170 H. G. Raverty— The Mihrdn of Sind and its Tributaries. [No. 3, 
by the Mu gh al Nu-in, Mangutah (at which time also he accompanied 
the relieving army from Dilili as already mentioned), and returned from 
Multan by way of the fort of Marut and Sarasti to Hansi again, in 
Jamadi-us-Sani of the following year, about the middle of October, 1248 
A. D. He had gone to Multan for the purpose of despatching forty 
head of Indian captives—male slaves 43 —to be turned into money, “ to 
his dear sister in Khurasan ”; and, although he set out in the hot season 
—the end of April—he says nothing about any “ impossibility ” in the 
route, “drought,” or “fissures,” nor does he mention any difficulty or 
obstruction whatever. Besides all this, he had an interview with Malik 
Slier Khan-i-Sunkar, one of the greatest Amirs and feudatories of the 
Dilili kingdom, “ on the banks of the Blah , after leaving Abuhar [Uboli- 
har], and this would have been simply impossible if the Biah had left 
its old bed and had united with the Sutlaj. Moreover, if one great river 
[the Hakra] had recently dried up, or disappeared, and if another river 
nearly as large [the Biah], on the banks of which his interview with 
Malik Slier Khan actually took place, had abandoned its old bed to meet 
another [the Sutlaj], halfway, which must have also similarly abandoned 
its channel, so that a vast tract of territory previously populous and 
fruitful had been turned into a desert, can it be conceived for a moment, 
that, if such vast changes had really taken place he would not even 
have hinted at them ? Besides, it would have been physically impos¬ 
sible for him to have held an interview on the banks of the Biah with 
Slier Khan, if any change had taken place, because, when it deserted 
its bed, it ceased to be the Biah. In going by this route he must have 
crossed both the Hakra, and its tributaries, including the Sutlaj as well 
as the Biah, to reach Multan by Uboh-har, and the Biah and the Hakra 
again on his return by way of Marut. 
In another place (page 782), he says, he went to Multan on the 
occasion in question, and reached it in Rabi’-ul Awwal, 648 H. (June, 
1250 A. D.), a journey which few would have attempted at that season, 
if all the rivers had dried up; and, that two days before his arrival, 
Malik ’Izz-ud-Din, Balban-i-Kashlu Khan (not Ghiyas-ud-Din, Balban, 
the Ulugh Khan-i-A’zam, but a totally different person) had reached 
Multan from U'chchh, and was then investing it; that he, the author, 
remained at Multan for two months—July and August—during which 
time Malik Balban relinquished the investment and retired to U'chchh 
again; and that he himself returned to Dilili by nearly the same route 
as he had come. 44 
43 Turned into “ 100 beasts of burden,” by Mr. Dowson, See Elliot’s Historians, 
Vol. II, page 350, and “ Tabakat-i-Nasirj,” pages 686, 783, and 822. 
4)4) At page 822 of the “Translation” he says he set out from Dihli for Multan 
