The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c13.34

c13.34

Bān (Rockets). Dr. Horn speaks of these on p. 39 of his treatise. Some form of rocket or fire-arrow was in use among Hindus from very early times. The word bān is said by Steingass, 152, to be from vāna, Sanskrit for an arrow. But takhsh used for a rocket in Elliot, “M. Hist.”, iii, 439, (Malfūzāt-i-Taimūrī), as quoted by Egerton, 17, is not found in any modern work. In the Āīn, i, 110, N°. 13, we have takhsh kamān, but that is explained as a small bow, while rockets appear as bān, N°. 77, p. 112. Ḥuqgah-i-ātash, defined by Steingass, 426, as a kind of rocket, has been placed by me under mortars, which see, ante p. 129. The stick of a rocket was apparently called chharī (H. a stick), see Khāfī Khān, ii, 304, line 15, year 1095 H., ṣadmah-i-chobchharī-i-bān ba dahān-i-ū rasīdah būd: “He had received a blow on the mouth from the stick (chob-chharī) of a rocket”. In Tārīkh-i-ʿĀlamgīr Sānī, fol. 152a, we have a word descriptive of some portion of a rocket, which reads پولك, pūlak, but must be intended, I think, for پونگا, pūngā, “a hollow tube”, Platts, “Dictionary”, 281. A thing called qainchi-i-bān is mentioned twice in the Aḥwāl-i-khawāqin (209b, 219b) and Khūshḥāl Chand speaks of Mahābat Jang, governor of Bengal, having with him in 1155 H. (1742) two thousand qaichī-i-bān [Nādir-uz-zamānī, Berlin Ms. Nº. 495, fol. 1128a]. See also Ashob, fol. 110a, and again 122a, who uses the word qaichī when writing in 1198—1199 H. of the events of 1150 H. I am not able to say what this was; but I guess it to have been a tripod or support from which the rocket was fired. Steingass, 997, gives qainchi, scissors. Perhaps, however, it is only one of the descriptive words so often used, like zanjīr with elephants or rās with horses; in that case it adds nothing to the meaning. Another obscure name, in connection with rockets, kahak-bānhā, is found in the Akbarnāmah (Lucknow edition, iii, 19, line 9). The only suggestion I can offer is, that it refers to the screaming noise made by some special kind of rocket, and that the word is, H., kuhuk, the cry of the koil, or scream of the peacock.