1878.] 
W. Irvine —The Hang ash Nawabs of Farr ukhabad. 
833 
Nadir Shah called out a champion, a great big man, and asked Muham¬ 
mad Shah to match him. Muhammad Khan proposed to meet him, but the 
Shekhzada offered to go instead. The Nawab laughed at him, and 
said he did not want to be turned into the laughing stock of the army. 
The Shekhzada would not listen. Meanwhile, the perspiration poured down 
Muhammad Khan’s body from anxiety, and he muttered a prayer to God. 
Seeing his opponent, the Persian said he would lift him and carry him 
off on his lance point. The combatants then galloped their horses at 
each other, and the Persian several times failed to touch the Shekh. 
At last his lance hitting him penetrated through his armour, and 
he was lifted from his horse, sticking to the end of the lance like a nat 
(tumbler), and he bled a little. Nadir Shah began to laugh, and the counte¬ 
nances fell of those on the other side. Then wounded as he was, the Shekh 
let fly an arrow at the horseman’s head so that it went through his steel 
head-piece and his chain-shirt, then entering his horse’s body it came out and 
fell into the ground uninjured. The man stunned sat on his horse for a minute 
with the lance in his hand. The Shekh, with the lance still sticking into 
him, called out “ Come and remove this, for the man is dead.” Nadir Shah 
praised the Shekh highly and gave him a khilaH. On the 7th Safar, 1152 
H. (5th May, 1739), Nadir Shah left Delhi, taking with him all his plun¬ 
der. 
Muhammad Khan’s correspondence contains little or no reference to 
the invasion of Nadir Shah, possibly because he was present in person at 
head-quarters, and thus had less occasion to write letters. Only once, in writ¬ 
ing to Baji Rao, he declares that when Nadir Shah attacked Kandahar, the 
Afghans of Kabul wrote that if Muhammad Khan were appointed they 
would resist, they only wanted a leader. When he spoke to the Emperor, 
the plan was at first approved but subsequently rejected. 
When Baji Rao, after the departure of Nadir Shah, wished the nobles 
to unite in one confederation to reduce the affairs of the Taimurya line to 
better order, Muhammad Khan was one of the nobles to whom he wrote. 
The Nawab returned a favourable reply, though, as he professed, he had 
little further interest in the world—•“ clunyd nakshe ast bar-db o ziyada az 
sirdb nest ”—a remark which reminds one of Bacon’s— 
“ Who then to frail mortality shall trust 
But limns on water, or hut writes in dust.” 
These plans were put an end to by Baji Rao’s death in the year 1740. 
spear. 5. JVu/cta, without head, it inflicts a blow hut no wound. 6. Thuth. 7. An- 
kri-dar , with a bent head like a saddle-maker’s needle. 8. Nawak , this is a kind of 
pipe of steel like a flute (pungij attached to the how. In this district Siroli Chand 
Thok, in parganah Shamsabad East, is celebrated for its bows and arrows. 
