Indian Antiquary Vol 51

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 191

SEPTEMBER, 1922]
A NEW VIEW OF SHER SHAH SUR
183
This check of the Mughals gave Sher Khân time to clear out of Gaur with an immense booty for Rohtâs, by the now familiar route through the Jharkhand, directing his son to. evacuate Teliâgharî and join him, which he did. Humâyân now marched in fancied triumph to Gaur, while Sher Khân had got in safety between him and the provinces of his Agra dominions.
Sher Khân's journey through the Jharkhand jungles in the rains was as great a feat as any he had previously performed, and he at once proceeded to shake the foundations of Humâyûn's rule in order to draw him off from Bengal. His conduct towards the Mughals was now ferocious. As has been said already, he was not an Afghân for nothing. He neither forgot nor forgave injuries and he remembered the fate of the gunners of Chunâr. He soon captured Benares, and scoured the country to Jaunpur and Kanauj, acting as a sovereign prince and collecting the revenue. He plundered the towns, but characteristically spared the peasantry. Sher Khân was marching on Agra when he heard of Humâyân's departure from Gaur, where he and his officers had been living in false security and luxurious idleness for nine months, while the Mughals in Agra were quarrelling with each other and Sher Khân was occupying his provinces. Sher Khân did not hesitate. He abandoned his tour of conquest and returned to South Bihâr and the neighbourhood of Rohtâs, thus leaving the way open to Humâyân to reach Agra by the Northern bank of the Ganges undisturbed. His object was apparently that the strife should stop, and that Humâyûn in Agra and himself in Bihar and Bengal should rule, side by side, in peace. Humâyûn did not seize the opportunities thus offered but crossed the river to march on Munêr on the Sôn right into the Tiger's maw as it were. Sher Khân had placed a division under Khawâs Khân in the hills, ostensibly to keep the troublesome Mahârathâ Cheros in order, but really to get behind the Mughal force-an old trick of his.
Humâyân's army arrived at Munêr in a somewhat disorganised condition, which tempted Sher Khân to attack it with the general assent of his Afghân officers. This he proceeded to do in his own inimitable way. By leaving Rohtâs with his main force, he put himself, as well as Khawas Khân, behind Humâyûn and let him be aware of it. And then he made a wide detour in the hills and marched past Humâyân, so that he could surprise him from the front, and did so by entrenching himself more suo opposite him on the bank of the Thorâ Nadi, a swampy little stream running into the southern bank of the Ganges between Chaunsa and Buxar. Here Sher Khân effectively checked Humâyân, who could neither attack him 'nor march past him without exposing his flank. The armies sat opposite each other till the rains, when Sher Khân was flooded out and retreated to the Karmanâshâ river, where the armies repeated at Chaunsâ the situation of the Thorâ Nadi.
Humâyûn was now in distress and short of supplies, and without help from the quarrelling factions at Agra. He made overtures for peace, but they came to nothing.
Then Sher Khân let it be known that Khawas Khân had lost touch with the Cheros and made public preparations to go after him, which entirely misled the Mughals. Finally he marched some miles up the Karmanâshâ at night in the direction of the Cheros, crossed the river safely unperceived, and was joined by Khawas Khân. He now had the Mughals between him and the Ganges, with the Karmanâshâ in front of them, and could fall on their left flank in full force at daybreak. The situation was parallel with that in 1871, when the French General, Bourbaki was surprised in flank, with consummate skill, by Manteufel, who had walked round the younger Garibaldi at Dijon, which was supposed to protect Bourbaki's left flank, and fell upon him when he had the Swiss frontier on his right flank and the