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 CnAP. II.]

SHAHAB-U-DIN,

59

number of his teeth, The rajah returned the thrust by letting tiy an arrow, ad. 1192. which pierced Shahab's right arm. He was on the point of falUng, when one of his faithful attendants leaped up behind him and bore him off the field, which his army had now almost wholly deserted. Having recovered of his wound at Lahore, he returned to Ghor, and disgraced the officers to whose desertion he attributed his discomfiture, com])elling them to walk round the city with horses' mouth-bags, filled with barley, about their necks.

After a year, spent partly in pleasure and festivity, and partly in preparation shahab-a for a new campaign, Shahab set out from Ghuznee at the head of 120,000 veugeanco. chosen horse, and took the road to India without disclosing his intentions. At Peshawer an aged sage, prostrating himself before him, said — " king, we trust ill thy conduct and wisdom, but as yet thy design has been a subject of much speculation among us." Shahab replied — "Know, old man, that since the time of my defeat in Hindoostan I have never slumbered in ease, nor waked but in sorrow and anxiety ; I Jiave, therefore, determined with this army to recover my lost honour from those idolaters, or die in the attempt."

On arriving at Lahore, he sent an ambassador to Ajmeer, offering, as the New only alternative, war or conversion. The rajah returned an indignant answer,

.JMEER, from near the Gogra Pass.'— From Dixon's Sketch of Mairwara.

and immediately applied for succour to all the neighbouring princes. It was readily granted ; and an army equal to that which had recently given them the victory again encamped on the same field. In this army were 150 Rajpoot l)rinces, "who had sworn by the water of the Ganges that they would concpicr their enemies or die mart}Ts to their faith." While the camps were separated

V ' Ajmeer was occasionally the resilience of the emperor, .Jehan>;eer, who was here visited, in IGIO, by Sir Thomas Roe, the En;;lish ambassador. In 1818 it was ceded to the British, and was then in a ruinous state, from which, however, it soon recovered,

and is now one of the liandsonie.st cities in British India. On thesuniniit of the hill, in the back ground, stands a fortress, named Taraglinr, nearly two miles in circumference, capable of containing 12U0 men, but fast going to decay.— /?n/f;'ia/ Gazetteer,