The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c31.s5.61

c31.s5.61

The dread inspired by the victorious Musalman army under the command of Shihāb-ud-dīn or Muhammad of Ghōr, who was now undisputed master of the greater part of the Panjāb, constrained the jarring states of Northern India to lay aside their quarrels and combine for a moment against the foreign foe. At first fortune smiled on the Indians; and in A.D. 1191 (A. H. 587) Prithivī-rāja succeeded in inflicting a severe defeat upon the invaders at Tarāīn or Talāwarī between Thānēsar and Karnāl, which forced them to retire beyond the Indus. A year later, in A. D. 1192 (A. H. 588), the Sultan, having returned with a fresh force, again encountered on the same field Prithivī-rāja, who was at the head of an immense host, swollen by contingents from numerous confederate princes. A vigorous charge by twelve thousand well-armed Musalman horsemen repeated the lesson given by Alexander long ages before, and demonstrated the inability of a mob of Indian militia to stand the onset of trained cavalry. Prithivī-rāja, having been taken prisoner, was executed in cold blood, and the wretched inhabitants of his capital Ajmēr were either put to the sword or sold into slavery.¹