army had been daily suffering from defection and who had been lying not far off attended by only 2000 men had retired with precipitation on the approach of an advanced party of the imperial army had been pursued and several of his men slain. He also now took refuge with the army of Bengal which had crossed the Ganges probably in the intention of cooperating with him. Babur proceeded to the district of Ari in Bihar lying between the Ganges and the Son River at their confluence where he invested Muhammad Zaman Mirza with the government of Bihar and fixed the revenue to be paid out of that province. The Emperor had now arrived opposite to where the Ghaghara River (also called Gogra in some texts) joins the Ganges from the north east and where apparently the kingdom of Bengal commenced on the left bank of that river. Here he learned that Sultan Mahmud Lodi was in the Bengal camp at the junction of the two rivers with a body of Afghans and that when he and his followers wished to remove their families and baggage they were not permitted by the Bengalis probably wishing to retain them as hostages Sultan Jalal ud-Din Khan Lohani his rival who had lately sent his submission to Babur was in like manner hindered from departing in consequence of which he had come to blows with the Bengalis had effected a passage over the Ganges into Bihar with his followers and was on his march to join the imperial army. The Emperor therefore who considered that the position of the army of Bengal and the conduct of its leaders had violated their neutrality prepared to call them to account. Nusrat Shah, the Sultan of Bengal had recovered some of his lost territories from the Pathans after the collapse of the Delhi Sultanate. Battle Babur found the army of Kherid, as the Bengal army was called, lying between what is at present the territory of Saran in the north. It was encamped near the junction of the Ganges and the Ghaghara River so as to be able to defend both the course of the Ghaghara River and the left bank of the Ganges after the union of the two rivers. He discovered too that the Bengali generals had collected about 100–150 vessels on their side of the stream by means of which they were able