Note 31 — The Seventh New Year’s Festival after the auspicious Accession.

ʿAlī Aḥmad died suddenly two years before this, unless indeed the passage at p. 169 refers to the mimic and not to ʿAlī Aḥmad. Probably the meaning is that ʿAlī Aḥmad had made this couplet on some previous occasion, and that one of the courtiers now quoted it. His verse about the hundred murders may contain a play on the word k͟hūn, ‘blood,’ and refer to the spilling of the blood-like wine. It is difficult to understand how Jahāngīr came to introduce the verse into his Memoirs here. It does not seem to have any connection with the account of the Raja of Kumaon. Jahāngīr says it was quoted ‘incidentally,’ bā taqarrubī. Perhaps the word here means ‘by way of parody,’ or ‘by way of paraphrase.’ In the MS. used by Erskine the words of the first line seem to be Maguẕar Masīḥ bar sar-i-mā, and so Erskine translates “Pass not, O Messiah, over the heads of us victims of love.” Perhaps maguẕar means ‘do not pass by.’ ↑