REVIEW. 247 



but, as the country abounded in brushwood, we could not get at 

 them. A she-Rhinoceros that had whelps came out and fled along 

 the plain ; many arrows were shot at her, but, as the wooded 

 ground was near at hand, she gained cover. We set fire to the 

 brushwood, but the Rhinoceros was not to be found. We got sight 

 of another, that, having been scorched in the fire, was lamed, and 

 unable to run. We killed it, and every one cut off a bit of it as a 

 trophy of the chase." 



This extract is from Leyden and Erskine's Translation of the 

 Emperor's Turki Memoirs, and has been verified by the kindness 

 of Miss Hughes of the Royal Asiatic Society. 



It is worth examining as a piece of thoroughly bad evidence. 

 In the first place the whole phrase, especially the word ''whelps," 

 shows that the passage is not from the hand of either Leyden or 

 Erskine, but from that of one of their. Munshis. 



Further, the Emperor, the most vivacious memoir writer of his 

 day, and perhaps the very best of any who ever wrote in any 

 Asiatic language, dismisses the whole affair in the few words 

 quoted. Had he really been relating his first encounter with a giant 

 pachyderm, is it to be supposed that he would have dismissed it 

 without any notice of its monstrous size, tough armour, and single horn 

 of magic virtue ? Until a Turki manuscript of the memoirs is examined 

 by a competent scholar, with his eyes open and his mouth shut, 

 we cannot tell what the Emperor really did write. Steps are being 

 taken in that direction, and it is hoped that some reader of this 

 notice (particularly any one at the British Museum, who could get it 

 done in a fortnight) may take them on his own account. 



Meanwhile, the most probable conjecture is that the game were 

 "Qoride" or swamp deer {Cervus chivauceli) existing in the marshy 

 jungles of the Indus within the present writer's time, under that 

 name. The error of a Scribe (even of Erskine's Munshi) would 

 easily turn "Gonda" into "Genda" (= a Rhinoceros), and that 

 would (if the Turki word is really at all like either) explain the 

 whole yarn. Baber evidently looked upon the whole affair as an 

 almost blank day ; and the present writer has seen a division of an 

 insufficient spoil, such as he describes, carried out as a joJce in 

 the same region. The scene was apparently in the jungles near the 



