A History of the Mahrattas v1.c17.185

v1.c17.185

¹ The disease which broke out in Aurungzebe's army at Beejapoor is mentioned by the same name as that which the natives of India now apply to the spasmodic cholera, but they bore no resemblance to each other. The disease was epidemic, and before it attacked the camp with such violence, had prevailed for some years both in the Deccan and in Guzerat. Khafee Khan describes it as commencing by a slight swelling under the ear, the arm-pit or groin, attended with inflamed eyes, and severe fever. It generally proved fatal in a few hours, and those who did recover became wholly or partially deaf or blind. [Though some of the symptoms mentioned by the author point to the identity of the disease in Aurangzeb's camp with the plague, which has ravaged India in recent years, the first trustworthy information of the occurrence of plague in India dates from 1812, when an epidemic broke out in Cutch, spread into Gujarāt and Sind, and did not die out until after the lapse of ten years. In 1828-9 a disease showing all the symptoms of plague is reported to have been prevalent at Hansi, in the Hissar District of the Panjāb. In 1836 another epidemic occurred at Pālī, in the Mārwār State of Rājputāna. The epidemic of recent years first broke out in Bombay during the autumn of 1896. (I.G. (1907), iv. 475; B.C.G., ii. 190, 191.) The disease in Auranzgeb's camp was clearly bubonic in character; for, according to Khāfī Khān, 'the visible marks of the plague were swellings as big as a grape or banana under the arms, behind the ears, and in the groin, and a redness perceptible round the pupils of the eyes, as in fever or pestilence (wabā)' (Elliot and Dowson, vii. (1877), 337). For earlier references to pestilences (wabā and ta'un) in the fourteenth, fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, see A History of the Progress of Plague in Bombay Presidency from September 1896 to June 1899, by Captain J. K. Condon, Bombay Government Records, 1900.]