Note 1821 — SECTION III. HINDŪSTĀN

In this passage my husband finds the explanation of two somewhat vague statements of later date, one made by Abū’l-faẓl (A. A. Blochmann, p. 65) that Akbar called the kīlās (cherry) the shāh-ālū (king-plum), the other by Jahāngīr that this change was made because kīlās means lizard (Jahāngīr’s Memoirs, R. & B. i, 116). What Akbar did is shewn by Bābur; it was to reject the Persian name kīlās, cherry, because it closely resembled Turkī gīlās, lizard. There is a lizard Stellio Lehmanni of Transoxiana with which Bābur may well have compared the crocodile’s appearance (Schuyler’s Turkistān, i, 383). Akbar in Hindūstān may have had Varanus salvator (6 ft. long) in mind, if indeed he had not the great lizard, al lagarto, the alligator itself in his thought. The name kīlās evidently was banished only from the Court circle, since it is still current in Kashmīr (Blochmann l.c. p. 616); and Speede (p. 201) gives keeras, cherry, as used in India.