Indian Antiquary Vol 51

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

Page 193

OCTOBER, 1922)
A NEW VIEW OF SHER BHAH SUR
185
A NEW VIEW OF SHER SHAH SUR. BY SIR RICEARD C. TEMPLE, Br.
(Continued from p. 184.) Humkyūn on his part was as dilatory as ever, hesitating and quarrelling with his brother and nobles, and he allowed Sher Shah to reach Allahabad and far up the Ganges. But despite his difficulties, the army and artillery he could still get together was larger and more formidable than Sher Shah's. Desertions induced him to cross the Ganges north of Qanauj and there the two armies entrenched much as at Chaunad, opposite each other, across & small stream running into the Ganges, until the Mughals moved, on the 17th May 1620, to higher ground near Bilgram in the Hardof district in front of Sher ShAh, and brought on a general battle in the open field.
The Mughal army was well deployed in the approved and successful plan of the day and was a truly formidable object for an inferior force to attack, but though this was the first time that Sher Shah had met Humâyân in pitched battle where surprise was impossible, he showed himself a good tactician, as well as strategist, by the way he took advantage of the fighting constitution of a Mughal army of the time. He kept about a third of his force in support and divided the rest into three positions, with his son, Jalal Khan Sar, and Khawle Khân on the wings, and himself opposite Humayun's powerful centre. He did no more than keep Humayun in check, and sent his wings to attack the Mughal flanks. Jalal Khân Sär failed, but Khawas Khân succeeded in driving back his opponent. Meanwhile, the Mughal centre not being seriously opposed, started to advance. This enabled Khawas Khân to get behind the Mughal forces. It was here that Sher Shah showed his judgment in tactics. Every Mughal commander of the time, great or small, was accompanied in the field everywhere in action by numerous unarmed slaves, who were an uncontrollable incumbrance in defeat. It was through these that Khawas Khân's cavalry rode, with the result that they rushed in amongst the artillery and troops of Humâyûn's centre in a panic for protection, before either could deploy for action, and threw them into hopeless confusion. Sher Shah was then able not only to retrieve his son's failure, but to attack Humâyûn's centre when in confusion. Humayun was completely routed and the battle of Bilgram cost him his throne.
Sher Shah then sent some of his lieutenants to frighten Humâyûn out of Hindustan and pursue him to Lahor, while he followed more at leisure vid Agra and Delhi, characteristically reprimanding unnecessary cruelty and punishing oppression of peasantry. Humayun always hesitating. always unable to unite his family or adherents, was powerless to present a real front to Sher Shah, and retired in a vacillating way towards Tattâ and Bhakkar in Sind, accompanied by a general exodus of Mughals from Lahor, only a small portion of whom followed him beyond Khushåb on the Jhulam. Khawas Khân pursued him as far as the old Panjab frontier, where the Five Rivers are merged in the Panjnad on their way to join the Indus beyond the Uch, and then left him. It was during his sixteen years of wanderings in exile that Humayun's son, the great Akbar, was born in 1542 at Amarkot, in the desert between Sind and Rajputânâ.
The mountainous country in the Northern Panjab in the upper courses of the Indus and Jhelam, occupied at that time by the warlike tribe of the Gakkhars, was always d great strategic value, from the days of Alexander onwards, for an invader from the North-west. and yet though no throne at Lahor or Delhi was safe while it remained independent, no previous Muhammadan Dynasty had thoroughly subdued it. Sher Shah was not the man to