Page:Historic Landmarks of the Deccan.djvu/174

 SOME FORGOTTEN BATTLEFIELDS OF BERAR. IN India, which has been at times a vast empire, and at times a congeries of petty states bound by no close bonds and without a de facto overlord, there is not a province in which it is not possible to point out the sites of numerous battles fought in the olden days. Northern India has its battlefields, whereon the fate of the whole empire has not seldom been decided. In southern India the traveller may visit the sites of countless battles fought between the Musalman invaders and the Hindu inhabitants, and later between the established Muhammadan kingdoms of the Deccan and the great Hindu empire of the South, or between the various Muhammadan sovereigns themselves.

An attempt to connect scenes naturally dreary or monotonous with valiant deeds of olden days can hardly fail to lend an additional interest to those localities in the eyes of those whose lot is cast among them and of those who are led by curiosity, or love of sport or travel, to visit them. This must be my apology for an attempt to excite a small amount of interest in places obscure and uninteresting enough in themselves, but not wholly devoid of the interest which attaches to historical associations — some forgotten battlefields of Berar — a province which was for long the debatable land between northern and southern India, afterwards the frequent scene of conflicts between the states of Gujarat, Khandesh, and Malwa on the north, and the Bahmani empire or its disintegrated fragments on the south, and again the borderland between the great Mughal empire on the north and the independent Muhammadan kingdoms of the Deccan.

Rohankhed, a village situated a few miles north of Buldana, seems to have held in Berar in former days relatively the position held by Panipat in northern India. It was a town situated on the high road from north to south, commanding the ascent to the Balaghat or the table land of southern Berar and was the site of two notable battles. Ala-ud-din Ahmad II, the son and successor of Ahmad Shah Wali, and tenth king of the Bahmani dynasty, had married Agha Zainab, entitled