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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[SEPTEXBER, 1898.
(2) By means of the Persian - i (itáfat); e. go, when I was farsand-i insan, son
of man (cf. 1.). 199. Locative. This case, which occurs only in composition with prepositions (or rather post-positions), is the same as the dative ; e. g., ¿ų bágh, garden, dat. sg. comély bágha-s ; loc. Cató) juh wat, baghas andar (or manz), in a garden ; Dat. pl. mély bághan, loc. (jo) jáil wélı bághan andar (mana), in gardens.
300. Besides the cases described above, Kaemiri has, like Persian, the so-called Case of Unity, which is formed by the addition of > -ah. The noun also is usually preceded, and sometimes followed by the word Ji ak, one.'; e. g., Nysy oiak naukar-ah, a slave, * certain slave ; als ui ak kulah, a tree; byer Ji ak kôr-ak, a girl.
I also find this : * ah used with tis kenh, any, and come yus, who ; •. g., *;tis henh chish, any thing, anything; LAS myus shakhsah, (he) who ; so also in the case of numerals with Jl ak; e. 9., sips l ak hat terah, one hundred sheep.784
201. Arabic words, which are already in their Arabic plural forms, can also forma Kasmiri plural; thus w nabí, a prophet ; plur. gen. i wt nabiyan-hond, or sia un anbiyah-an hond, from the Arabic Plural i anbiya (compare Luke, xvi. 29 with xvi. 31).
So also from Arabic adjectives new Kaśmfri adjectives can be formed by means of the above-mentioned termination J uk (ef. above, ali on hayat-i-abadiy-uk).
(To be continued.)
Birl.
THE BIEGE OF AHMADNAGAR AND HEROIC DEFENCE OF THE FORT BY CHAND BIBI - A NARRATIVE OF AN EYE-WITNESS.
BY MAJOR J. S. KING, Indian Staf Corps (retired).
Prefatory Remarks. The great siege of Ahmadnagar by the Mughals and the heroic defence of the fort by the famous Chand Bibt forms one of the most interesting and romantic chapters in Indian history, but hitherto - as far as I am aware - no account by an eye-witness of the siege has ever been published. Up to the present Firishtah has been almost our only informant, for those who succeeded him, recognising him as the greatest authority of the day on Dakhan history, have simply copied him. Bat Firishtah, with most of the other foreigners who escaped the massacre in the reign of Isma 11 Nizâm-Shah, was compelled to leave Ahmadnagar, and he then went to reside in Bijapur. This was six or seven years before the siege, and he does not appear ever to have re-visited Ahmednagar.
The Burhan-i Ma,Asir, from which I have translated the present account, is a very rare Persian MS. by 'Al B. Asis-Ullah Tabataba. I have only been able to hear of three copies of the work, vir., one in the India Office Library, No. 127 - from which this translation is made-one in the library of King's College, Cambridge, No. 65, and one in the British Museum Library, Add. 9996-9998, and the latter seems to me to be a modern copy made directly from the Cambridge MS. before it found its way to the College library. The first part deals with the history of the Bahmani dynasty, and the
1a (In Devanagari these words are spelt with a long 4. Thus, naukar.ch, FTC kulah, &c.]
