Note 2349 — SECTION III. HINDŪSTĀN (continued 3)

Here the 1st Pers. trs. (I.O. 215 f. 214) mentions that it was Chalma who wrote and despatched the exact particulars of the defeat of the Aūzbegs. This information explains the presumption Bābur expresses. It shows that Chalma was in Ḥiṣār where he may have written his letter to give news to Humāyūn. At the time Bīān Shaikh left, the Mīrzā was near Kishm; if he had been the enterprising man he was not, one would surmise that he had moved to seize the chance of the sult̤āns’ abandonment of Ḥiṣār, without waiting for his father’s urgency (f. 348b). Whether he had done so and was the cause of the sult̤āns’ flight, is not known from any chronicle yet come to our hands. Chalma’s father Ibrāhīm Jānī died fighting for Bābur against Shaibāq Khān in 906 AH. (f. 90b).

As the sense of the name-of-office Chalma is still in doubt, I suggest that it may be an equivalent of aftābachī, bearer of the water-bottle on journeys. T. chalma can mean a water-vessel carried on the saddle-bow; one Chalma on record was a safarchī; if, in this word, safar be read to mean journey, an approach is made to aftābachī (fol. 15b and note; Blochmann’s A.-i-A. p. 378 and n. 3).