Note 171 — The Thirteenth New Year’s Feast

Text darʿa, MSS. ẕirāʿ. See text 298, account of fifteenth year, where a darʿa is defined. The Ilāhī gaz or daraʿ consisted of 40 digits (fingerbreadths), according to Jahāngīr. If the Kapūr tank be the one described in the Archæological Survey Reports, Vol. XVIII., for 1894, yards seem to be required here, for the tank is mentioned in the Report as being 95 feet 7 inches square. According to Jahāngīr, 34 krors odd of dams—i.e., I presume, fulūs, in copper money, and 16 lakhs and 80,000 rupees in silver were poured into the tank, making a total of 1 kror and 3 lakhs of rupees, or 3 lakhs 43,000 tūmāns. Apparently the tūmān, which was a gold coin, was, in Jahāngīr’s time, reckoned as worth 30 rupees, and Wollaston, in his Dictionary, says it was worth £3 in S͟hāh ʿAbbās I.’s time. Jahāngīr’s account of the tank should be compared with that given in the Akbar-nāma, III. 246 and 257, where the tank is called the Anūp-talāo, or the “Unequalled Tank.”

In the text, difficulty has, I think, been made by the introduction of the word kih in p. 260, six lines from foot, and bās͟had in the fifth line from the foot. These words make the sense to be that 34 krors odd of dams were only equal to 16 lakhs odd of rupees. But this cannot be, for the dam was the fortieth part of a rupee, and so 34 krors of dams would be not far short of one kror—i.e., 100 lakhs of rupees. The MSS. have not the kih and bās͟had in question, and have only a conjunction after the word dām. Thirty-four krors odd of copper and 16 lakhs of silver were poured into the tank, making a total, in round numbers, of 1 kror, 3 lakhs of rupees. According to Abū-l-Faẓl gold was also thrown in. ↑