The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c23.24

c23.24

Challenges to single combat seem to have been not unusual between men of lower rank. We have an instance in Khāfī Khān, ii, 633, line 14, where he says that Sarwā, a robber associate of Pāprā, the toddy-seller, and one of the latter’s petty officers, Purdil Khān, had such a violent quarrel about each other’s soldierly qualifications, that they fought a duel (*jang-i-yakyangī*), “as is the custom in the Dakhin” (see *ante*, p. 185). Later on the practice showed itself in 1782, when the English under Sir Eyre Coote were opposed to the Mysore army under Ḥaidar ʿAlī. Individual horsemen would ride up within speaking distance and, with contemptuous abuse of a mode of warfare excluding individual prowess, would give a general challenge to single combat. Many times and with uniform success these were accepted by Lieut. Dallas, a man six foot high, who rode a coal-black horse, and formed a striking exception to the general inferiority of European to native swordsmen (Wilks, ii, 392).