The Army of the Indian Moghuls: Its Organization and Administration c23.30

c23.30

*Harakat-i-mazbūḥī.* This means literally the expiring throes of a slaughtered animal, but seems used to express a feeble and hesitating attack, which is never carried home. In Budāonī, ii, 234, occurs the following passage: *o sare chand az fidaiyān-i-Rānā, kih maḥal-i-ū-rā muḥāfazat mī-kardand, o sare chand-i-dīgar, suknah-i-muʿābad, kih majmūʿ bist kas bāshand, binābar-i-rasm i-qadīm-i-Hindūstān, kih waqt i-khālī sākhtan-i-shahr, ba jihat-i-raʿāyat-i-nāmūs, kashtah mī shavvand, az andarūn-i-khānahhā o butkhānahhā bar āmdah, harakat-i-mazbūḥī kardah, ba zakhm-i-shamsher-i-jān-sitān jān ba mālikān-i-dozakh sipurdand.* Lowe, 240, renders it thus: "And certain of the devoted servants of the Rānā, who were the guardians of his palace, and some inhabitants of the temple, in all amounting to twenty persons, in accordance with an ancient custom of the Hindūs that when they are compelled to evacuate a city, they should be killed in order to save their honour, coming out of their houses and temples performed the sacrificial rite and by the stroke of their life-taking swords committed their souls to the keepers of hell". See also Lowe's note. I take this passage as meaning, on the contrary, that the men made a feeble purposeless onslaught (*harakat-i-mazbūḥī*), and were slain not by their own swords, but by those of their Moslem opponents.