Page:Babur-nama Vol 1.djvu/129

 ir

901 AH.— SEP. 21ST. 1495 TO SEP. 9th. 1496 AD. 59

custom of Timuriya sultans on such occasions, I had seated myself on a raised seat (tushdk) ; when Hamza SI. and Mamaq SI. and Mahdi SI. entered, I rose and went down to do them honour ; we looked one another in the eyes and I placed them on my right, bdghlsh da} A number of Mughdls also came, under Muhammad Hisdri ; all elected for my service.

(c. SI. Husain Mlrzd's affairs resumed).

SI. Husain Mirza, on reaching Hisar, settled down at once to besiege it. There was no rest, day nor night, from the labours of mining and attack, of working catapults and mortars. Mines were run in four or five places. When one had, gone well forward towards the Gate, the townsmen, countermining, struck it and forced smoke down on the Mirza's men ; they, in turn, yo. 345. closed the hole, thus sent the smoke straight back and made the townsmen flee as from the very maw of death. In the end, the townsmen drove the besiegers out by pouring jar after jar of water in on them. Another day, a party dashed out from the town and drove off the Mirza's men from their own mine's mouth. Once the discharges from catapults and mortars in the Mirza's quarters on the north cracked a tower of the fort ; it fell at the Bed-time Prayer ; some of the Mirza's braves begged to assault at once but he refused, saying, ** It is night." Before the shoot of the next day's dawn, the besieged had rebuilt the whole tower. That day too there was no assault ; in fact, for the two to two and a half months of the siege, no attack was made except by keeping up the blockade,^ by mining, rearing head-strikes,^ and discharging stones.

^ This pregnant phrase has been found difficult. It may express that Babur assigned the sultans places in their due precedence ; that he seated them in a row ; and that they sat cross-legged, as men of rank, and were not made, as inferiors, to kneel and sit back on their heels. Out of this last meaning, I infer comes the one given by dictionaries, " to sit at ease," since the cross-legged posture is less irksome than the genuflection, not to speak of the ease of mind produced by honour received. Cf. f. 1 8b and note on Ahmad 's posture ; Redhouse s.nn. bdghlsh and bdghddsh ; and B.M. Tawarikh-i-guzida nasrat-nama, in the illustrations of which the chief personage, only, sits cross-legged.

2 siydsat. My translation is conjectural only.

^ sar-kob. The old English noun strike, " an instrument for scraping off what appears above the top," expresses the purpose of the wall-high erections of wood or earth (L. agger) raised to reach what shewed above ramparts. Cf. Webster.