Page:History of India Vol 6.djvu/349

 ENGAGEMENT ON THE RIVER HUGLI 283 to them and thus met their deaths. Out of the sixty- four large dlngas, fifty-seven ghrabs and two hundred jaliyas, only one ghrab and two jaliyas escaped in con- sequence of some fire from the burning ships that had fallen upon some boats laden with oil and burnt a way through the bridge of boats. Whoever escaped from the water and fire, became a prisoner. From the beginning of the siege to its conclusion, almost ten thou- sand of the enemy, men and women, old and young, were killed, being either blown up with powder, drowned in water, or burnt by fire; nearly one thousand brave warriors of the imperial army obtained the glory of martyrdom; 4400 Christians of both sexes were taken prisoners; and well-nigh ten thousand inhab- itants of the neighbouring country who had been kept in confinement by these tyrants were set at liberty/ Some ten years later, in 1633, the Emperor Shah Jahan again took active measures against the Chris- tians, as we are told by Abd-al-Hamid, the Moham- medan annalist whose work has just been quoted. [EUiot, vol. vii, pp. 42 - 43.] ' On the eleventh of Muharram [in the year 1043 A. H., 1633 A. D.], Kasim Khan and Bahadur Kambu brought four hundred Chris- tian prisoners, male and female, young and old, with the idols of their worship, to the presence of the Faith- defending Emperor [Shah Jahan]. He ordered that the principles of the Mohammedan religion should be ex- plained to them, and that they should be called upon to adopt it. A few appreciated the honour offered to them and embraced the faith; these few experienced