Note 1762 — SECTION III. HINDŪSTĀN

This name is explained on the margin of the Elph. MS. as “rāsū, which is the weasel of Tartary” (Erskine). Rāsū is an Indian name for the squirrel Sciurus indicus. The kīsh, with which Bābur’s nūl is compared, is explained by de C. as belette, weasel, and by Steingass as a fur-bearing animal; the fur-bearing weasel is (Mustelidae) putorius ermina, the ermine-weasel (Blanford, p. 165), which thus seems to be Bābur’s kīsh. The alternative name Bābur gives for his nūl, i.e. mūsh-i-khūrma, is, in India, that of Sciurus palmarum, the palm-squirrel (G. of I. i, 227); this then, it seems that Bābur’s nūl is. Erskine took nūl here to be the mongoose (Herpestes mūngūs) (p. 318); and Blanford, perhaps partly on Erskine’s warrant, gives mūsh-i-khūrma as a name of the lesser mungūs of Bengal. I gather that the name nawal is not exclusively confined even now to the (mungūs.)