Chapter XX: Part II (2)

This great affection between father and son--for "Prince Mahomed always behaved to him with the utmost filial affection and duty"--is, indeed, the one human interest of a life devoted to pious pretences, to pomp and pose.

His grandson Kêik-obâd came to the throne at his death, and promptly gave the reins to pleasure and the guidance of public affairs to his _wazîr_. He succeeded in painting Old Delhi very red indeed during his short reign of three years. "Every shady grove was filled with women and parties of pleasure, every street rang with riot and tumult; even the magistrates were seen drunk in public, and music was heard in every house."

His minister kept him at this task also; for, perceiving a faint check in the pursuit of pleasure, he "collected graceful dancers, beautiful women, and good singers from all parts of the kingdom, whom he occasionally introduced as if by accident."

So, finally, the three-year-old Prince Keî-omurs--the only child of a miserable father who was now paralytic--was smuggled out of the harem to be King-designate, while the wretched, debauched, half-dying man had his brains beaten out with bludgeons while he was lying on his bed helpless; and so, battered out of all recognition, his body was hastily rolled up in the bed-clothes, and flung through the window into the sliding river.

A horrid tale, with which the history of the Slave Kings fitly comes to an end.

They were not a good breed. Even Ferishta the historian, who has a weakness for kings, feels this, for he ends his account of them with the sphinx-like remark: "Eternity belongs only to God, the great Sovereign of the Earth!"

THE TARTAR DYNASTIES

A.D. 1288 TO A.D. 1398

As can easily be imagined, India at the end of those ten Slave reigns (which between them lasted but eighty-two years) was a very different place to what India had been when Eîbuk's iron hand first closed on it. Half the Punjâb, almost all Râjputana, and the better part of the United Provinces, had run red with Hindu blood in those days; but as the stream subsided, the terrible legacy of the flood had remained as a lesson welding the whole land into apathetic acquiescence, until absorption set in with the years, and as time went on, the crushed, half-dead organism began once more to feel life in its veins. For Hinduism is India--India is Hinduism. When the last trace of the metaphysical Monism which underlies every aspiration, every action, has disappeared, India and Hinduism will have disappeared also, but not till then.

So as time crept on, and under slack rule Mahomedan began to fight Mahomedan, each petty governor playing for his own hand, his own independence, the Râjputs raised their dejected heads, and, seizing every opportunity, strove to recover part at least of their own. Gwalîor with its rock,--that almost impregnable fort--for instance, changed hands many times, and, save during the reign of Nâsir-ud-din, no attempt was made on the part of the Mahomedans after the time of Altâmish, either to increase their conquests, or do more than temporarily bolster up their rule.

Nor when the Slave dynasty ended, and one Jelâl-ud-din, of the House of Khilji, established himself on the throne of Delhi by the murder of the three-year-old Keî-omurs, was there any change of policy. He was seventy years old; old for kingship in any country, extraordinarily so for India. And he was weak, hesitating. For a while distracted by feeble remorse he refused royal honours, and after a very short time delegated his authority to his nephew, Allah-ud-din, who succeeded him, and who for many years prior to his uncle's death arrogated to himself almost absolute independence.

The seven years of Jelâl-ud-din's reign, then, are but a prelude to Allah-ud-din's twenty.

A vigorous man this, and an unscrupulous. One of his first emprises was the conquest of the Dekkan which, as yet, had been untouched by Mahomedan adventure.

He got no further, however, than Deogîri, the capital of the Mâhârâjah of the Mahrattas. Far enough, however, for pillage _à la_ Kutb-din-Eîbuk. He found the Râjputs unprepared--they had strict scruples of honour regarding the necessity for a formal declaration of war, by which their adversaries were not bound--and the usual slaughter took place. For the first time, also, mention is made of merchants being tortured to make them disclose their treasures. "_L'appetit vient en mangeant_," and a rich Hindu _banya_ was to the Mahomedan what the Jew was to a Crusader.

The result was prodigious. Allah-ud-din left Deogîri--surely misnamed thus the "Shelter of the Gods"--with "2,400 pounds weight of pearls, 12 pounds of diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and sapphires, 6,000 pounds of silver, 4,000 pieces of silk, besides a long list of other precious commodities to which reason forbids us to give credit." In truth, reason appears as it is somewhat over-taxed!

It was on Allah-ud-din's return from this campaign that he perpetrated the foulest murder of Indian history; and that means much.

His expedition had been absolutely unauthorised by his uncle, the king, who, almost dotingly affectionate though inwardly relieved at his favourite's success, was persuaded to ask on Allah-ud-din's return for explanations, and express displeasure. The latter feigned remorse, went so far as to hint that the excess of his regret might put an end to his melancholy life; so lured the old man to meet him on the banks of the river Ganges, where the villain halted, fearful, he protested, of just punishment. The king, deceived, crossed the river in the Royal Barge almost unattended, bidding those who did accompany him unbuckle swords lest the beloved prodigal might take affright. He reached the landing-stage, and found Allah-ud-din backed by trusty friends. The old man advanced, the prodigal fell at his feet, to be raised with almost playful tenderness. "Lo!" said the tremulous old voice, as the tremulous old hand patted the villain's cheek, "how couldst thou fear me, Allah-hu? Did I not cherish thee from childhood? Have I not held thee dearer than mine own sons?"

The words had hardly left his lips, the first step hand-in-hand towards the Royal Barge had hardly been taken, when Allah-ud-din gave the signal. The feeble old man was thrown down. One cry, "Oh, Allah-ud-din, Allah-ud-din!" and all was over. His head, transfixed on a spear-point, was paraded about the city, and his murderer, making a pompous and triumphant entry into Delhi, ascended the throne in the Ruby Palace, and thereinafter utilised part of his loot by spending it on magnificent shows, grand festivals, and splendid entertainments, "by which the unthinking rabble were made to forget in gaiety all memory of their former king, or of the horrid crime which had placed the present one on the throne."

So much for Allah-ud-din's accession. His reign is literally crammed full of picturesque incidents, and would almost require a volume to itself. Before attempting a few details, there is one tale of Jelâl-ud-din's which deserves record--that of the Mysterious Stranger. He was called Sidi--Dervish Sidi. He appeared in Delhi suddenly, opened a large house, and commenced to distribute charity on a scale of magnificence which led instantly to the belief that he must possess the philosopher's stone. He thought nothing of giving three thousand pieces of gold in casual relief to some noble but distressed family. Every day he expended about 8,000 pounds of flour, 400 pounds of meat, with sugar, spices, and butter in proportion to feed the poor, while he lived on rice alone, and foreswore both wine and women. So, after a time, his influence almost exceeding that of Majesty itself, he was accused of high treason, and by the king's orders condemned to the ordeal by fire.

It was to be carried out _coram populo_. On the plain between the town and the river all preparations were made: a circle round the blazing pile to give fair view to the populace; Sidi Dervish, and his companions in suspicion, saying their prayers; then, at the last moment, objection raised and upheld by learned doctors that such ordeals were both contrary to the law of God and against Reason. So Sidi Dervish and his friends are being hauled off to prison once more, until the foiled king gives a hint to some shaven monks hard by: "I leave him to you to be judged according to his deserts."

Cut down by the shaven ones' razors, Sidi offers no resistance, begs them to be expeditious in sending him to God, lays his curse heavily on the king and his posterity, and dies; whereupon a black whirlwind rises and envelopes all for the space of half an hour. A terrifying end to one whose piety was unquestioned, but whose dogma was disturbing; for Sidi Dervish held, we are told, "very peculiar opinions, and never attended public worship."

A quaint, incomprehensible tale, surely, that reads true, and brings wonder as to who the poor man could possibly have been.

To return to Allah-ud-din. One of the most picturesque stories of Râjput history is associated with his name: the story of the Princess Padmani and the first sack of Chitore--that terrible happening which still haunts the memory of the race, and provides its ultimate inviolable oath, "By the sin of the sack of Chitore."

Padmani, then, was peerless. Her very name survives to the present day as synonymous with perfect womanhood. And Allah-ud-din--who seems to have been eclectic in his pleasures--hearing of her beauty while still only commander-in-chief to his uncle, forced his way to the sacred stronghold of the Râjputs, and threatened instant attack if he were not allowed to see her, if it were only her reflection in a mirror. Now such hardy, yet in a way honourable, requests were not foreign to the Râjput spirit, and Râjah Bhim-si, her husband, granted it. With due pomp and ceremonial he escorted Allah-ud-din to his palace, with due pomp and ceremony showed him the reflection of the most beautiful woman in India, with due pomp and ceremony escorted the Mahomedan general back to his tents, trusting to his honour. But Allah-ud-din's honour was a mutable quantity: he seized the husband as ransom for the wife, and swore instant death if the princess were not delivered to him without delay. So forth from the frowning rock came seven hundred litters, Padmani and her women offering themselves up in exchange for a life that was the dearest thing on earth to every Râjput man and woman. Into the camp they came; and then? Then each litter belched out reckless manhood armed to the teeth; each disguised litter-bearer threw off his swathing shawl and proclaimed himself warrior.

So the husband was brought back to the wife, and in the ensuing battle the Râjputs died hard. There is a story of how one widow of the slain, standing with foot ready to mount the funeral pyre of her dead hero, called in a loud voice to the page who had followed him in the fight:

"Boy! Tell me once more ere I go how bore himself my lord?"

"As reaper of the harvest of battle! On the bed of honour, he spread a carpet of the slain, whereon, a barbarian his pillow, he sleeps ringed about by his foes."

"Yet once again, oh boy, tell me how my lord bore himself?"

"Oh mother! Who can tell his deeds! He left none to fear or to praise!"

The memory of Padmani's trick rankled. After ascending the throne Allah-ud-din returned to Chitore. Up till then, A.D. 1303, the fort was maiden, had been held unassailable, impregnable. But Allah-ud-din was rich beyond belief. He gave gold for every basket of earth brought to raise the pile, whence, overtopping the rock, he could pour his missiles into the doomed city.

Night and day, day and night through the long hot weather the baskets worked, the gold was paid, until the end drew near.

The tale which is still told round many a watch-fire runs that one night Râjah Bhim-si, to whom twelve sons had been born by the beautiful Padmani, woke in fear. Before him, in a lurid light, stood Vyan-Mâta, the tutelary goddess of his race. "I am hungry," she wailed. "Lo! I drink Râjput blood, but I am hungry for the blood of kings. Let me drink the blood of twelve who have worn the diadem, and my city may yet be inviolate."

So one by one eleven of the young princes were raised to the throne. Then, after three days' reign, they went forth to meet the foe, to meet fate.

But the youngest, Prince Ajey-si, was the darling; so when his turn came, his father's heart failed him, and he called his chiefs together. "The child shall go free to recover what is lost. I will be the twelfth king to die for Chitore."

"Yea-we will die for Chitore," was the reply.

So each Râjput man put on the bridal coronet and the saffron robe, and every Râjput woman her wedding garment. And when the dawn came, the city gates were set wide, and through them poured desperate manhood surrounding a little knot of picked heroes who had sworn to see the child safe; while from behind rose up on the still morning air a column of smoke from the vast funeral pyre on which desperate women had sought the embrace of death in the dark vaults and caves which honeycomb the rock, and which, since that fatal day, have never been entered but once by mortal man. Their very entrance is now forgotten.

So runs the story. This, at least, is fact: the great Sacrifice of Honourable Death--the Johâr--was performed at Chitore, and Allah-ud-din, entering victorious, found a silent city.

Given an unscrupulous man, possessed of boundless wealth, and all things are possible in a country distracted by jealousies as India was at this time. And all things were achieved. The frequent incursions, growing year by year on larger scale, of the Moghuls who had already gained foothold to the west and north, were repelled. The Dekkan was finally conquered and annexed by the king's worthless slave and favourite, the eunuch Kafûr, a man whose life was one long tale of infamy. Originally the seat of the great Andhra dynasty, the Dekkan, divided into many principalities, had passed into many hands. In the seventh century King Hârsha had attempted to gather it into his empire, but had been foiled by the skill of Pulikêsin the king, during whose reign the wonderful caves in the Ajanta valley were excavated and adorned.

Another dynasty, another king in the eighth century gave to the Dekkan the marvellous rock-cut temple at Ellora. At first a stronghold of the Jain religion, it oscillated between that and Brahmanism, until in the twelfth century the latter finally came uppermost with the Haysâla line of kings.

It was in A.D. 1310 that Kafûr swept through the kingdom, despoiled the capital, laid waste the country, and carried off the reigning Râjah, though its final absorption in the Mahomedan empire was not until A.D. 1327. Kafûr, however, set his mark so far south as Adam's Bridge, opposite Ceylon, the furthest point yet reached by any northern invasion.

This was the zenith of Allah-ud-din's power. His health had yielded to intemperance of all kinds; he became more and more despotic, more and more cruel, more and more under the baleful influence of his creature Kafûr.

Rebellion grew rife. Little Prince Ajey-si's heir, Hâmir, recovered Chitore, Guzerât revolted, and almost ere it was annexed, the Dekkan rose and expelled half the Mahomedan garrison.

These tidings coming to the already suffering king brought on paroxysms of rage, and he died, his end accelerated by poison administered by that slave of his worst passions, Kafûr. Thereupon followed the usual murders and sudden deaths of an Indian succession, followed by the death of Kafûr, and the final enthroning of Allah-ud-din's third son, Mobârik. He was a weak sensualist, who, nevertheless, was human. So he removed some of his father's more oppressive taxes, and did away with his restrictions on trade and property. After which he and his creature Khûshru, a converted Hindu slave, outraged all decency, and gave way to sheer dissolute devilry, which ended in the master's murder by his favourite, who thereinafter snatched at the crown.

But this man even the Mahomedan India of the time could not stand. Mobârik, "whose name and reign would be too infamous to have a place in the records of literature, did not our duty as historian oblige us to the disagreeable task," was bad enough. Khûshru was worse. So he was killed, and a worthy warrior, by name Ghâzi-Beg Toghluk, who had repelled many invasions of Moghuls, was invited to the throne.

Ferishta's description of this is rather nice, and bears quotation:

"So they presented him with the keys of the city, and he mounted his horse and entered Delhi in triumph. When he came in sight of the Palace of a Thousand Minarets" (this must have been somewhere close to the Kutb) "he wept, and cried aloud:

"'Oh, subjects of a great empire! I am no more than one of you who unsheathed my sword to deliver you from oppression, and rid the world of a monster. If, therefore, any member of the royal family remain, let him be brought, that we his servants should prostrate ourselves before his throne. But if none of the race of kings have escaped the bloody hands of usurpation, let the most worthy be selected, and I swear to abide by the choice.'"

Not a bad speech. Small wonder that there followed on it the first historical notice of "chairing"--"the populace, laying hold of him, raised him up, carried him to the throne, and hailed him as Shâhjahân, Master of the World; but he chose the more modest title of Ghiâss-ud-din...."

For the curse of Sidi Dervish had been effectual, and the House of Khilji was extinct.

Warned by the past, one of the first acts of Ghiâss-ud-din was formally to nominate his successor from amongst his four sons. He made an unfortunate choice, for there is little doubt but that Prince Jonah was accessory to his father's death four years afterwards, when he invited him into a wooden palace which promptly fell upon, and crushed the king and five of his attendants.

Neither was Prince Aluf-Khân--under which title Jonah became heir-apparent--a lucky choice in other ways. He lost a large army in attempting to regain Deogîri, and was not particularly successful against the Râjputs. The king, meanwhile, spent most of his energy in building a new citadel at Delhi, the ruins of which still survive under the name of Tôghlukabad. A fine, massive piece of work it must have been, with its huge blocks of dressed stone and curiously sloping walls, reminding one of a modern dam.

So with the death of honest Ghiâss appears the typical Eastern potentate, complete as to arrogance, cruelty, power, and pride, who for seven-and-twenty years was to cry, "Off with his head!" to any one he pleased.

He seems to have been clever. We are told that he was the "most eloquent and accomplished prince of his time, and that he was not less famous for his gallantry in the field than for those accomplishments which render a man the ornament of private society."

It sounds well, but, judged by his acts, it appears doubtful if pride and arrogance had not made Mahomed Toghluk partially insane. No other supposition explains the extraordinary contradictions of his rule. He "established hospitals and almshouses for widows and orphans on the most liberal scale," but "his punishments were not only rigid and cruel, but frequently unjust. So little did he hesitate to spill the blood of God's creatures, that one might have supposed his object was to exterminate the human species." On more than one occasion, going out for a royal hunt, he suddenly announced his intention of hunting men, and not beasts; so the unoffending peasantry were driven in by the beaters and slain as if they were blackbuck. He imagined and started vast schemes for conquering China and Persia, in order to enrich his coffers, yet bribed a Moghul invasion to return whence it came by a huge subsidy which completely crippled him. He attempted to face famine--one of the worst India has ever known--by projects for agricultural improvements, and then added to the horrors and distress by ordering Delhi to be evacuated, and its inhabitants on pain of death to migrate with his court to Deogîri, which he rechristened Dowlutabâd, or the "Abode of Wealth." He founded an admirably regulated postal system throughout the country, but the roads themselves were bad, and absolutely unsafe for travellers. He tried to escape insolvency by coining copper at silver values--the first instance of token money in India--then fell upon his people tooth and nail because the public credit was not stable enough to stand the strain. Consequently, vast tracts of land were left uncultured, whole families fled to the woods to subsist on rapine and murder, while famine desolated wide provinces.

But the potentate remained a potentate. So strong was his grip on the people, that when, after having once been allowed to return to Delhi he again ordered them to Dowlutabâd, they obeyed, leaving "the noblest metropolis, the Envy-of-the-World, a resort for owls, and a dwelling-place for the beasts of the desert."

Thus it was not the hand of an assassin, but a surfeit of fish which eventually carried him off. This much may be said in his favour--he was no sensualist.

He was succeeded by his cousin Ferôze in A.D. 1351, who until his death, at the great age of ninety, in A.D. 1388, bent his whole mind towards restoring peace and prosperity to his distracted empire; which, while the largest, nominally, that India had ever seen, was in reality at the breaking-up point from sheer disorder. His great panacea appears to have been irrigation, and many an old canal in India dates from the time of Ferôze Toghluk. Despite his efforts, however, the empire began to disintegrate. The Dekkan and Bengal gained independence by the reception of ambassadors at court, and various smaller states seceded into autonomy. India was, in fact, at this time semi-fluid, half-gelatinous. Its form was for ever changing. Each principality at one moment, am[oe]ba-like, reached out an invertebrate arm and clutched at something, the next it had shrunken to a mere piece of jelly, quiescent, almost lifeless. And Ferôze Toghluk's hand was not strong enough for the task set it. Yet he was a good and kindly soul, as is evidenced by the resolutions which he caused to be engraven on the mosque he built at Ferôzebad (another portion of Old Delhi). In one he abolished judicial mutilation, claiming that God in His goodness having conferred on him the power, had also inspired him with the disposition to end these cruelties. Another orders the repeal of many vexatious taxes and licences. Yet another reduced the share of war plunder due to the sovereign from four-fifths to one-fifth, while it increased that of the troops to four-fifths from one. A fourth recorded his determination to pension for life all soldiers invalided by wounds or by age. A fifth declared his intention of severely punishing "all public servants convicted of corruption, as well as persons who offer bribes." The latter being a nicety in legal morality which one would hardly expect of the fourteenth century.

Ferôze was followed in about six years by no less than five kings whose only record of interest is that they stood by and watched the great empire which Kutb-ud-din Eîbuk had wrested from the Râjputs, and which Allah-ud-din had consolidated by sheer tyranny, fall to bits. Anarchy reigned supreme, civil war raged everywhere, and in Delhi itself two nominal kings were in arms the one against the other when, in A.D. 1398, news came that for an instant checked quarrel, and made all India hold its breath.

The Moghuls, under Timur, on their way to Delhi, had crossed the Indus, The long-dreaded, ofttimes-delayed invasion had come at last.

THE INVASION OF TIMUR

A.D. 1388 TO A.D. 1389

There is one cry of terror which from time immemorial has echoed out over the wide wheatfields of Northern India. Sometimes it has come when the first sword-points of the new-sprouted seed give a green shading to the sandy soil, and the flooding water from the wells which cease not night or day follows obedient to the naked brown figure with a wooden spud which directs it first to one patch of corn, then to another. Sometimes, again, it has come when the village has emptied itself upon the harvest field, when men are cutting and threshing, and women winnowing, while the children lie asleep in the great heaps of chaff, or make quaint images out of the straw.

At times, again, but not often, it has come, as it did in the Mutiny days, when the bare burnt fields lie idle, resting against next crop-season, and the peasant women sit outside the breathless village, picking and carding and spinning. But the cause is always the same: a knot of hurried horsemen showing on the level horizon, messengers, as it were, from the outside world beyond village ken.

"The Toork! The Toork!" rises the cry, and in an instant jewels are torn off and hidden, everything that can be concealed concealed, and with a wild prayer to some god for protection, the ultimate atom of India awaits destruction or dishonour or death in apathetic despair.

It must have needed a bitter biting indeed to have engraven this fear so indelibly on the Hindu heart.

Yet looking back on the four hundred years of Mahomedan inroads which we have just followed, small wonder can be felt at the persistence of this terror. How many times had not this knot of horsemen appeared, done their worst, and disappeared, leaving behind them miserable, dishonoured women, maddened by the sight of their murdered husbands, and the very dead boy-babies at their breasts.

A horrible legacy of fear, in truth!

And of late, in addition to the endless incursions of the Mahomedans proper, there had been persistent appearances and reappearances of the yellow-skinned Moghuls. From north, from east, from west, this rising race had ridden, had ravaged, and had returned whence they came.

In truth they were more of a rising race than these poor peasants knew; more so than the effete monarchies and nobilities of Mahomedan India realised. Close on a hundred and fifty years before, Chengiz Khân, a Moghul chief, had barbarously swept through the plains of North-Western Asia, and now his descendant Timur--though born in comparatively civilised times, and by profession a Mahomedan--was to carry on the destruction which his ancestor had begun. History hardly presents a more terrible personality than that of this man, as judged by the autobiography he left behind him. It is one of the most remarkable records ever written. Here is no mere rude barbarian, but a wily man of the world, ready to practise on every weakness of his fellows, ready with cant, with real devotion, full of courage as well as full of address, and with and through it all the most unscrupulous selfishness, the utmost admiration for his own perfidies.

But he was a great man; in his way, a genius. There is nothing in its way finer than the record he gives in this autobiography of his--which he entitles, "Political and Military Institutions of Tamârleng," or the Lame Timur--of his reasons for advancing on India, and his experiences there.

"I ordered 1,000 swift-footed camels, 1,000 swift-footed horses, and 1,000 swift-footed infantry to bring me word respecting the princes of India. I learnt that they were at variance one with the other.... The conquest appeared to me easy, though my soldiers thought it dangerous.

"Resolved to undertake it, and make myself master of the Indian Empire.

"Did so."

Brief to the point almost of bathos; but surely a brevity which brings with it a shiver as at something inhuman in its strength.

So in September 1398 the "admirably regulated horse and foot post" which Mahomed Toghluk had given to India, brought news that a huge host of Turks and Tartars and Moghuls, led by Timur in person, had crossed the river Indus by a bridge of rafts and reeds.

The tidings seem to have brought about no concerted action in India. It was too much given over to anarchy for cohesion. And so the celebrated march of the "Lame Firebrand of the World" began in earnest.

It is a horrid record of brutal butchery. As if fascinated by some unholy spell, the inhabitants of India seem to have yielded their necks to the smiter, without, as Ferishta puts it, "making one brave effort to save their country, their lives, or their property."

His first halt was at Talûmba, a strong fort and city at the junction of the Chenâb and the Râvi rivers. He plundered the town, but as the fort was strong, left it comtemptuously alone and went forward on his path of desolation and destruction. Not a village was left unburnt, not a male left alive, not a female unravished. The next pause was at a town famous for the shrine of a Mahomedan saint, for whose sake he spared the inhabitants, and after (doubtless) saying his prayers, dutifully pressed on to Bhatnîr, the headquarters of the Great Lunar Race of Râjputs. This he reached in two days by forced marches, the last being one of close on 100 miles. Here his ferocity broke beyond bounds. He slew by thousands the helpless country folk who had fled for protection to their Râjah, and who, overcrowding the city, were huddled together like sheep beyond its walls. The garrison gave battle, but, hard-pressed, sought refuge in the citadel, and Timur, gaining the gates of the town ere they could be shut, drove the unfortunates from street to street. Overmastered by numbers, by sheer terror, the place capitulated on terms. To no purpose. For, even while the Tartar was receiving the delegates and accepting their presents, orders were given to sack and slay. Whereupon, struck with horror, with despair, the cry, "Johâr! Johâr!" arose from the men, wives and children were slain, and the Râjputs sought nothing but revenge and death. "The scene," says Ferishta, "was awful. The inhabitants in the end were cut off to a man, though not before some thousands of the Moghuls had fallen."

This so exasperated Timur that every living soul in the city was massacred, and the place itself reduced to ashes.

To Sarâswati, to Fatehâbad, to Râjpur, he carried his flaming sword; then at Kâitul he rejoined the main body of his army--for he had only commanded a flying column hitherto--and settled his face fairly towards his goal--Delhi.

But now abject fear was beforehand with him, and he marched through desolate fields, deserted houses, empty cities.

A strange march of Death indeed! The young green wheat showing green as ever, the hearth fires still burning bravely, the litter and leavings of human life lying about in the sunlight; but life itself?--nowhere! Everything, gold, gems, home, country left, but that had gone. It must have angered the horde of butchers to find no blood with which to wet their swords, to hear no piteous cries for mercy as they rode. The very hands must have grown listless as they gathered in the unresisting spoils.

Perhaps that was the reason why Timur, arriving within touch of Delhi, sought to revive his soldiery by an order for the wholesale slaughter of all prisoners.

And all this time at Delhi the puppet-king Mahmûd, the last degenerate scion of the House of Toghluk, had sate in the massive palace of his forefathers, waiting.

"Delhi dûr ust."

["It is a far cry to Delhi."]

This had been his hope as he waited. But early in January an old man--for Timur was now past sixty years of age, and his life had been a strenuous one--crossed the river with a small body of seven hundred horse, and calmly reconnoitered Tôghlukabad.

Seven hundred horse only! Mahmûd took courage, sallied out with five thousand, was contemptuously driven within the walls again, until Timur, "having made the observations he wished, repassed the river, and rejoined his army."

A good general this, trusting to no Intelligence Department, but to his own eyes.

That night the one thousand prisoners (the figure is that given by Mahomedan historians) were slain in cold blood. Next day, 13th January, he and his army forded the river without opposition and entrenched themselves close to the gates of Tôghlukabad. Despising the astrologers, who pronounced the 15th of January to be an unlucky day, Timur chose it for his attack, and drew up his army in order of battle. His foes were barely worthy of such trouble. They certainly returned the challenge by marching out, elephants covered in mail, warriors in armour, pennants flying, drums sounding; but at the first charge of Moghul horsemen, the elephants' drivers were unseated, and leviathan in terror fled to the rear, communicating confusion to the ranks.

So almost without a blow the Tartar found himself by nightfall at the very gates of the city.

A fateful night! The king fled in it, the chief men in the city resolved during it on submission, and were promised protection on payment of a heavy indemnity.

Next morning, Timur was proclaimed Emperor in every mosque, guards were placed at Treasury and gates, and troops sent to enforce immediate payment.

What followed may have been due to insubordination on the part of the pillaging soldiery; on the other hand, it occurred far too often in Timur's career to make us quite unsuspicious of perfidy. Anyhow, whether by collision between the populace and the troops, or by mere wanton violence, resistance was aroused even amid the panic-stricken inhabitants, and the greatest tragedy Delhi has ever seen began. Once more the cry, "Johâr! Johâr!" echoed out helplessly, the gates were overpowered by mob-force and closed, the houses were set on fire, and while women and children perished in the flames, the men fought desperately to death in the streets, hand to hand with their butchers. The lanes were barricaded by the bodies of the dead, lives were sold dear, and a scene of carnage beyond description ensued; until the gates being once more forced, the whole Moghul army was let loose, to deal inevitable death on the almost unarmed crowd.

Five days afterwards Timur offered up to God "his sincere and humble tribute of grateful praise for his victory" in the splendid mosque of marble which Ferôze Toghluk had built on the banks of the Jumna.

Once more we are reminded of that idle rhyme--

"Three thousand Frenchmen sent below,
Praise God from whom all blessings flow."

The primitive passions change very little.

After that he departed, his work accomplished, his task done. He took with him plunder inconceivable, and with a few minor excursions to "put every inhabitant to the sword," made his way back to Samarkhûnd by the Kâbul route. To the last exposing himself to every fatigue, every privation which he imposed upon his army.

So he quitted India, taking no trouble to make provision for holding the empire he had won. He left anarchy, famine, pestilence, behind him. For two months Delhi was a city of the dead, and for thirty-six years India owned no government either in name or in reality. Dazed, depopulated, despairing, she dreamt evil dreams--dreams almost worse than the nightmare of the past.

No greater proof of the totality of Timur's destruction is needed than this--a whole generation had to pass away ere men could be found with hope enough wherewith to face the future.

DEVASTATED INDIA

A.D. 1389 TO A.D. 1514

For over a hundred and twenty years India remained free from a master hand. It is true that the puppet-king Mahmûd, who had fled from Delhi on that fateful night of the 15th of January 1389, returned to it, first as a mere pensioner, afterwards as nominal ruler; but the whole continent had split up into petty principalities governed by Mahomedan rulers. Guzerât, Mâlwa, Kanauj, Oude, Kârra, Jaûnpur, Lahôre, Dipalpûr, Multân, Byâna, Kalpi, Mahôba, these were but a few of the countless kings who rose up and warred with one another.

Beyond these, again, to the southward, lay the great kingdom of the Dekkan, which one Allah-ud-din Hassan had reft bloodlessly from Mahomed Toghluk. This Hassan had a curious history. The servant of a Brahman astrologer, he appears to have lived a life absolutely without colour, until one day, when ploughing, the share caught in a chain attached to an old copper vessel full of antique gold coins. This treasure trove introduced him to the king's notice; he was made captain of a hundred horse, so rose gradually to power. And wherever he went he took with him his former master, the Brahman Ganga, who long years before had predicted for him great distinction. When Hassan reached royalty, the Brahman became finance-minister, and from this fact the whole dynasty was called Bâhmani, or Brâhmani. It lasted for close on two hundred years; a most unusual stability for India. But ere the period now before us had closed, the Dekkan also had split up into five separate states--Bîjapur, Golcônda, Berâr, Ahmudnâgar, Hyderabâd.

About the time of Timur's invasion, the Brâhmani dynasty was in the zenith of its fortunes. We have in the description of it, then, a picture of Eastern despotism that fits in with the preconceived ideas of most Westerns on this subject. Absolute power, untold wealth, munificence, cruelty, passion, pride, prejudice; all the concomitants of an Eastern potentate are there. The celebrated Turquoise Throne itself fills the imagination with its "enamel of a sky-blue colour, cased in gold which was in time totally concealed by the number of precious ornaments"; but when we add to this the golden ball over the throne "all inlaid with jewels, on which sate a bird of paradise composed entirely of precious stones, in whose head was a ruby of inestimable price," we desire no more. The Eastern glamour is complete.

So the kings of the Dekkan went on ruling, every now and again letting themselves loose on some minor râjah, and killing a few thousand Hindus for the sake of the Faith; every now and again ruling wisely and well, but as often as not badly and brutally. Sometimes they combined the epithets, as in the case of Mahomed Shâh Bâhmini, A.D. 1358-1375, during whose reign it is said "all ranks of the people reposed in security and peace," and that "nearly five hundred thousand unbelievers fell by the swords of the warriors of Islâm, by which the population of the Carnatic was so reduced that it did not recover for several ages"!!!

Some of these precious potentates died in their beds, a larger proportion of them were assassinated. This much, at any rate, may be said of Indian public opinion in these times, that it sided with morality, for the most condign punishments on record are invariably meted out to the biggest villains. Perhaps the most picturesque of these records is that concerning King Ghiâss-ud-din Bâhmini and Lâlchi, one of the principal Turki slaves of the household. This man possessed a daughter of exquisite beauty, whom the seventeen-year-old young monarch happened to see and instantly desired. The father refused, the king persisted. So Lâlchi laid his plans. He invited the passion-struck lad to an entertainment at his house, plied him with wine, and then induced him to order his attendants to withdraw, in order that the exquisite beauty might appear. The half-intoxicated prince attempted flight when Lâlchi returned from the harem not with a girl, but a naked dagger, rolled down some steps, and the next instant both his eyes were blinded; whereupon Lâlchi coolly sent for the royal attendants one by one, as if by the king's order, and put them to death severally as they appeared. As these were mostly nobles and officials of high rank, he found no difficulty in deposing Ghiâss-ud-din, who had only reigned for six weeks!

The history of the Dekkan finds echo in the kingdoms of Kandeish, Mâlwa, Guzerât, all of which came into existence about the same period. But in addition to these Mahomedan principalities a great and powerful Râjput confederacy--for the semifeudal system of the race was antagonistic to empire--was springing up among the hills in Mêwar, the "middle mountain" country now called Oudipur, and in the deserts of Mârwar or the "Region of Death," now called Jodhpur and Jeysulmeer. The two former kingdoms were ruled by princes of the Sun, but Jeysulmeer claimed, as it does now, descent from the Moon.

Such slight differences, however, were as naught before a common enemy, and ever since Mahmûd of Ghuzni had defeated Anangpal, Lunar king of Delhi--representative of a dynasty which, legend has it, had lasted since the days of Yudishthira of Mâhâbhârata fame--down through the time when Mahomed Ghori had annihilated Prithvi-Râj, grandson of the last Anangpal, and Kutb-uddin Eîbuk, his Slave-general, had carried on his butchery, until the present day, the common enemy of every Râjput had been the Mahomedan.

So, naturally, the conflict of the conquerors was the opportunity of the vanquished.

It is true that the young Ajey-si, saved from the sack of Chitore by so much bloodshed, did not fulfil his father's hope that the child should recover what the man had lost, but his appointed heir, Hamîr, more than redeemed the promise; for, during the two centuries following on the recapture of his kingdom, it rose to a pitch of power and solidarity never before touched, and received the homage of all surrounding principalities. The story of Hamîr's success is a strange one, and is reminiscent of the legend of Sir Gawaine, or the Knight of Courtesy, since the success came as a consequence of chivalry to womanhood.

Hamîr's perseverance had brought him to the very walls of Chitore, but the real struggle for possession was before him. At this juncture the city gates opened, and a peaceful procession passed out, bearing the recognised symbol of a marriage proposal, a cocoa-nut. It came from the mercenary but highborn Hindu Governor of Chitore, offering his daughter as a preliminary to peace. The young prince's advisers voted for a return of the offer. Hamîr bid its retention, boldly saying that, come what might, his feet would thus tread the rocky steps which his ancestors had trodden.

Forth, therefore, with but the stipulated five hundred horse, went the Bridegroom-Prince. He was met at the gate by the bride's five brothers, gloomy of face, solemn of mien. But on the city portal was no mystical triangle of marriage, no wedding garlands decorated the streets. Yet ceremony was not absent. The ancient hall of his ancestors was filled with chiefs awaiting him with folded hands; the bride's father welcomed him gravely. One can imagine the young man, ready to take what the gods chose to give for the sake of a hold on Chitore, waiting while the bride was led forth.

No cripple this! The young heart must have breathed more freely as the slim, veiled figure stood silent by his side. A promise of beauty here, surely! The young blood shivered through his veins, as the strong sword-hand met the soft, slender fingers; then seemed to flow almost tumultuously towards the new, the unknown, as the attendant priest knotted the marriage garments together. Yet still no smile, no word of congratulation. What did it mean? What matter! it was for the sake of Chitore.

So to the marriage chamber, where the family priest lingered hesitatingly to preach patience.

Patience! with a bride before one, every fold of whose veiled figure told of beauty!

Beauty indeed! but--one glance was enough--she was a widow!

He had been tricked indeed! A virgin widow, no doubt, and beautiful, exceedingly; yet still a widow, and accursed, almost unclean.

What did she say to him? History does not tell us. All we know is that "her kindness and vows of fidelity overcame his sadness."

Doubtless, the pity which is akin to love swayed him, but it was her cleverness, and not her kindness that gained the victory. For that strange marriage night was spent in a woman teaching a man how to win back his ancestral kingdom. Not by war, that was too crude. The people must be won over. Let her husband ask next morning as the marriage gift which no Râjput bridegroom is refused, for one Jâl, a humble scribe of the city.

So Hamîr went home burdened by a widow-wife and a scribe.

A year passed, and a prince was born; another year spent in what wiles and guiles only the widow mother and her scribe adviser knew, and the little prince, sick, had to be taken back to Chitore in order to be placed for healing before the shrine of Vyan-Mâta. Taken, oddly enough, while his grandfather, the mercenary governor, was away with most of the troops on an expedition.

A beautiful injured queen, a lovely baby prince, a hero husband ready to regain the throne of his ancestors, a devoted adherent prepared for every emergency; these were the factors in the sudden acclaim by which Hamîr, in consequence of his courtesy, was able once more to raise the standard of the Sun on the walls of Chitore. Where it remained for long years gloriously, comparatively peacefully; for while in Mahomedan Delhi no less than twenty-five monarchs were needed--such was the perpetual procession of assassinations, rebellions, dethronement--to bridge the period between Kutb-ud-din's seizure of Delhi and Timur's invasion of India, in Chitore--that is to say, Mêwar, or as it is now called, Oudipur--eleven princes had sufficed to fill the throne.

But in addition to Mêwar we have to reckon with Mârwar, or Jodhpur and Jeysulmeer. The former, however, was at this time a comparatively modern principality. After the defeat of Jâichand, the Râjah of Kanauj--who had so unavailingly performed the Sai-nair rite at which Prithvi-Râj had carried off the Princess Sunjogâta--his grandsons Shiv-ji and Sâyat-Râm, set out towards the great Indian Desert, hoping to carve fresh fortune from its barren stretches. They succeeded; but it was not until A.D. 1511 that Prince Jodha laid the foundation of a new capital, and brought Mârwar into line with the other great Râjput powers.

Jeysulmeer had a longer record. Headquarters of the Bhatti clan, its legendary history goes back to the eighth century; but from A.D. 1156 the chronicle is fairly continuous, and is full of romance and interest. Proud, passionate, clean-lived princes, these descendants of the Moon--for they were of the Yâdu race--seem to have been. One of them, still quite a lad, giving way to Berserk rage, struck his foster-brother. The blow was returned; whereupon, stung with shame, both at the insult and the lack of self-control which brought it about, the offender stabbed himself with his dagger. Another still more typical story is told of the passing of Râwul (an honorific title equalling Râjah) Chachîk, who, finding disease his master, sent an embassy to the Mahomedan ruler of Multân, begging from him the last favour of _jûd-dan_, or the gift of battle, "that his soul might escape by the steel of his foeman, and not fall sacrifice to slow disease."

The challenge was accepted, after the Mahomedan had been assured that honourable death was the sole end and aim.

So on the appointed day Râwul Chachîk, followed by seven hundred nobles, who, having shared all his victories, were prepared to follow him to death, marched out "to part with life."

"His soul was rejoiced, he performed his ablutions, worshipped the sword, bestowed charity, and withdrew his thoughts from this world. The battle lasted four hours, and the Yâdu prince fell with all his kin, after performing prodigees of valour. Two thousand Mahomedans fell beneath their swords, and rivers of blood flowed in the field; but the Bhatti gained the abode of Indra, who shared His throne with the hero."

Such, then, were the people who were gradually recovering some of the possessions and the prestige which they had lost when Prithvi-Râj fell victim to Mahomed Shahâb-ud-din Ghori.

Meanwhile, at Delhi the thirty-six years of kinglessness passed into seventy-three, during which the government was in the hands of three comparatively strong men, Belôl Lodi, Secûnder Lodi, Ibrahîm Lodi.

The first was a warrior, the second a bigot, the third a tyrant. Of the three, Belôl did most for his country, since at his death his empire extended eastwards as far as Benares.

Secûnder seems to have subordinated policy to religion. He destroyed every image and temple which he could see, or of which he could hear, and promptly put to death a Brahman who preached that "all religions, if sincerely practised, were equally acceptable to God."

Tolerance was not a virtue in those days.

It was during the reign of Ibrahîm Lodi that Babar, the first of the great Moghuls, entered India in A.D. 1514; but this was an event of such vast importance that it will be necessary to hark back some thirty years to the little kingdom of Ferghâna, where Babar was born on the 14th of February, A.D. 1483.

[Map: India to A.D. 1483]

THE GREAT MOGHULS

BABAR THE ADVENTURER

A.D. 1483 TO A.D. 1514

Born on St Valentine's Day, A.D. 1483, the boy-baby, who was hereafter to be called Zâhir-ud-din Mahomed, and nicknamed Babar, must have been plentifully supplied with fairy godmothers, for he was gifted with almost every possible gift.

To begin with, he had good looks, even judging by the curious portraits of those days. Then, there can be no question of his ability as a soldier, while intellectually he would have been remarkable in any age. Besides this, he was possessed of the true artistic temperament to a quite unusual degree; he was painter, poet, author, and in the smallest thing that he wrote showed unerring literary skill and taste.

Beyond, and above all, however, he had that nameless charm which makes him, surely, the most delightful personality known to history.

Given such a man, it would be sheer perversity to treat of him solely in reference to the part he played in India, as this would be to deprive ourselves of no less than thirty-six years of the very best of company.

So let us begin at the very beginning. It is possible to do this with an accuracy unobtainable with any other Indian king--or, indeed, with any king of any clime--because Babar left to the ages an autobiography of himself, his thoughts, his acts, his failures, his successes, which is, truly, a quite extraordinary record. Between the covers lies a whole, real, live, human being.

It opens, however, with these words, "In the year 1494, and in the twelfth year of my age, I became King of Ferghâna." We have therefore to go back eleven years for the birth of Babar. Before doing this, a glance round the world will give us the _milieu_ in which our hero was to play his part.

Briefly, then, Vasco da Gama had but just discovered India, Henry VII. was King of England. Michelangelo was revolutionising the world of art, Copernicus creating that of science. For the rest, a hundred years had passed since Timur the "Earth Trembler" had shaken literally the whole world; for his grip on it had reached West to Moscow and East to China. Yet a hundred years further back again Chengiz Khân had swept over the same ground like a devastating flame.

Babar had both these unamiable ruffians as ancestors, but, apparently, was by no means proud of his Mongal or Moghul descent. He called himself a Turk, and wrote hardly of the race whose name, by the irony of fate, was to be attached to the dynasty he founded.

"If the Moghul race had an angel's birth,
It still would be made of the basest earth;
Were the Moghul name writ in thrice-fired gold,
It would ring as false as it did of old;
From a Moghul's harvest sow never a seed
For the seed of a Moghul is false indeed!"

Babar was the son of Omâr-Shaîkh, King of Ferghâna, or as it is now called, Khôkand. At his birth a courier was sent post-haste to inform his maternal grandfather, the Khân of the Mongols, who, despite his seventy years, came back post-haste to join in the festivities, and--his uncouth, Mongolian tongue trippling over the polished Persian name Zâhir-ud-din (the Evidence of Faith)--to dub the child Babar, or "the tiger," a nickname which stuck to him for life. A fine old man this grandfather of Babar's, and a fine old woman his grandmother must have been. A woman not to be trifled with, to judge by her action when one Jâimul-Khân, having for a time defeated her husband, seized her and made her over to one of his officers.

Isa-Begum raised no puerile objections. She received her new master quite affably, but once he was within her chamber door she locked it, bade her maids stab him to death, fling the body to the street, and send this message to Shâikh-Jâimul: "I am the wife of Yunâs. Contrary to law, you gave me to another man, so I slew him. Come and slay me if you choose."

The erring Jâimul must have had good in him, for, struck by her courage, he restored her honourably to her husband.