ttacking
him; Karim was in consequence driven to seek an asylum with his old
patron Amir Khan, but by the influence of Sindhia Amir Khan kept him
in a state of confinement until 1816.

When the Marathas ceased to spread themselves over India, the Pindaris
who had attended their armies were obliged to plunder the territories
of their former protectors for subsistence. To the unemployed soldiery
of India, particularly to the Muhammadans, the life of a Pindara had
many allurements; but the Maratha horsemen who possessed hereditary
rights or had any pretensions to respectability did not readily join
them. One of the above leaders, Sheikh Dullah or Abdullah, apparently
became a dacoit after the Pindaris had been dispersed, and he is
still remembered in Hoshangabad and Nimar in the following saying:

Niche zamin aur upar Allah,
Aur bich men phiren Sheikh Dullah,

or 'God is above and the earth beneath, and Sheikh Dullah ranges at
his will between.'

3. Their strength and sphere of operations

In 1814, Prinsep states, [439] the actual military force at the
disposal of the Pindaris amounted to 40,000 horse, inclusive of the
Pathans, who though more orderly and better disciplined than the
Pindaris of the Nerbudda, possessed the same character and were
similarly circumstanced in every respect, supporting themselves
entirely by depredations whenever they could practise them. Their
number would be doubled were we to add the remainder of Holkar's
troops of the irregular kind, which were daily deserting the service
of a falling house in order to engage in the more profitable career
of predatory enterprise; and the loose cavalry establishments of
Sindhia and the Bhonsla, which were bound by no ties but those of
present entertainment, and were always in great arrears of pay. The
presence of this force in the centre of India and able to threaten
each of the three Presidencies imposed the most extensive annual
precautions for defence, in spite of which the territories of our
allies were continually overrun. On two occasions, once when they
entered Gujarat in 1808-9 and again in 1812 when the Bengal provinces
of Mirzapur and Shahabad were devastated, they penetrated into our
immediate territories. Grant-Duff records that in one raid on the coast
from Masulipatam northward they in ten days plundered 339 villages,
burning many, killing and wounding 682 persons, torturing 3600 and
carrying off or destroying property