Page:History of India Vol 4.djvu/148

112 dazed prince, scarcely awake, hastily took to flight, abandoning his camp and treasure, artillery and ammunition. Meanwhile Aurangzib had made up his mind to join forces with his younger brother, Murad Bakhsh, and at the head of the Deccan army shortly met him near the Narbada. Towards the close of April, 1658, the combined forces came upon the royal army under the command of the Maharaja Jaswant Singh, on the opposite banks of the Narbada. Under a withering storm of arrows and javelins, Murad Bakhsh charged across the ford, followed by the whole strength of the Deccan, and crashed into the royal forces with an overwhelming shock. Kasim Khan and his Mohammedans fled from the field. The Rajputs fought desperately, till of their eight thousand men only six hundred remained. The wounded remnant sadly followed their chief back to his desert fastness in Marwar. There he was received with bitter scorn. His high-mettled wife shut the castle gates in his face, saying that a man so dishonoured should not enter her walls: "If he could not vanquish, he should die."

The Moghul capital was in an uproar. Dara, exasperated by the defeat, resolved to wipe out the disgrace, and led a magnificent array to the encounter. The lowest calculation estimates his army at one hundred thousand horse, twenty thousand foot, and eighty guns, but many were half-hearted in his cause. At the Chambal, Dara found that his brothers, making a circuit, had already crossed the river on the 2d of June. The two armies came in sight of each other on the 7th, at Samu-