Page:History of India Vol 4.djvu/151

Rh order was enough to restore the ebbing courage of the few squadrons that still stood beside him.

Meanwhile Murad Bakhsh was hotly engaged with Dara's right, fighting like a lion and reeking with slaughter. Three thousand Uzbegs charged up to his ensanguined elephant, and arrows, spears, and battle-axes rained so thickly that the frightened animal turned to fly. The Moghul courage was again put to the test. The elephant's legs were quickly chained. Then Raja Ram Singh, of the valiant Rantela stock, came riding up with his Rajputs, insolently shouting, "Dost thou dispute the throne with Dara Shukoh?" and hurling his spear at the prince, tried to cut his elephant's girths. The Moghul, wounded as he was, and sore beset on all hands, cast his shield over his little son, who sat beside him in the howdah, and shot the raja dead. The fallen Rajputs, in yellow garb, and stained with their war-paint of turmeric, were heaped about the elephant's feet, and "made the ground like a field of saffron."

The cool courage of the one prince and the fiery valour of the other daunted Dara's division. Aurangzib and Murad Bakhsh were still perilously hemmed in by raving Rajputs maddened with bang (opium), and furious at the death of their chiefs, but it needed little to turn the balance of fortune either way. It was Dara's unlucky destiny always to turn it against himself. At this crisis he committed the most fatal error that an Indian commander could perpetrate. All the army looked to his tall elephant as to a standard of victory. Yet now, when the day seemed almost his own, he must