Or
Beasts, And Who Ever Lets Aught Escape Loses His Life, Unless Pardoned
By The King.
All the beasts thus taken, if man's meat, are sold, and the
money given to the poor:
If men, they become the king's slaves, and are
sent yearly to Cabul, to be bartered for horses and dogs; these being
poor miserable and thievish people, who live in the woods and deserts,
differing little from beasts. One day while the king was hunting, about
the 6th January, 1611, he was assaulted by a lion[244] which he had
wounded with his matchlock. The ferocious animal came upon him with such
sudden violence, that he had in all probability been destroyed, had not
a Rajaput captain interposed, just as the enraged animal had ramped
against the king, thrusting his arm into the lion's mouth. In this
struggle, Sultan Chorem, Rajah Ranidas, and others, came up and slew the
lion, the Rajaput captain, who was tutor to the lately baptized princes,
having first received thirty-two wounds in defence of the king; who took
him into his own palanquin, and with his own hands wiped away the blood
and bound up his wounds, making him an omrah of 3000 horse, in
recompence of his valorous loyalty.
[Footnote 244: The lion of these early travellers in India was almost
certainly the tyger. - E.]
This month of January 1611, the king was providing more forces for the
Deccan war, although the king of that country offered to restore all his
conquests as the price of peace.
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