218 THE MUGHAL ADVANCE CHECKED book iii
29th
or 30th degree, where the frontier of Assam is situated, and thence he
led it by land through a country abounding with all the necessaries of
life, and with but little means of defence, especially as the people
were taken by surprise. As they are all idolaters, the army, which
consisted wholly of Musalmans, did not spare their pagodas, but
destroyed them wherever they met with them, burning and sacking all, up
to the 35th degree.1 Mir Jumla then heard that the King of
Assam was in the field with a larger force than had been expected ;
that he had many guns, and an abundance of fireworks, somewhat like our
grenades, which are fixed at the end of a stick as long as a short
pike, as I have elsewhere described, and carry more than 500 paces.2
When Mir Jumla received this intelligence he did not consider it
prudent to advance farther, but the principal cause of his return was
that the cold season had commenced, and to effect the conquest of that
country it would have been necessary to go as far as the 45th degree of
latitude ; this would have involved the loss of his army. For the
Indians are so susceptible to cold, and fear it so much, that it is
impossible to make them pass the 30th, or at the most the 35th degree,
except at the risk of their lives, and of all the servants whom I took
from India to Persia, it was a great feat for them to come as far as
Kasvin,3 and I never succeeded in taking any of them to
Tabriz. As soon as they saw the mountains of Medea covered with snow I
had to allow them to return home.
As Mir Jumla was unable to go farther north, he resolved to turn to the south-west, and laid siege to a town called Azoo,4 which he took in a short time, and found great riches -
of
Dinajpur, an ancient city now marked by ruins, according to Muhammad
Kazim, was the starting point of Mir Jumla on the 21st November 1662.
This was after he had conquered Kuch Bihar. The route is fully given by
Jadunath Sarkar, and cannot be reconciled with the text (Jadunath
Sarkar, iii. 181 ft.).
1
The Mughal forces can scarcely have gone beyond Garhgaon, which they
reached on 17th March 1662 or about the 28th degree of latitude, at the
farthest.
2 Rockets (see vol. i, p. 311). * Casbin in the original.
4
Azoo or Koch Hajo, a kingdom on the left bank of the Brahmaputra
river, extending up to Kamrup. The town of Hajo was on the frontier of
Assam. A full account of it will be found in the Padishah-
