Fall of the Mughal Empire v4.c54.s1.2

v4.c54.s1.2

¹ This Persian book has been miscalled by the Marātha writers as *Bhawāni Shankar’s Diary*. It is not a diary, and is admittedly the composition of Mohan Singh from facts narrated by Bhawāni Shankar, and at the very end (after Bhawāni Shankar’s flight from Jaswant’s camp in April 1805) based on the author’s personal inquiries. Bhawāni Shankar could not hold a pen as the fingers of both his hands had been destroyed by wounds received in fighting for Holkar—by a bayonet thrust in a fight with two battalions of Dudrenec in December 1798, according to Mohan S. (f. 66b of ms.) or “by a gun shot in a former action with the English” according to Capt. J. Pester, (*War and Sport*, 468.) A much later work, the *Holkar Family Kaifiyat* (written after 1826) in Marathi, gives a different account, which I cannot prefer to the contemporary Bhawāni Shankar’s. Best account in *PRC*. vi. 25-26 (in Puna), 48, 86-90 (confined).