Note 30 — The Fifteenth New Year’s Feast after the Auspicious Accession

The word used by Jahāngīr is daraʿ, which is given by Steingass as Arabic, and as meaning a yard. Ẕaraʿ again, is given as equal to a cubit. Clearly Jahāngīr uses the word here as equivalent to a gaz or yard, for he says that there are 5,000 daraʿ in the koss adopted by himself and his father, and Abū-l-Faẓl in the Āyīn (Jarrett, II. 414) says the koss is 5,000 gaz. The word daraʿ is also rendered gaz in the Hindustani translation of the Memoirs. There is an important discrepancy between the two I.O. MSS. and the printed text of the Memoirs. The former, instead of saying that the daraʿ or yard is = 2 s͟harʿī daraʿ, say that 1¼ daraʿ are = 2 s͟harʿī daraʿ. In the Āyīn (Jarrett, II. 417) the gaz is given as equal to 24 digits. See later on, p. 303 of text, where, in describing S͟hāh S͟hujā’s accident, 7 daraʿ are said to be equal to 10 s͟harʿī, or ordinary, gaz. ↑