History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v1.c14.31

v1.c14.31

Jaisiah with a few followers escaped from the bloody battlefield and went to Raor. That fort was not thought safe and he went to Brāhmanābād where were the accumulated riches of his father and sufficient forces to oppose the Arabs. Dahar's another queen Bai remained in Raor with 15000 warriors and opposed Kasim who soon invested it with his victorious army. Bai found that "She could not escape the clutches of those chāndālas and cow-eaters" and resolved to burn herself. "She and many Rajput women were of one mind and so they entered a house, set fire to it and soon were burnt to death." This was probably the first immolation of Indian women in its history. The Indians no doubt fought among themselves in former times and even sometimes appropriated the women of the conquered princes as has been stated before. But there was no compulsion in these cases. If they refused to be wives and concubines of the victors they remained only as servants and were even allowed to go away as Buddhist nuns or other recluses. And there was no loss of religion or of caste. But with the Mahomedan conquerors the case was entirely different. Women were forcibly appropriated by them as wives or as concubines or as slaves and were also forcibly converted. And the eating of cows' flesh and the slaughter of cows were the most abominable things with the Indians. The courage of Indian women had always been exhibited in the long established practice of sati and thus Indian women during Mahomedan times often, nay almost always, made those terrible holocausts of themselves which make the history of the Mahomedan conquest of India hideous and painful. This sacrifice by Bai said to be Dāhar's step-sister and wife and other Rajput women was thus probably the first of its kind in Indian history.