Note 1660 — SECTION III. HINDŪSTĀN

These arāba may have been the baggage-carts of the army and also carts procured on the spot. Erskine omits (Memoirs p. 304) the words which show how many carts were collected and from whom. Doubtless it would be through not having these circumstances in his mind that he took the arāba for gun-carriages. His incomplete translation, again, led Stanley Lane-Poole to write an interesting note in his Bābur (p. 161) to support Erskine against de Courteille (with whose rendering mine agrees) by quoting the circumstance that Humāyūn had 700 guns at Qanauj in 1540 AD. It must be said in opposition to his support of Erskine’s “gun-carriages” that there is no textual or circumstantial warrant for supposing Bābur to have had guns, even if made in parts, in such number as to demand 700 gun-carriages for their transport. What guns Bābur had at Pānī-pat will have been brought from his Kābul base; if he had acquired any, say from Lāhor, he would hardly omit to mention such an important reinforcement of his armament; if he had brought many guns on carts from Kābul, he must have met with transit-difficulties harassing enough to chronicle, while he was making that long journey from Kābul to Pānī-pat, over passes, through skirt-hills and many fords. The elephants he had in Bīgrām may have been his transport for what guns he had; he does not mention his number at Pānī-pat; he makes his victory a bow-man’s success; he can be read as indicating that he had two guns only.