The Memoirs of Bābur 912.3.2

912.3.2

Badī`u'z-zamān Mīrzā, hearing that Muz̤affar M. had entertained me, asked me to a party arranged in the Maqauwī-khāna of the World-adorning Garden. He asked also some of my close circle[1193] and some of our braves. Those about me could never drink (openly) on my own account; if they ever did drink, they did it perhaps once in 40 days, with doorstrap fast and under a hundred fears. Such as these were now invited; here too they drank with a hundred precautions, sometimes calling off my attention, sometimes making a screen of their hands, notwithstanding that I had given them permission to follow common custom, because this party was given by one standing to me as a father or elder brother. People brought in weeping-willows....[1194] At this party they set a roast goose before me but as I was no carver or disjointer of birds, I left it alone. "Do you not like it?" inquired the Mīrzā. Said I, "I am a poor carver." On this he at once disjointed the bird and set it again before [Sidenote: Fol. 191.] me. In such matters he had no match. At the end of the party he gave me an enamelled waist-dagger, a _chār-qāb_,[1195] and a _tīpūchāq_. (_l. Bābur sees the sights of Herī._) Every day of the time I was in Herī I rode out to see a new sight; my guide in these excursions was Yūsuf-i-`alī Kūkūldāsh; wherever we dismounted, he set food before me. Except Sl. Ḥusain Mīrzā's Almshouse, not one famous spot, maybe, was left unseen in those 40 days.