CHAP. I.] FIGHT WITH AN ELEPHANT. 9 All that he built took the impress of his utili- tarian mind. They were commonplace necessary things, piles of brick and mortar, which quickly decayed. Such were the mosques which marked the scenes of his victories, and the numberless serais which he built along the Imperial high- ways running to the south and the west.* Elephant com- bat at Agra. One incident of his boyhood made his fame ring throughout India, and showed what stuff he was made of. It was his encounter with a fighting elephant on 28th May, 1633. That morn- ing Shah Jahan, who loved this sport, set two huge elephants, Sudhakar and Surat-sundar by name, to fight a combat on the level bank of the Jumna near the mansion at Agra which he used to occupy before his accession. They ran for some distance and then grappled together just below the balcony of the morning salute in the fort. The Emperor hastened there to see the fight, his eldest three sons riding a few paces before him. Aurangzib, intent on seeing the fight, edged his way very close to the elephants. Aurangzib's mosque at Fatihabad or Dharmat, where he defeated Jaswant Singh, was in ruins when I visited it on 19th October, 1909. For the serais he built, see Alamgir- namah, 1084. Digitized by Microsoft Ⓡ
