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108
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
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(June, 1920
supplies, by which process the defenders would be compelled to surrender. The king then issued orders that the plundering should begin at once and the army plundered the city and the surrounding country and destroyed the dwellings of the people. The king then returned to his capital.
XIII.-AN ACCOUNT OF THE FOUNDATION OF THE CITY OF AHMADNAGAR. Since the erection of buildings is one of the most essential affairs in the world and one of the most necessary for the comfort of mankind, great kings in all countries have left behind them wonderful monuments by building cities and laying out gardens planted with fruitful trees. The king of the age and the earth (Ahmad Nizam Shah), who was ever solicitous for the welfare of the world and its inhabitants, determined to found a city. As it had been decided that the king should lead an army every year to Daulatâbâd to plunder and lay waste that province, and it would have been necessary for him on each ocoasion to traverse the considerable distance which intervened between Daulatâbâd and his capital, which in those days was Juunar, he determined to found a city between Junnar and Daulatabad in order that he might dwell there until the fall of Daulatábad and his army would not have 80 far to march. He therefore pitched on the site of Ahmadnagar, exactly half way between Junnâr and Daulatâbåd, in & tract which in climate and in greenness and freshness of its hills and plains, may be compared with Paradise, and is indeed second only to the Paradise on high.
Some historians have given the following account of the founding of the fair city of Ahmadnagar: Ahmad Nizam Shah, who was very fond of hunting and of wandering in the country, was one day hunting with some of his companions and nobles in the plain on which Ahmadnagar now stands. A fox was viewed, and the king ordered the hounds to be loosed on it. The fox tried to save himself by craft, but when this failed, and he was hard pressed by the hounds, he turned on them and faced them, ready to make a fight for his life. The king was much astonished and determined to build his new capital on the spot, deeming that the land which could instil such courage into a feeble animal like the fox, was a fit place for a king's abode. 9 He communicated his design to the cmirs and companions who were with him, and they applauded it. He then consulted his ministers and astrologers who declared that the spot was a fit one for the capital.
When it was finally decided to build the capital in that spot, the king halted there and, having ordered the astrologers to seleet an auspicious day for the beginning of the work, summoned surveyors, architects, and builders from Junnar to lay out and build the city. An auspicious day was selected, and the surveyors, architects and builders obeyed the king's commands, and laid out and began to build the city with its palaces, houses, squares and shops, and laid out around it fair gardens. In a short time, a very fine city was brought to completion under the king's personal supervision.
When the question of the naming of the new city came up for consideration, the king remembered that the city of Ahmadâbâd in Gujarat, which was built by the late Sultan Almad of that country, had been so called from the king who built it, his minister, and the Oaxt of the sacred law, who all bore the name of Ahmad. In this case also, by a fortunate coincidence, the king's name was Ahmad, the name of his minister, Masnad-i- 'Ali, Malik Nasir-ul-Mulk Gujarati, was Ahmad, and the Qazi of the royal army also bore the name of Ahmad. For this reason the new capital was named Ahmadnagar.
(To be continued.) 19 A similar story is told of the foundation of Bidar, Nirmal, and other towns. In fact there are very iew towns in the Dakan, the foundation of which is recorded, of which the story is not told.
