The Etymology of the name Babar.

Babar appears to be a lengthened form of the word ببر , babar or bibar, and is commonly explained as meaning ' tiger’. In our Persian and Hindustani dictionaries the word ببر is rendered both as ‘lion’ and as ‘ tiger ' ; while Lane, in his Arabic dictionary, gives as one explanation of the word, " a certain Indian animal, stronger than the lion, between which and the lion and leopard, or panther, exists hostility." He also says that the word is foreign, or Persian. The word occurs several times in Jahangir's Memoirs, and in one place, B.M. MS. Add. 26,215, p. 245a, he distinguishes it from the شير , sher or tiger, and speaks of having had both these dissected in order to find the cause of their courage. It seems to me that he understood the word as meaning ' leopard,' and as he speaks on more than one occasion of having despatched the babar by a single shot, it probably was a smaller animal than the tiger. In one place in Afghanistan, either Babar's tomb or the entrance of the inscription-cave described by Darmesteter, two leopards are sculptured, which seems to show that Babar was supposed to mean ‘leopard’. In Zend the word is bawri, and in Balfour's Cyclopaedia and Jerdon's " Mammals of India,” p. 99, the form bibla is given. Is not, then, the word the same as the Greek βαβλιός, which appears in Latin as varius, and means ‘the spotted’ ? In Anglo-Indian slang the leopard and the tiger are commonly distinguished as “ spots and stripes." The word may also be connected with the Greek pardos or pardalis.

­H. Beveridge.

May 5, 1900.