importance. “Amīr Niz̤āmu’d-dīn ‘Alī-sher’s brother Darwesh-i-‘alī the librarian (q. v. Ḥai. Codex Index), and Amīr Bihbūd, and Muḥ. ‘Alī ātāka, and Bakhshīka and Shāh Walī Qīpchāq, and Dost-i-muḥammad chuhra, and Amīr Qul-i-‘alī, and” (another).
The total of our information about the man is therefore: —
(1) That when Ḥusain2779 from 861 to 873 AH. (1457 to 1469 AD.) was fighting his way up to the throne of Harāt, Bihbūd served him well in the corps of braves, (as many others will have done).
(2) That he was a beg and one of Ḥusain’s commanders in 876 AH. (1471 AD.).
(3) That Bābur includes him amongst Ḥusain’s begs and says of him what has been quoted, doing this circa 934 AH. (1528 AD.), some 56 years after Khwānd-amīr’s mention of him s. a. 876 AH. (1471 AD.).
c. Of the term chuhra-jīrga-sī used by Bābur.
Of this term Bābur supplies an explicit explanation which I have not found in European writings. His own book amply exemplifies his explanation, as do also Khwānd-amīr’s and Ḥaidar’s.
He gives the explanation (f. 15b) when describing a retainer of his father’s who afterwards became one of his own begs. It is as follows: —
“‘Alī-darwesh of Khurāsān served in the Khurāsān chuhra-jīrga-sī, one of two special corps (khāṣa tābīn) of serviceable braves (yārār yīgītlār) formed by Sl. Abū-sa‘īd Mīrzā when he first began to arrange the government of Khurāsān and Samarkand and, presumably, called by him the Khurāsān corps and the Samarkand corps.”
This shews the circle to have consisted of fighting-men, such serviceable braves as are frequently mentioned by Bābur; and his words “yārār yīgīt” make it safe to say that if instead of using a Persian phrase, he had used a Turkī one, yīgīt, brave would have replaced chuhra, “young soldier” (Erskine). A considerable number of men on active service are styled chuhra, one at least is styled yīgīt, in the same way as others are styled beg.2780
Three military circles are mentioned in the Bābur-nāma, consisting respectively of braves, household begs (under Bābur’s own command), and great begs. Some men are mentioned who never rose from the rank of brave (yīgīt), some who became household-begs, some who went through the three grades.
Of the corps of braves Bābur conveys the information that Abū-sa‘īd founded it at a date which will have lain between 1451 and 1457 AD.; that ‘Umar Shaikh’s man ‘Alī-darwesh belonged to it; and that Ḥusain’s man Bihbūd did so also. Both men, ‘Ali-darwesh and Bihbūd, when in its circle, would appropriately be styled chuhra as men of the beg-circle were styled beg; the Dost-i-muḥammad chuhra who was a commander, (he will have had a brave’s command,) at Chīkmān-sarāī (see list supra) will also have been of this circle. Instances of the use by Bābur of the name khaṣa-tābīn and its equivalent būītīkīnī are shewn on f. 209 and f. 210b. A considerable number of Bābur’s fighting men, the braves he so frequently mentions as sent on service, are styled chuhra and inferentially belong to the same circle.2781
d. Of Bih būd on Ḥusain Bāī-qarā’s coins.
So far it does not seem safe to accept Bābur’s statement literally. He may tell a half-truth and obscure the rest by his brevity.
Nothing in the sources shows ground for signal and public honour to Bihbūd Beg, but a good deal would allow surmise that jesting allusion to his name might decide for Bih būd as a coin mark when choice had to be made of one, in the flush of success, in an assembly of the begs, and, amongst those begs, lovers of word-play and enigma.
The personal name is found written Bihbūd, as one word and with medial h; the mark is Bih būd with the terminal h in the Bih. There have been discussions moreover as to whether to read on the coins Bih būd, it was good, or Bih buvad, let it be, or become, good (valid for currency?).
The question presents itself; would the beg’s name have appeared on the coins, if it had not coincided in form with a suitable coin-mark?
Against literal acceptance of Bābur’s statement there is also doubt of a thing at once so ben trovato and so unsupported by evidence.
Another doubt arises from finding Bih būd on coins of other rulers, one of Iskandar Khān’s being of a later date,2782 others, of Tīmūr, Shāhrukh and Abū-sa‘īd, with nothing to shew who counterstruck it on them.
On some of Ḥusain’s coins the sentence Bih būd appears as part of the legend and not as a counterstrike. This is a good basis for finding a half-truth in Bābur’s statement. It does not allow of a whole-truth in his statement because, as it is written, it is a coin-mark, not a name.
An interesting matter as bearing on Ḥusain’s use of Bih būd is that in 865 AH. (1461 AD.) he had an incomparable horse named Bihbūd, one he gave in return for a falcon on making peace with Mustapha Khān.2783
e. Of Bābur’s vassal-coinage.
The following historical details narrow the field of numismatic observation on coins believed struck by Bābur as a vassal of Ismā‘īl Ṣafawī. They are offered because not readily accessible.
The length of Bābur’s second term of rule in Transoxiana was not the three solar years of the B.M. Coin Catalogues but did not exceed eight months. He entered Samarkand in the middle of Rajab 917 AH. (c. Oct. 1st, 1511 AD.). He returned to it defeated and fled at once, after the battle of Kūl-i-malik which was fought in Ṣafar 918 AH. (mid-April to mid-May 1512 AD.). Previous to the entry he was in the field, without a fixed base; after his flight he was landless till at the end both of 920 AH. and of 1514 AD. he had returned to Kābul.
He would not find a full Treasury in Samarkand because the Aūzbegs evacuated the fort at their own time; eight months would not give him large tribute in kind. He failed in Transoxiana because he was the ally of a Shī‘a; would coins bearing the Shī‘a legend have passed current from a Samarkand mint? These various circumstances suggest that he could not have struck many coins of any kind in Samarkand.
The coins classed in the B.M. Catalogues as of Bābur’s vassalage, offer a point of difficulty to readers of his own writings, inasmuch as neither the “Sult̤ān Muḥammad” of No. 652 (gold), nor the “Sult̤ān Bābur Bahādur” of the silver coins enables confident acceptance of them as names he himself would use.
