After prolonging the siege for some time Shīr Shāh entered into a compact, and succeeded in dislodging Pūranmal* by the intervention of Shāhzāda ‘Ādil Khān and Qub Khān Nāib,* and assigned him a place in his own camp, bestowing upon him a hundred horses, with a robe of honour and a sum of gold; and eventually by the advice of Mīr Saiyyid Rafī‘u-d-Dīn Ṣafawī of Īj,* which was given the title of Muqaddasa (Sacred) by Sikandar Lodī, broke his word, and caused Pūranmal together with his family and children to be trampled to death by elephants. Not a single man of those turbulent and rebellious Hindūs, who were 367. near ten thousand souls, escaped in that battle. Their women and men either* became food for the edge (jauhar) of the sword or fed the flames of the fire called jūhar, a well-known word in the Hīndī language. This chronicle, from that day forward, remained as a record upon the pages of Time, may God be merciful to its author. This event occurred in the year 950 H., and* after some time he girded up his loins for a holy war to uproot the pestilent infidels of the country of Mārwār, and led a vast* army against Rāi Maldeo* the leader of the Rāis of Hindūstān who held sway over the country of Nāgor and Jaunpūr, and was a powerful opponent of the Muslims; and inasmuch as one of the maxims of Shīr Shāh, from which he never departed,* was to throw up an entrenched position round his army, no matter how few the enemy might be, as soon as Māldeo arrived in the vicinity of Ājmīr with fifty thousand picked cavalry trained and experienced in war, intent upon slaying or being slain, and confronted Shīr Shāh, he, finding it impossible to make trenches and ramparts because of the sandy soil, held a conference with his experienced and veteran Amīrs. No one of them however could devise a way to effect that object. Suddenly Maḥmūd Khān, the son of ‘Ādil Khān,* who was grandson to Shīr Shāh, notwithstanding his youth said, “Let Shāh ‘Ālam order the banjāras (grain sellers) of the army to fill sacks with sand and arrange them round* the army.” This idea* highly commended itself to Shīr Shāh, and he immediately placed his turban upon the lad's head, and bestowed upon him in perpetuity the treaty territories.
In the end Heaven did not favour his designs, and Islām Shāh* after reaching kingly power, made this unfortunate boy the very first of his family, heirs to the kingdom, to have his name blotted out from the page of existence, in accordance with the saying Al mulku ‘aqīm* (The kingdom has no heir), and that treatment which he meted out to them, vindictive Time measured again to his posterity.
Verse.If thou hast done evil remain not secure from calamity,
For the nature of things brings about requital.
In short Shīr Shāh, who* would not give the head of one of 368. his soldiers for a kingdom, and to whom the Afghāns were* far dearer than can be expressed, was by no means willing to involve his army in calamity with the ignorant, boar-natured, currish* Hindūs. Accordingly he devised an artifice, and wrote fictitious letters purporting to emanate from the generals of Māldeo's army, to himself, couched in enigmatical language,* the substance of them being that there would be no need for the king in person to superintend the fighting, when the armies were drawn up for battle, because they themselves would take Māldeo alive and deliver him up, upon the condition that such and such places should be given them as a reward. Having done this he so arranged that those letters fell into Māldeo's hands, with the result that Māldeo became utterly suspicious of all his generals,* and, in the dead of night* fled alone without looking behind him; and, notwithstanding that his generals denied their complicity with oath upon oath, saying that they never could have been guilty of such dastardly conduct,* and that this was all the handiwork of Shīr Shāh in his desire to raise dissensions* between them, it was of no use, and had no effect upon Māldeo's mind. Kanhaiyā,* who was his minister and agent, abused Māldeo in violent terms, and taking four thousand resolute men devoted to death, or even more than this number, came down upon the army of Shīr Shāh, with the intention of surprising them by night, but missed his way, and after marching the whole night, when morning broke became aware that he had left the camp far in rear.* After striving to the utmost of their powers, when they had abandoned all hope of life, at the very moment when the army of Shīr Shāh came in sight, as a result of their own stupidity, by the good luck of Shīr Shāh or by the superior good fortune of Islām, the infidels in a body dismounted from their horses, and renewing their vows of singleness of purpose and mutual assistance, binding* their sashes together and joining 369. hand to hand, attacked the army of the Afghāns with their short spears, which they call Barchha,* and with their swords. Shīr Shāh had given orders saying that if any man ventured to fight with the sword with this swinish horde, his blood would be on his own head. He accordingly ordered the elephant troops to advance and* trample them down. In rear of the elephants, the artillery and archers gave them a taste of the bowstring, and admitting them to the banquet of death, gave them the hospitality of the land of extinction. The bright surface of the world's page was polished, and freed from the dark lines of the land of infidels, and not one of the infidels got off with his life, nor was a single Muslim lost in that encounter.* A poet of Basāwar, whose takhalluṣ is Faiẓī,* wrote this verse on that subject.
Suddenly check to the king happened to Māldeo
It would have been checkmate had not the piece
Kanyā* protected him as ‘Irā.*
It is said that after this victory Shīr Shāh on several occasions used to say, “I have sold the empire of the whole of Hindūstān* for a handful of millet.” Returning thence and making over the fortress of Rantanbhūr to his son ‘Ādil Khān, he gave him leave for a few days to visit the fort, and put the garrison in order, when he was to follow his father. The writer has heard from a trustworthy source, that one day while on that expedition Mīr Saiyyid Rafī‘u-d-Dīn, the renowned and unique traditionist now pardoned and absolved, who has been already mentioned, said to Shīr Shāh, “All my ancestors were* authors of authoritative compositions and used to give instructions in the two sacred cities.* I alone of all my family have become so helpless and powerless that in search of the gold and fame of Hindūstān I 370. am blindly wandering. I beseech your Majesty to grant me permission to depart, so that at the end of my days I may be able to relight the lamp of those venerable ancestors of mine.
Seeing that I was not worthy to succeed those mighty
intellects who have gone before me,
My hands have spoiled many books, my ignorance has wasted
many parchments.*