A History of the Mahrattas v1.c9.175

v1.c9.175

¹ ‘The sovereign of the plain.’ The natives of Beejapoor insist on calling it moolk-i-mydan, which, they say, signifies ‘the lion of the plain.’ This gun, of which the muzzle is four feet eight inches in diameter, and the calibre two feet four inches, was cast at Ahmednugur, A.D. 1549, by a native of Constantinople, named Hoosein Khan. Aurungzebe put an inscription upon it to commemorate the conquest of Beejapoor in 1685, which has led to the mistake of supposing it to have been cast at that time. It is alike curious from its dimensions and its history: the Bombay government in 1823 was particularly desirous of sending it to the King of England, and an engineer was sent to examine it for the purpose, but the present state of the roads renders the difficulty of transporting such a huge mass of metal to the coast almost insuperable. [The Malik-i-Maidān (Mullik-i-Mydan), which is now located on a special bastion in the western rampart of Bijāpur town, is a dumpy piece of ordnance of the howitzer type. The muzzle is fashioned in the likeness of a lion’s head with open jaws, between the curved fangs of which on either side is a small elephant. The tip of the nose forms the foresight. The gun is fourteen feet four inches long, with a maximum diameter of four feet eleven inches. Three inscriptions on the top record the name of the maker, Muhammad son of Hasan Rumi (Turk), the date of the casting, and the capture of Bijāpur by Aurangzeb (1097 A.H. = A.D.