Page:The Tarikh-i-Rashidi - Mirza Muhammad Haidar, Dughlát - tr. Edward D. Ross (1895).djvu/107

 76 hundred years, fall into their right place and need be heard of no more.

But the anomalies of nomenclature did not stop here, for our author further implies that the Moghuls retorted on the Chaghatais with the reproachful name of Karáwánás. Unfortunately he does not, in this instance, give any clue to the meaning of the word, and neither Turki dictionaries nor the transliterated Mongol dictionaries (as far as I am able to use them) throw any light upon it. Indeed, I know of nothing to point to the word being a term of depreciation, except the inference to be drawn from this one statement of Mirza Haidar's; but, taking into consideration the connection in which he introduces it, and the common practice over the greater part of Asia, of one nation calling another by a reproachful nickname, this single instance is probably sufficient. The name, under one variant or another, has been found by translators in several Oriental works, and appears in many cases to be applied to a tribe or community: thus Quatremère cites the Tarikh-i-Wassáf to the effect that the army of the "Karavenas" resembled monkeys rather than men, but that they were the bravest "among the Mongols"; also Mirkhwánd, who is represented as describing them in precisely the same way; Rashid-ud-Din, who also speaks of their bravery; and several others who, however, only make mention of the name. Not one of these authors assists us in assigning a meaning to the word, or in tracing the origin of its application to the Chaghatais as a people. None of them do more than represent the Karáwánás to have been a sub-tribe of Mongols who entered Khorasán and Persia under Hulaku, or very shortly after him.

It appears from Wassáf that there was, indeed, a tribe among the Mongols named Kuránas towards the end of the twelfth century, though the name is not traceable in Rashid-ud-Din's lists, unless we are prepared to recognise it in that which Dr. Erdmann transliterates "Ckaranut" (where the final t is only the Mongol plural) or "Ckurulás." In any case, the form Kuránas is said to have afterwards become modified in Persia, into Karáwanás, which, but for the absence of an accent on the third a, is the same spelling as Mirza Haidar's. But the fact