Note 54 — Chapter I

Text, topchī, which seems properly to mean a gunner, but the number is preposterous. Cf. Blochmann, p. 470, and Price, p. 28. Price’s original has 6,000 topchī mounted on camels, and has pāytak͟ht, i.e. the capital. Erskine has “To have always in readiness in the arsenal arms, and accoutrements for 50,000 matchlock men.” This seems reasonable, for even if Jahāngīr ordered 50,000 musketeers, he would not have required them to be kept in the arsenal. It seems to me that though chī in Turkī is the sign of the agent (nomen agentis) it is occasionally used by Indian writers as a diminutive. Thus topchī here probably means a small gun or a musket, and in Hindustani we are familiar with the word chilamchī, which means a small basin. At p. 301 of the Tūzuk, four lines from foot, we have the word īlchī, which commonly means an ambassador—an agent of a people—used certainly not in this sense, and apparently to mean a number of horses. It is, however, doubtful if īlchī here be the true reading. ↑