Page:The Tarikh-i-Rashidi - Mirza Muhammad Haidar, Dughlát - tr. Edward D. Ross (1895).djvu/108

 Rh that a tribe, or sub-tribe, bearing this name existed in the twelfth or thirteenth centuries, in no way accounts for its having been applied, as a general term of contempt, to the Chaghatais as a people: there must have been some other reason and origin. The name itself was found, by Quatremère, never to appear previous to the Mongol invasions of the west, or subsequent to the date of the Zafar-Náma—viz., 1424. Marco Polo was one of the earliest to mention it, and he gives it the form Caraonas. He relates that he met with the Caraonas at Kirmán and, apparently also, at other places in Persia farther north, and describes them as a robber tribe who were "the sons of Indian mothers by Tartar fathers." Probably the word "Indian" may have been employed by him in a very broad sense, or it may, as Sir H. Yule has suggested, perhaps stand for Biluchi; but in any case, Marco Polo refers to them as a race of half-breeds, and states that the name of Caraonas had been given them on account of their mixed parentage. Dr. Erdmann, again, alludes to the Karawinah, or Karawinas, stationed in Khorasán about the same period, and explains, on the authority of Wassáf, that they were the artillerists (Feuerwerker) of the Chaghatai army. These are the only two instances known to me, where meanings for the term are suggested by original contemporary authors; but there seems no reason to suppose that the name was specially given to any such classes as half-caste robbers or artillerymen. It was imposed, Mirza Haidar tells us, on the Chaghatais generally, and therefore is far more likely to have had its origin in something quite unconnected with either the banditti of Kirmán or the gunners of the army in Khorasán, for both these classes may have inherited a right to the distinction with their Chaghatai relationship: the lesser would be contained in the greater.

But under whatever name the Moghuls were known to their neighbours, one of the most noteworthy circumstances connected with them, during the period to which Mirza Haidar's history refers, was that they were rapidly declining in power and in numbers. With the introduction among them of the Musulman