Page:Shivaji and His Times.djvu/107

1660 ] The Mughals, flushed with victory, cleared the pass at a gallop, in the teeth of a hot fire from the fort-walls, and dispersed the enemy assembled beyond it. The victors returned to their camp at Saswad in the evening. Thence, after a four days' halt at Rajwah, they entered Puna on 9th May.

Meantime, a force 3,000 strong, detached by Shaista Khan under Ismail, had occupied North Konkan, and that district was now placed under a Mughal faujdar (Salabat Khan Deccani) with a contingent of Maratha friendlies, among whom Babaji Bhonsla and Raghuji are mentioned in the official history of Aurangzib (A. N. 584), while the Chitnis Bakhar (p. 97) speaks of Shambhuji Kavji and Babaji Ram Honap, deshpande of Puna, as having joined the Mughals. (A. N. 578-588, our only authority.)

Shaista Khan had decided to pass the rainy season with his army at Puna, then a small hamlet. But before his arrival there, the enemy had totally destroyed the grain and fodder in the country round Puna and Chakan and removed all traces of habitation. And now the many rivers between Puna and the Mughal frontier being in flood, no provision reached his camp, and his army had to undergo great hardship from scarcity. He, therefore, decided to remove his camp from Puna to Chakan, 18 miles northwards, as being nearer to Ahmadnagar and the