The Book of Akbar 380.3

380.3

Observe some secrecy in your meetings Lest the watchman come in with sword-play. When the army of fortune came near to Sārangpūr, which was the fool’s paradise of this drunkard, he awoke in some measure from his insensate slumbers and came out from Sarangpūr, crapulous and wine-stained and took post three kos beyond it. He put his army in order and prepared for battle. He gilded the centre (qalb) with the base copper of his personality, and Selim Khan Khasga-khel, the governor of Raisin and Canderi, commanded the right wing. Adam commanded the left wing. Taj Khan Khasga-khel and Sufi who had the vapours of audacity in their brains commanded the vanguard. The armies faced one another at the distance of two or three kos, and the braves on both sides were continually coming out and encountering. They put the observance of the rules of wariness into the charge of men of skill while they themselves displayed intrepidity in combat. Every day a troop of gallant and capable men headed by an experienced loyalist, who possessed both abundant sense and abundant courage, proceeded to the flanks of the enemy and stopped the egress and ingress of the rebels, and especially of the convoyers of grain who in the language of India are called Banjara. They made the position of the enemy difficult. One day it was the turn of Shah Muhammad Khan Qandahari, Sadiq Khan, Payanda Muhammad Khan Moghal, Shah Fanai, Mihr ‘Ali Sildiz, Samanji Khan, and Muhammad Khwaja Kushtigir.