पानीपत १७६१ (मराठा साम्राज्य एवं पानीपत महायुद्ध इतिहास)

PANIPAT 67 wounded.¹⁷ The Marathas were able to capture more than a hundred horses and but for the nightfall the result would have been still more decisive, as men from that part of the Abdali camp which was attacked by the Marathas had begun to run away from their posts. There was again a similar skirmish after a few days, with no decisive result. The tone of the rank and file in the Maratha army, as well as of the commander-in-chief himself, is found to be all optimistic for over a month, and there is no ground for taking Kashiraj as a correct reporter for this period. Not only are Kashiraj's forebodings incor- rect, but the tone also of his narrative is vitiated by his personal predilections. As Abdali had to retreat from his first position to the riverside, it is proved thereby that the Marathas were in the ascendant till then. Kashiraj describes with awe all the actions of Abdali. He praises his arrangement to guard his camp and to watch the other side day and night. As no such vivid description is forthcoming from the Maratha side, a wrong impression is created in the mind of the reader, and he thinks that there was no such system followed by the Marathas. This is absolutely wrong. Just as parties of thou- sands were appointed to guard the camp on the Afghan side, similarly the Marathas were also mounting guard and patrolling around their camp at night. Kashiraj says that the Afghan monarch was in the habit of going round not only his own camp and that of his allies, but he also took a round about the entire Maratha camp from a distance, and every day returned by noon after having ridden fifty kos in person with a small escort. This seems a gross exaggeration of Kashiraj. We do not think that the Maratha watch- men and patrols were so slack as not to see even once the Afghan monarch go- ing round their camp during a period of more than two months, and one can guess that it was impossible for the daily rounds of Ahmad Shah to go un- seen, at whatever distance he might be encircling the Maratha camp. We also think that it was geographically not possible. The canal on the west side of the Maratha camp was a great impediment to such a movement, and on the east side also the land was not very favourable for such an excursion. The river on the north-east side coming very near and the bogs and the zils, which exist to this day, do not make such a supposition look feasible. Only during the last fortnight, when the Maratha army had become quite despondent and taken to heart the lesson of cold massacre, the Afghan monarch might have indulged in his rounds, though at great risk even then to himself. Kashiraj was perhaps remembering this last period when he wrote nineteen years after, and made it applicable to the whole period of two and a half months. A fortnight after the Wazir's discomfiture, a major engagement took place between the two armies. As we have noted above, Abdali had moved to the riverside by then. As the Afghan camp had now gone far beyond the range of Maratha fire and in a somewhat difficult terrain, and as the Afghans would not come out of their own accord to offer a battle, it became a teasing problem for the Marathas to pass the days in futile inactivity. The Marathas, therefore, hit upon a plan to call them out. At some distance from 17 Bhau Kaifiyat, p. 24