6 Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. (January, 1911. 
as a good omen and called the child Hindal (7.c., taker of India).”’ 
By this time he had left the Yiisufzai country and was in 
India, near Bhera and the Jhilam. 
With the exception of the Kehr MS., which is the founda- 
tion of the Ilminsky edition, the above is all that the manu- 
scripts of the Memoirs, whether Turki or Persian, tell about 
Hindal’s birth. The Ilminsky edition, however, p. 281, pp. 45, 
46, vol. ii, of Pavet de Courteille’s French translation, has the 
following remarkable paragraph :— 
‘The explanation of the above statement (i.e., the state- 
ment about Mahim’s letter, etc.), is that up to this time there 
had been several children by the same mother as Humayiin’s’, 
namely, one boy, younger than him, but older thanyall my 
other (male) children, and three girls, of whom Mihr Jan was 
one, but they had all died in infancy. I wished much for a 
full brother or sister to Humayiin. At this time Dildar 
Aghacha conceived, and I kept on saying, ‘ How nice it would 
or Hasan, and on the other, Fatima. Then they shut up 
those in two balls of clay and put themintoa cup of water. The 
first to open is to them’a prognostic of the sex. Should it con- 
tain a boy’s name, the child will be a boy: if there be a girl’s 
name, it will be a girl. The experiment was made, and a boy’s 
hame came out. When I got the good news, I at once wrote 
age : > experiment), she (my mother), 
ieee that her desire had been fulfilled , eae child the 
ut the most remarkable thing in t is 
reference to Babur’s mother as eine still ee cua 
