It was built by the Turki slave Eibuk, and one can forgive him much in

that he left the world such a thing of beauty to be a joy for ever.

And yet as one stands beneath it, marking here and there the

half-obliterated traces of previous cutting on the stones of the

wonderful tapering pillar, all corbeilled with encircling balconies,

and banded in dexterous art with interlaced lettering; as one looks

round on the dismantled ruins of still more ancient temples, the mind

suddenly ceases to give the glory to Kutb-ud-din, and turns almost

with amaze to the thought of the Hindu architects who built it to

order out of their dishonoured shrines.

Think of it! Art, true Art rising superior to Self! Surely as they

chiselled at those interlaced attributes of the One Unknowable,

Unthinkable, they must have been conscious that though all things in

this life were--as their religion told them--but Illusion, behind that

Illusion lay Reality.

And so their work comforted them.

How much of India is built into this watch tower of her gods? The best

of her, anyhow, and English civilisation can scarcely add an

additional story to this record of her past.

To Kutb-ud-din Eibuk, however, belongs the glory of inception;

therefore also some forgiveness, which, in truth, he sorely needs. For

from the beginning his attitude towards strict morality is, to say the

least of it, doubtful. He was a beautiful Turki slave, the avowed pet

and plaything of his master Shahab-ud-din, who gave him "his

particular notice, and daily advanced him in confidence and favours."

He appears to have been diplomatic, for on one occasion, being

questioned by the king as to why he had divided his share of a general

distribution of presents amongst the other retainers, he kissed the

ground of Majesty's feet, and replied, that being amply supplied

already by that Majesty's favours, he desired no superfluities.

This brought him the Master of the Horse-ship, from which he went on

to honour after honour, until in the year A.D. 1193 he was left as

viceroy in India. Thenceforward he was practically king. It was he who

took Delhi after a conflict in which the river Jumna ran red with

blood. It was he who commanded the forces at Etawah, and it was his

hand which shot the arrow that, piercing the eye of the Benares Rajah,

cost him his life and the loss of everything he possessed.

A quaint picture that, by the way, of the search for Jai-Chund's body

amidst the huge heaps of the slain, and its final recognition after

weary days by "the artificial teeth fixed by golden wires." Had

dentistry got as far in the West, I wonder?

Then it was Kutb-ud-din who presented to his master the three hundred

elephants taken at Benares; amongst them the famous white one which

refused to kneel like the others before the _M'lechcha_, king though

he might be. The beast's independence serving him better than a man's

would have done, since it brought no punishment, but the honour of

being pad elephant to the viceroy thenceforth.

And it was he who marched his forces hither and thither, "engaged the

enemy, put them to flight, and having ravaged the country at leisure,

obtained much booty."

The eye wearies over the repetitions of this formula, as the hand

turns the pages of Ferishta's history, while the heart grows sick at

the thought of what such a war of conversion or extermination meant in

those days.

The victorious procession of the Mahomedan troopers was only broken

once in Guzerat. Here Kutb-ud-din, despite six wounds, fought

stubbornly and with his wonted courage, until forced by his attendants

from the field, and carried in a litter to the fort at Ajmir, where he

managed to hold out until reinforcements came to his aid from the King

of Ghuzni.

Defeat seems ever to have been the mother of victory with these

passionate, revengeful Afghans, for on the very next occasion on which

Kutb-ud-din "engaged the enemy," he is said to have killed fifty

thousand of them, and to have gathered into his treasury vast spoils.

Nothing seemed to stop him. Even the swift assassination by his own

prime minister of a cowardly rajah who was coming to terms with the

_M'lechcha_ instead of resisting the Unclean to the death, did not

avail to preserve almost impregnable Kalunjur; for a spring

incontinently dried up in the fort, and there once more was one last

sally, and then death for the garrison.

It was in A.D. 1205, after Kutb-din had had twelve years of battles,

murders, and sudden deaths, twelve years of absolute if not nominal

kingship, that Mahomed Shahab-ud-din's successor, feeling himself not

strong enough to assume the reins of government in India, made a bid

for peace for himself in Ghuzni by sending Eibuk the slave, the drums,

the standards, the insignia of royalty, and the title of King of

India.

Eibuk received them all with "becoming respect," and was duly crowned.

This fact did not prevent his being crowned again in Ghuzni the

following year!

He then, having attained to the height of his ambition, seeing no more

worlds to conquer, having for the time being crushed even Rajput

resistance, gave himself up "unaccountably to wine and pleasure."

This seems to have irritated the good citizens of Ghuzni. They invited

another claimant to the throne to try his luck. He came, found Eibuk

unprepared, possibly drunk. Anyhow, there was no time to attempt a

defence. He fled to Lahore, thus finally severing the Kingship of

Ghuzni from that of India.

There, we are told, he became "sensible of his folly," repented, and

thereinafter "continued to exercise justice, temperance, morality."

He was killed while playing _chaugan_ (the modern polo) in A.D. 1210.

At that time he was supposed to be the richest man in the world; but,

unlike Mahmud, he was generous. "As liberal as Eibuk" is still a

phrase in the mouth of India.

His son Aram (Leisure) appears to have deserved his name. He never

gripped the kingdom, and lost it fatuously after less than a year.

Apparently he was not deemed worth the killing, and Altamish, a

favourite slave of the slave Eibuk, took his place by virtue of being

son-in-law to the dead king.

Altamish was also of Turki extraction. As a youth, the fame of his

beauty and talents was noised abroad, and Shahab-ud-din was in the

bidding for him, but hung back at the price; whereupon Eibuk the

Lavish put down the fifty thousand pieces of silver, and carried off

the prize.

Years after, he was married to the Princess-Royal, and so, adding

Shums-ud-din (Sword of the Faith) to his name, ascended the throne,

and reigned for no less than twenty-six years.

So Delhi, indeed, was founded by slaves!

Atlamish appears to have been of the regulation type. He was, so to

speak, Kutb-ud-din and water. The largest number of Hindus he is

recorded to have killed at one time is three hundred; a sad

falling-off in _Ghazi_-dom.[3] On the other hand, he was the barbarian

who, taking Ujjain, destroyed the magnificent temple of Maha-Kali

which it had taken three hundred years to build. The idols thereof,

and also a "statue of Vikramaditya, who had been formerly prince of

this country, and so renowned that the Hindus have taken an era from

his death," were conveyed solemnly to Delhi, and there broken at the

door of the great mosque of which the magnificent ruins--spoils of

many a Jain and Hindu temple--still lie about the foot of the Kutb

Minar, a monument to the slave Eibuk who commenced it, the slave

Altamish who finished it.

---------------------

[Footnote 3: A Ghazi is the title of honour given to one who has

killed the infidel.]

---------------------

This solemn smashing was doubtless a fine ceremony, yet as we of the

present day contemplate it, regret goes forth, especially for the

statue of Vikramadjit. How many a riddle might it not have solved

concerning the Unknown King!

We are told that Altamish was an "enterprising, able, and good

prince"; he has, however, another, and in the history of the world,

quite unique claim to regard. The father of seven children, six of

them in turn mounted the throne with more or less success.

Considerably less as regards the first occupant, Ruku-ud-din (Prop of

the Faith), who spent his six months and twenty-eight days tenancy in

lavishing his inherited treasures on dancing girls, pimps and

prostitutes.

This might have been borne for longer, but the hideous cruelties of

his mother, a Turki slave to whom he entrusted the reins of

government, were such as to rouse even the dull humanity of a

thirteenth-century Mahomedan. She had murdered horribly every one of

the dead king's women, and had begun on his son's, when the patience

of the various viceroys gave way. They entered into a conspiracy,

deposed the king, and threw his mother into prison--a lenient

punishment for such a monster of cruelty.

And then? Then they did a thing unheard of in Indian history--they

raised a woman to the throne.

But Sultana Razia Begum was no ordinary mortal! Indeed, there is

something so quaint about the recapitulation of her virtues, as given

in the pages of Ferishta, that, perforce, one cannot but quote it.

"Razia Begum (my Lady Content) was possessed of every good quality

which usually adorns the ablest princes; and those who scrutinise her

actions most severely, will find in her no fault but that she was a

woman."

Alas! Poor Lady Content! Of what avail that you changed (as it is

solemnly set down) your apparel; that you abandoned the petticoat in

favour of the trews; that your father, when he appointed you regent

during one of his long absences, defended his action by saying that

though a woman, you had a man's head and heart, and were worth more

than twenty such sons as he had? All this was of no avail against

womanhood. Let this be thy comfort, poor shade of a dead queen, that

the argument still holds good against thy sisters in this year of

grace 1907!

Setting this aside, the career of Queen-Content matches in tragedy

that of Mary Queen of Scots. A clever girl, evidently, her father made

her his companion, and while her brothers were dicing and wenching,

drinking and twanging the _sutara_, she was frowning with him over

endless pacifications, endless violences, becoming, apparently, an

adept at both. For it would have needed great qualifications to ensure

the almost unanimous vote of the nobles which placed a woman on the

throne.

At first even these contemptuous Mahomedans were satisfied. Then came

discontent. Did Razia Begum really favour the Abyssinian slave whom

she allowed--_horribile dictum!_--to "lift her on her horse by raising

her up under the arms"? Or had she really forgotten the petticoat in

the trews? Who can say? All we know is that Malik-Altunia, the Turki

governor of Bhattinda--curious how that name crops up in all the

really exciting tales of Indian history!--revolted on the plea of the

queen's partiality to the Abyssinian; that she marched against the

rebel, leading her troops; that a tumultuous conflict occurred in the

old place of battles, in which the Abyssinian favourite was killed,

the queen taken prisoner, and sent to Altunia's care in the fort.

So far good. But here affairs take a turn which is fairly breathless,

and which gives pause for doubting Altunia's disinterested care for

morality and _les convenances_.

He promptly married the empress, and with scarce a comma, we find him

raising an army to espouse her cause, and fighting her battles, the

Bothwell of his time. He failed, and he and his wife were put to death

together on the 14th of November A.D. 1239.

A tragic tale indeed! Best finished by another excerpt from the

historian.

"The reign of Sultana Razia Begum lasted three years, six months, and

six days. Those who reflect on the fate of this unfortunate princess

will readily discover from whence arose the foul blast that blighted

all her prospects.--What connection exists between the high office of

Amir-ul Omra and an Abyssinian slave? Or how are we to reconcile the

inconsistency of the queen of so vast a territory fixing her

affections on so unworthy an object?"

And no one, apparently, remembered that she herself was the daughter

of a Turki slave who achieved empire.

Byram was the next brother to ascend the throne. The two years, one

month, and fifteen days before he also "sipped the cup of fate" is a

welter of crimes. Enemies were trodden under foot of elephants, slaves

suborned to feign drunkenness and assassinate friends; in short,

"these proceedings, without trial or public accusation, justly alarmed

every one," so Masud, the next brother, had his innings. A poor one,

though it lasted twice as long as Byram's. He found time in it,

however, to repel the first Moghul invasion by way of Tibet into

Bengal. This was in A.D. 1244, and it was followed by a similar

incursion the next year, by way of Kandahar and Sinde. Masud seems to

have become imbecile over wine and women, and when deposed, was

contemptuously allowed to live by his brother, Nasir-ud-din, the only

one of Altamish's sons who appears to have been worth anything;

possibly because he had passed the whole of the last four reigns in

prison!

Adversity may be a hard, but she is a good taskmistress, and in

Nasir-ud-din she had evidently good mettle on which to work. He was a

man, distinctly, of original parts, for while in prison he had always

preferred supporting himself by his writings to accepting any public

allowance; a "whimsical habit" which he continued after he came to the

throne. He was also almost scandalously moral according to the

orthodoxy of the day in refusing to have more than one wife, and in

cutting down all outward show and magnificence on the ground that,

being only God's trustee for the State, he was bound not to burden it

with useless extravagance.

As he reigned for no less than twenty years, he had time to gather

together the _disjecta membra_, of the Indian empire which Eibuk had

built up, and which was fast coming to be a series of semi-independent

provinces, and even once more to annex Ghuzni to the kingdom of Delhi.

He followed his predecessors' example also in rousing yet again the

Rajput resistance. During the previous reigns the clans had recovered

themselves, and, from the Mahomedan point of view, needed a lesson. So

some few thousands were killed in battle, some few hundred chiefs put

to death, and innumerable smaller fry condemned to perpetual slavery.

And yet a story is told of Nasir-ud-din which shows him not devoid of

heart.

A worthy old scholar, criticising the king's penmanship, pointed out a

fault. He, smiling, erased the word, but when the critic was gone,

began to restore it, remarking that it was right, but it was better to

spoil paper than the self-confidence of an old man.

He died, after a long illness, in A.D. 1266, and thereinafter

Ghiass-ud-din the _wazir_, who had married a sister of Sultana

Razia's, ascended the throne, possibly in the absence of more direct

heirs. He must have been nearly sixty at the time, for he died

twenty-one years after in his eightieth year.

He also was a Turki slave, first employed as falcon-master by

Altamish, who promoted him again and again; wherefore, Heaven knows,

for history gives us but a poor character of him. He appears to have

been a pious, narrow-minded, intolerant, selfish tyrant, with a

hypocritical dash of virtue about him which took in his world

completely. Circumstances also aided him in posing as perfection; for

about this time the Moghul invasion had reached the western

borderlands, and hundreds of illustrious and literary fugitives

crowded thence, to find in Delhi the only stable Mahomedan government.

These, flattering and fawning, helped to noise his fame abroad as a

paragon. Then the son of his old age, Prince Mahomed, was a potent

factor in his popularity. The apple of his father's eye, he seems to

have been an Admirable Crichton, and his death, in the moment of

victory, not only "drew tears from the meanest soldier to the

General," but came as a final blow to the old king, "who was so much

distressed that life became irksome to him."

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 Keik-obad came to the throne at his death, and promptly

gave the reins to pleasure and the guidance of public affairs to his

_wazir_. 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 Kei-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 Eibuk's iron hand first closed on

it. Half the Punjab, almost all Rajputana, 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 Rajputs raised their dejected heads, and, seizing

every opportunity, strove to recover part at least of their own.

Gwalior with its rock,--that almost impregnable fort--for instance,

changed hands many times, and, save during the reign of Nasir-ud-din,

no attempt was made on the part of the Mahomedans after the time of

Altamish, either to increase their conquests, or do more than

temporarily bolster up their rule.

Nor when the Slave dynasty ended, and one Jelal-ud-din, of the House

of Khilji, established himself on the throne of Delhi by the murder of

the three-year-old Kei-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 Jelal-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 Deogiri, the capital of the

Maharajah of the Mahrattas. Far enough, however, for pillage _a la_

Kutb-din-Eibuk. He found the Rajputs 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 Deogiri--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

Jelal-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

Rajput 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 Rajputs, 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 Rajput spirit, and Rajah 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 Rajput 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 Rajputs 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 Rajah Bhim-si, to whom twelve sons had been born by the

beautiful Padmani, woke in fear. Before him, in a lurid light, stood

Vyan-Mata, the tutelary goddess of his race. "I am hungry," she

wailed. "Lo! I drink Rajput 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 Rajput man put on the bridal coronet and the saffron robe, and

every Rajput 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 Johar--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 Kafur, 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 Harsha had attempted to gather it into his

empire, but had been foiled by the skill of Pulikesin 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 Haysala

line of kings.

It was in A.D. 1310 that Kafur swept through the kingdom, despoiled

the capital, laid waste the country, and carried off the reigning

Rajah, though its final absorption in the Mahomedan empire was not

until A.D. 1327. Kafur, 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

Kafur.

Rebellion grew rife. Little Prince Ajey-si's heir, Hamir, recovered

Chitore, Guzerat 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, Kafur. Thereupon

followed the usual murders and sudden deaths of an Indian succession,

followed by the death of Kafur, and the final enthroning of

Allah-ud-din's third son, Mobarik. 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 Khushru, 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.

Mobarik, "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. Khushru was worse. So he

was killed, and a worthy warrior, by name Ghazi-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

Shahjahan, Master of the World; but he chose the more modest title of

Ghiass-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 Ghiass-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-Khan--under which title Jonah became

heir-apparent--a lucky choice in other ways. He lost a large army in

attempting to regain Deogiri, and was not particularly successful

against the Rajputs. 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 Toghlukabad. 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 Ghiass 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 Deogiri, which he rechristened

Dowlutabad, 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 Dowlutabad, 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 Feroze 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 Feroze 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 Feroze

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 Ferozebad (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.

Feroze 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 Eibuk had wrested from the Rajputs, 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

Khan, 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 Tamarleng," 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 Talumba, a strong fort and city at the junction

of the Chenab and the Ravi 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 Bhatnir, the headquarters of the Great Lunar

Race of Rajputs. 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 Rajah, 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, "Johar! Johar!" arose from the men, wives and

children were slain, and the Rajputs 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 Saraswati, to Fatehabad, to Rajpur, he carried his flaming sword;

then at Kaitul 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 Mahmud, the last degenerate

scion of the House of Toghluk, had sate in the massive palace of his

forefathers, waiting.

"Delhi dur 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 Toghlukabad.

Seven hundred horse only! Mahmud 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 Toghlukabad. 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, "Johar! Johar!" 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 Feroze 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 Samarkhund

by the Kabul 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 Mahmud, 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. Guzerat, Malwa, Kanauj, Oude, Karra, Jaunpur, Lahore,

Dipalpur, Multan, Byana, Kalpi, Mahoba, 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 Bahmani, or Brahmani. 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--Bijapur, Golconda, Berar, Ahmudnagar,

Hyderabad.

About the time of Timur's invasion, the Brahmani 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 rajah, 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 Shah Bahmini, 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 Islam, 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 Ghiass-ud-din Bahmini and

Lalchi, 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 Lalchi 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 Lalchi 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 Lalchi 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

Ghiass-ud-din, who had only reigned for six weeks!

The history of the Dekkan finds echo in the kingdoms of Kandeish,

Malwa, Guzerat, all of which came into existence about the same

period. But in addition to these Mahomedan principalities a great and

powerful Rajput confederacy--for the semifeudal system of the race was

antagonistic to empire--was springing up among the hills in Mewar, the

"middle mountain" country now called Oudipur, and in the deserts of

Marwar 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 Mahmud 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 Mahabharata fame--down through

the time when Mahomed Ghori had annihilated Prithvi-Raj, grandson of

the last Anangpal, and Kutb-uddin Eibuk, his Slave-general, had

carried on his butchery, until the present day, the common enemy of

every Rajput 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, Hamir,

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 Hamir'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.

Hamir'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. Hamir 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 Rajput bridegroom is refused, for one Jal, a humble

scribe of the city.

So Hamir 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-Mata. 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

Hamir, 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,

Mewar, or as it is now called, Oudipur--eleven princes had sufficed to

fill the throne.

But in addition to Mewar we have to reckon with Marwar, or Jodhpur and

Jeysulmeer. The former, however, was at this time a comparatively

modern principality. After the defeat of Jaichand, the Rajah of

Kanauj--who had so unavailingly performed the Sai-nair rite at which

Prithvi-Raj had carried off the Princess Sunjogata--his grandsons

Shiv-ji and Sayat-Ram, 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 Marwar into line with the other great Rajput

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 Yadu 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 Rawul (an honorific title

equalling Rajah) Chachik, who, finding disease his master, sent an

embassy to the Mahomedan ruler of Multan, begging from him the last

favour of _jud-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 Rawul Chachik, 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 Yadu 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-Raj fell

victim to Mahomed Shahab-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, Belol Lodi, Secunder Lodi, Ibrahim Lodi.

The first was a warrior, the second a bigot, the third a tyrant. Of

the three, Belol did most for his country, since at his death his

empire extended eastwards as far as Benares.

Secunder 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 Ibrahim 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 Ferghana, 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 Zahir-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 Ferghana." 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 Khan 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 Omar-Shaikh, King of Ferghana, or as it is now

called, Khokand. At his birth a courier was sent post-haste to inform

his maternal grandfather, the Khan 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 Zahir-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 Jaimul-Khan, 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 Shaikh-Jaimul: "I am the wife of Yunas. Contrary

to law, you gave me to another man, so I slew him. Come and slay me if

you choose."

The erring Jaimul must have had good in him, for, struck by her

courage, he restored her honourably to her husband.

At the age of five Babar was betrothed to his cousin Ayesha, and the

next six years must have been spent at the millstone of education,

since this was all the schooling Fate granted him, and he emerged from

it with two languages at his fingers' end, and an amount of literary

skill and general knowledge which was fairly surprising. His father,

still in the prime of life, was killed by an accident while away from

his capital, and the incident is thus described by the boy-king, who,

36 miles away, "immediately mounted in the greatest haste, and, taking

such followers as were at hand, set out to secure my throne."

"The river flows under the walls of the castle, which is situated on

the very edge of a high precipice, so that it serves as a moat. And

some of the ravines down to it being scarped to support the castle, in

all Ferghana stands no stronger fortress. Thus one of the walls giving

way, my father, feeding his pigeons, was, with the pigeons and the

pigeon-house, precipitated from the top of the steep, and so himself

took flight to another world."

A quaint description, giving a picture which lingers in the mind's

eye. The fortress hanging over the abyss, the king, in Eastern

fashion, making his pigeons tumble for their corn. Then the sudden

slip, and a startled soul among the startled white wings on its way to

another world. Even the body which the soul had left remains alive for

ever in Babar's words:--

"My father was of lowish stature, had a short, bushy beard, and was

fat. He used to wear his tunic very tight, and as he drew himself in

when he put it on, when he let himself out the strings often burst. He

plaited his turban without folds, and let the end hang down. He was

but a middling shot with the bow, but had such uncommon force with his

fists that he never hit a man but he knocked him down. His generosity

was large, and so was his whole nature. He was a humane king, and

played a great deal at backgammon."

Peace be to thine ashes, oh, Omar-Shaikh! Even after all the centuries

we seem to know the man himself, as we read the words in which his son

has pictured him.

So, let us hark back to Ferghana, the little kingdom watered by the

river Jaxartes, and give one more extract from Babar's journal to show

what manner of place it seemed to the eleven-year-old king.

"Ferghana is situate on the extreme boundary of the habitable world.

It is a valley clipped by snowy mountains on all sides but the west,

whither the river flows, and on which side alone it can be entered by

foreign enemies. It is of small extent, but abounds in grain and

fruits. Its melons are excellent and plentiful. There are no better

pears in the world. Its pheasants are so fat that four persons may

dine on the stew of one and not finish it. Its violets are

particularly elegant, and it abounds in streams of running water. In

the spring its tulips and roses blow in great profusion, and there are

mines of turquoise in the mountains, while in the valley the people

make velvet of a crimson colour."

Surely this description is sufficient, not only to show us Ferghana,

but also to give us a clear idea of the boy who saw it thus. Truly the

temptation to quote from this delightful record is well nigh

irresistible, but space forbids, for there is much to say of Babar as

poet, painter, musician, astronomer, knight-errant, soldier-lover,

king, and _bon vivant_. He was all of these in turn; and in addition,

kindly, valorous, courteous. A real paladin if ever there was one.

From the very first he gripped the reins of kingship with a firm hand.

And it was no easy task to guide the little kingdom through the

dangers which beset it; but he succeeded "through the distinguished

valour of my young soldiers" (he himself being but twelve!) in besting

his uncles the Kings of Samarkhund and Tashkund, so holding his own.

Shortly after this the young king nearly fell a victim to conspiracy,

owing to his confidence in one Hassan-Yukub, "the best player of

leap-frog I have known." From this infatuation he was rescued by his

shrewd old grandmother, of whom Babar speaks with sneaking awe: "She

was uncommonly far-sighted; few of her sex equalled her in sagacity."

This incident evidently sobered him, for he "began to abstain from

forbidden meats, and seldom omitted midnight prayers."

For there is always something absolutely translucent in Babar's

accounts of himself, and of everything which he heard and saw.

It is impossible even for a moment to doubt their accuracy. His

self-revelation is frankness itself, and his views of men and manners

bring conviction with them.

Ambition seems to have seized on him early, for ere he was fifteen,

his uncle the king having died, he marched on Samarkhund to make a bid

for the throne. And he succeeded. He was Emperor of Samarkhund, as his

ancestor Timur had been, for exactly one hundred days, during which he

appears to have enjoyed himself hugely. One is apt to think of these

Eastern cities beyond the verge, as they are now--half-ruined, dreary,

dead-alive. But in those days they were centres of commerce, learning,

and art. To Samarkhund Timur had brought the untold riches of India,

her clever craftsmen, her skilled artisans. It was a beautiful, a

cultured city, and Babar came to the conclusion "that in the whole

habitable world there are few places so pleasantly situated."

His dream of success lasted but those hundred days; then evil news of

rebellion at Ferghana and an appeal for help came from his mother. "I

was ill," he writes, "but had not the heart to delay an instant, so

being unable to nurse myself, I had a relapse."

He came so near death, indeed, that some of his followers, despairing

of life, shifted for themselves, and brought the news of his demise to

Ferghana. Thus when the young king came back to consciousness, it was

to find himself without a kingdom; for his friends, believing him

dead, had surrendered.

"Thus for the sake of Ferghana I had given up Samarkhund, and now

found I had lost the one without securing the other."

Such is his philosophical comment. But Babar's remarks are always

inimitable. When they hanged his envoy over the gate of the citadel,

he sets down his instant belief that "without doubt Khwaja Kazi was a

saint: he was a wonderfully brave man--which is no mean proof of

saintship. Other men, brave as they may be, have some nervousness or

trepidation in them. The Kazi hadn't a particle of either."

This reverse necessitated two years of wandering in the hills. He took

his mother with him and his old grandmother, giving them the best

shelter he could find. And wherever he wandered, he himself was always

cheerful, always kindly, always ready to enjoy the beauties and the

gifts of Nature; especially "a wonderful delicate and toothsome melon,

with a mottled skin like shagreen."

Until one day, just as the sun was setting, a solitary horseman

bearing a message sped up the valley towards his mountain fastness,

and in less than half an hour Babar was up and away through the

deepening night in response to those who loved him; and there were

many of them. Indeed his capacity for winning over most men to his

side is one of his most salient characteristics. He was _bon camarade_

with half his world.

An eventful ride this over hill and dale, through darkness and through

light. "We had passed three days and three nights without rest,

neither man nor horse had strength left," when, hanging on the edge of

a hill, the city of his hope showed rose-red in the dawn. Then for the

first time fear came. Had he been over-hasty? What if this were a

trick to decoy him and his handful of followers to their death?

But "there was no possibility of retreat, no refuge even to which we

could retreat. So, having come so far, on we must go. (Nothing happens

but by God's will.)"

The trite little sentence of consolation was justified. Babar found

himself once more King of Ferghana; but he promptly lost his kingdom

again by attempting to make his ill-disciplined Mongolian troops make

restitution to the peasantry of the loot they had taken from them.

He admits his error frankly.

"It was a senseless thing to exasperate so many men with arms in their

hands. In war and in statecraft a thing may seem reasonable at first

sight, but it needs to be weighed and considered in a hundred lights

before it is finally decided upon. This ill-judged order of mine was,

in fact, the ultimate cause of my second expulsion."

This was in A.D. 1500, when he was seventeen years old. Still his

buoyancy remained, despite his evil fortune, and for the next few

months his itinerary is full of the joys of "a capital hunting-ground,

with good covers for game," in which he coursed, and shot, and hawked,

to his heart's content.

Not for long, however. Samarkhund tempted him again in the summer; but

he had to retire and seek shelter in the hills once more,

"by dangerous tracks among the rocks. In the steep and narrow ways and

gorges which we had to climb, many a horse and camel dropped and fell

out. After four or five days we came to the col of Sir-i-Tuk. This

_is_ a pass! Never did I see one so narrow and steep, or follow paths

more toilsome and strait. We pressed on, nevertheless, with incredible

labour, through fearful gorges and by tremendous precipices, until,

after a hundred agonies and losses, at last we topped those murderous

steep defiles and came down on the borders of Kan, with its lovely

expanse of lake."

When eighteen he finally managed to conquer Samarkhund, and in the

same year his first child, a daughter, was born; for he had wedded his

cousin Ayesha while in hiding in the hills. He called the baby "The

Glory of Womanhood," and chronicles regretfully that "in a month or

forty days she went to partake of the Mercy of God."

Marriage, however, appears to have roused him to no emotion, for he

admits first that he had "never conceived a passion for any woman, and

indeed had never been so placed as even to hear or witness words of

love or amorous discourse"; secondly, that in the beginning of his

wedded life, shyness almost overcame affection; "and afterwards," he

adds quaintly, "as my affection decreased my shyness increased."

A curious record of clean-living this for an Eastern king in the very

hey-day of youth.

Babar's success did not last for long. Two years after he was once

more a fugitive, and this time he did not succeed in saving all his

womenkind. His favourite sister, older than he was by some years,

remained behind, part of the price paid for bare freedom, and entered

his victorious enemy's harem. This was a bitter pill to swallow, and

Babar never forgot it. This sister figures in the Memoirs of Babar's

daughter, Gulbadan, as "Dearest Lady." She seems to have kept her

brother's deep devotion to the last.

So for three long years Babar wandered once more. This is perhaps the

most exciting portion of his Autobiography. It is absolutely packed

full with hair's-breadth escapes, crowded in each word with human

interest. We see the young king, now in the very prime of his manhood,

standing stripped for his bathe in "a stream that was frozen at the

banks, but not in the middle, by reason of its swift current." We

watch him "plunge in and dive sixteen times, but the biting chill of

the water cut through me." We follow breathlessly the vain endeavour

made by him and three trusted friends to induce his frightened troops

to rally: "I was constantly turning with my three companions to keep

the enemy in check, and bring them up short with our arrows; but we

could not make the men stand anyhow." We mourn with him on another

occasion his ignorance that "the horsemen who followed were not above

twenty or twenty-five, while we were eight." We agree with him that

had he "but known their number at first, he would 'have given them

warm work.'" We share his faith in his own nimbleness in climbing a

hill as the only escape from the arrows of bowmen, and we positively

hold our breath in the amazing story of the Garden at Tambal, where he

waited for Death, and found Life, and friends, and new hope.

This was the capture of Kabul. The kingly blood in him craved a

kingdom. He felt he must have one if he died for it.

Surely never was claimant for royalty worse fitted out for the quest

than was Babar! Even Prince Charlie, with his head in Flora

Macdonald's lap, does not come up in forlornness with Zahir-ud-din

Mahomed Babar, who gave his only tent to his mother, and whose

followers, "great and small, were more than two hundred and less than

three. Most on foot with brogues to their feet, clubs in their hands,

and tattered cloaks over their shoulders." Yet a short time afterwards

he finds himself, "to my own great surprise," at the head of quite a

respectable army.

A short time, again, and he is King of Kabul; such are the amazing ups

and downs of this most unfortunate, most fortunate of princes.

By this time his wife, Ayesha, had left him, giving as her reason the

perfectly true plaint that he did not love her. He had, however,

fallen in love with some one else; the woman who was to be the mother

of his son Humayon, and of his three daughters, who were named by

Babar's express wish, "Rose-face, Rose-blush, Rose-body." It was at

Kabul that Humayon was born. At Kabul, also, Babar lost his mother,

whom he helped to carry shoulder high to her grave in the Garden of

the New Year, outside the city, "the sweetest spot in all the

neighbourhood."

He remained King of Kabul until he made his first expedition to India

in 1514. He gives us detailed accounts of his new kingdom. He seems to

know everything that is to be known about it. The names and habits of

every animal, bird, and beast, even to the fact that in stormy weather

the migratory birds are stopped by the everlasting snows of the

Hindu-Kush hills, and so are taken in hundreds by the bird-fowlers. He

knows the place where the rarest tulips are to be found, and is

unceasing in his praise of three-and-thirty different kinds, one

"yellow, double, scented like a rose." Doubtless, the parents of that

favourite in modern gardens, "Yellow Rose."

He knows also of the different clans and people of Kabul, their past

history, their present languages. In fact, he knows all things that

are possible to vivid vitality, all things that are given to friendly

hand and seeing eye.

It was from Kabul that he went on a visit to his cousins, the Princes

of Herat. Here, for the first time, he learnt what luxury meant, for

Herat was the home of culture and of ease. At first he is somewhat

shocked. There are so many things "contrary to the institutions of

Chengiz Khan"--that sacred rule from which his family never deviated.

Then he began to meditate that after all "Chengiz had no divine

authority," and that if a "father has done wrong, the son should

change it for what is right."

From this to doing at Rome what Rome did is but a step; and yet it

seems as if he had kept his vow of drinking no wine sacred while at

Herat. Pity he did not keep it so always.

It was in returning to Kabul by the mountains from his twenty days'

visit to the most charming "city in the whole habitable world," that

Babar met with the following adventure which shows him at his best. He

and his army were lost in the snow, and "met with such suffering and

hardship, as I have scarcely endured at any other time of my life."

The poem about it which he sat down to write has not survived, but

Babar's prose is sufficient for most things.

"For about a week we went on trampling down the snow. I helped with

Kasim Beg, and his sons, and a few servants. Each step we sank to the

waist, or the breast; but still we went on. After a few paces a man

became exhausted, and another took his place. Then we dragged forward

a horse without a rider. The horse sank to the stirrups and girths,

and after advancing ten or fifteen paces, was worn out and replaced by

another. It was no time for using authority. Every one who has spirit

does his best at such times, and those who have none are not worth

thinking about.

"In three or four days we reached a cave at the foot of the Yerrin

pass. That day the storm was terrible, and the snow fell so heavily,

we all expected to die together. When we reached the cave the storm

was at its worst. We halted at the mouth. It seemed small, so I took a

hoe and, clearing away the snow, made a resting-place for myself about

as big as a prayer-carpet, and found a shelter from the wind in it.

Some were for my going into the cave, but I would not. I felt that for

me to be within in comparative comfort while my soldiers were in snow

and drift would be inconsistent with that fellowship and suffering

which was their due. So, remembering the proverb, 'Death in the

company of friends is a feast,' I continued to sit in the drift. By

bedtime prayers 4 inches of snow had settled on my head and lips and

ears."

The description is excellent, and gives a delightful background to the

quaint comment with which it finishes: "_N.B_.--That night I caught a

cold in my ear."

Then once again the haunting dream of Samarkhund, the desire to

possess the throne of his ancestor Timur, came to obsess him, and

bring disaster. He gained the throne once more, only yet once more to

lose it. Whether by his own fault, or because Fortune's wheel had

turned for the time, we know not. The Autobiography is silent.

All we know is that in A.D. 1519--that is, when he was thirty-six

years of age--he finally gave up the thought of Samarkhund, and turned

his eyes to India.

Timur had conquered it; why should not he?

THE GREAT MOGHULS

BABAR, EMPEROR OF INDIA

A.D. 1519 TO A.D. 1530

These eleven years are all that India really can claim of Babar's

life; yet ever since the day when, after a fatal battle in 1503, he

had taken refuge in a shepherd's hut on the Kuh-i-Suliman hills, and

(as he sate eating burnt bread like another Alfred, and looking out to

where in the dim distance the wide plain of Hindustan rose up like a

sea ending the vast vista of mountains) an old woman, ragged,

decrepid, had told him tales of her youth when the earth trembled

under Timur--ever since then the idea of India had been part and

parcel of his adventurous mind.

To do as his great ancestor had done; that became his ambition. At

thirty-six he tried to make that ambition a reality.

How the last twelve years from A.D. 1507 had passed, we have no

record. The Memoirs are silent, the Diary has ceased to be written.

Why, it is impossible to say. Perhaps Babar felt his life too tame and

commonplace for record, especially after his melodramatic youth.

We left, therefore, a young man of four-and-twenty, inclined to be

shocked at a wine party, we find him again a man of thirty-six and an

inveterate toper. Anything and everything is an excuse for the

wine-cup. "Looking down from my tent on the valley below, the

watch-fires were marvellously beautiful; that must be the reason, I

think, why I drank too much wine at dinner that evening." For Babar is

still translucently frank. "I was miserably drunk," is an oft

confession, and he does not hesitate to record the fact that he and

his companions "sate drinking wine on the hill behind the water-run

till evening prayers; when we went to Tardi-Beg's house and drank till

midnight--it was a wonderfully amusing and guileless party."

It was the vice of his age. He had resisted it apparently until he was

six-and-twenty, and he had every intention of giving it up at a stated

time, for he writes in 1521: "As I intended to abstain from wine at

the age of forty, and as I now wanted somewhat less than a year of

that age, I therefore drank copiously."

One thing may be said in his favour: he never let wine interfere with

his activities, either of body or of mind. He was ready, as ever, to

detail the flowers he saw in his marches, to expatiate on a beautiful

view, to turn a _ghazel_ or quatrain, to rise ere dawn, to spend

arduous days in the saddle or on foot.

The portraits of him belong to this period, and they show us a man

tall, strong, sinewy, with the long straight nose of his race, a broad

brow, arched eyes, and a curiously small, sensitive mouth.

Such was the man who conquered India, and in the beginning of his

conquests set Timur before himself as an example to such purpose that

it is hard to believe that the ardent and bloodthirsty Mahomedan of

his first campaign is our sunny, genial Babar.

In fact the taking of Bajaur is sad reading. "The people," writes

Babar, "had never seen matchlocks, and at first were not in the least

afraid of them, but, hearing the reports of the shots, stood opposite

the guns, mocking and playing unseemly antics."

By nightfall, however, they had learnt fear, and "not a man ventured

to show his head."

This was, nevertheless, not the first time that we hear of guns and

matchlocks in Indian warfare, although it is the first absolutely

authentic mention of them. But a hundred and fifty years before this,

Mahomed-Shah Bhamani, King of Guzerat, is said to have employed them.

As a digression, it may be observed that Babar's Memoirs give us an

interesting account of the casting of a big gun by one Ustad-Ali, "who

was like to cast himself into the molten metal" when the flow of it

ceased ere the mould was full! Babar, however, "cheered him up, gave

him a robe of honour," and "succeeded in softening his humiliation."

Which, by the way, was unnecessary, since when the mould was opened

the mischief was found to be reparable, and the gun, when finished,

threw over 1,600 yards.

To return to Bajaur. The influence of Timur was strong upon Babar, and

though women and children were spared, the less said about the fate of

the town the better. Once or twice in his life the Tartar which lay

beneath his culture showed in Babar's actions; but only once or twice.

Ere he arrived at the next town he had found an excuse for clemency.

He claimed the Punjab as his by right of inheritance. "I reckoned," he

writes, "of the countries which had belonged to the Turk as my own

territory, and I permitted no plundering or pillage." An admirable

compromise, which allowed him to read his great ancestor's account of

his campaign with a clear conscience.

After a short expedition he returned to Kabul, having set a faint

finger-mark on the extreme north of India. In the next five years he

is said to have made three more expeditions into the Punjab, but the

Memoirs are again silent as to these, and they appear to have been

insignificant. But the idea of Indian conquest was not dead, and in

A.D. 1524 it burst forth again into sudden life. The cosmic touch

which roused it being the appeal of the rightful heir to the Kingdom

of Delhi for help against his nephew Ibrahim Lodi, who, he said, had

usurped the throne. At the same time Babar's governor in the Punjab

begged the emperor to come to his aid.

It was the psychic moment, and Babar was prepared for it. He marched

instantly on Lahore, and finding affairs unsatisfactory, paused ere

going further to return to Kabul, and beat up reinforcements with

which to secure his line of retreat. Coming back, he found it

necessary to settle the governor, an old Afghan, who had broken into

rebellion, and who, girding on two swords, swore to win or die. He did

neither, for Babar, catching him red-handed in rebellion with the two

swords still hanging round his neck, forgave him--as he was inclined

to forgive all men.

So, free at last, he set his face towards Delhi. What the state of

India was at this time we know. It was one of countless jealousies,

seething rebellions, open disunion--on all sides conquest seemed

possible; but Delhi had been the goal of Timur, so it must be the goal

of his descendant.

Curiously enough, this last, and in all ways most decisive attack from

the North-West on India did not come as those of Mahomed of Ghuzni, of

Mahomed Shahab-ud-din Ghori, and of Timur had come, with the returning

flight of migratory birds from the summer coolth of the high Siberian

steppes. The birds were winging westward in this April A.D. 1526, when

Babar, choosing with the eye of a general the old battle-field on the

plain near Paniput, set to work entrenching himself in a favourable

position. This was a new method of battle to the Indians. So was the

laager which he made out of his seven hundred gun-carriages linked

together by raw cow-hide to break a possible cavalry charge, and

strengthened by shield shelters for the matchlock men. For a whole

week, though the army of Delhi--consisting of a hundred thousand

troops and a thousand elephants--lay before him, Babar, whose total

force numbered twelve thousand, was neither let nor hindered in his

work. But then Sultan-Ibrahim, who commanded the enemy himself, is

briefly dismissed by the man whose whole life had been one long fight,

as being "inexperienced, careless in his movements, one who marched

without order, halted or retired without method, and engaged without

foresight."

It was on the 21st that Babar accepted the challenge which followed on

a repulsed night-attack which he attempted in order to draw the enemy.

It is interesting to note the formation Babar adopted. The laagered

guns in front; behind them--the line broken at bowshot distances by

gaps through which a hundred horsemen could charge abreast--the right

and left centre, right and left wing. Behind that again the reserve,

and the cavalry left over from the flanking parties at the extreme

right and left.

On came the Indians at quick march, aiming at Babar's right; finding

the enemy entrenched, they hesitated, and pressure from behind threw

them into disorder. In an instant the Mongol cavalry charged through

the gaps, took them in rear, discharged their arrows, and galloped

back to safety. This is their national man[oe]uvre, and proved once

more of deadly effect, as it had done in the days of Timur.

But the battle waged fiercely, uncertainly. At one time Babar's left,

over-rash, might have been overwhelmed, but for his watchful eyes, his

instant support.

So as the sun rose high, the wavering victory chose the side of the

Northerners. The Southerners, driven into their centre, were unable to

use what strength they possessed, and by noon Sultan-Ibrahim himself

lay dead, with fifteen thousand of his finest troops. The rest were in

full flight. It had been "made easy to me, and that mighty army in the

space of half a day was laid in the dust."

So wrote the victor modestly, though there can be no question that the

battle was won by superior generalship.

The way was now clear before him. He seized on Delhi and Agra without,

apparently, much bloodshed, and immediately distributed the treasures

gained amongst his followers, only reserving sufficient for the State

to send a silver coin to every living soul in Kabul, bond or free, and

to pay the army and the Government.

He kept nothing for himself; he was not of those to whom gold brings

pleasure. Yet in Hindustan he found few things for which he cared.

There can be no question that it was a disappointment to him.

"It is a country," he writes, "that has few pleasures to recommend it.

It is extremely ugly. All its towers and its lands have a uniform

look. Its gardens have no walls; the greater part of it is level

plain. And the people are not handsome. They have no idea of the

charms of friendly society. They have no good horses, no good

flesh, no good grapes, or musk-melons, no ice or cold water, no good

food or bread in their bazaars, no baths or colleges, no candles or

torches--_never even a candlestick!_"

Poor Babar! It was now the hottest of the hot weather, and the heat in

the summer of 1526 "chanced to be unusually oppressive." Hitherto

these northern invaders had sought relief from discomfort in return to

their cooler climes; but Babar had other aims. He wished to establish

himself Emperor of India, and all around him in Mewar, in Marwar, in

Gwalior, everywhere save in the line of his victorious march, lay

enemies.

He determined to remain, but had to meet as determined an opposition

on the part of his troops.

It irritated even his placid good-temper.

"Where is the sense of decency," he writes, "of eternally dinning the

same tale into the ears of one who had seen the facts with his own

eyes, and formed a calm and fixed resolve in regard to the business in

hand? What use was there in the whole army, down to the very dregs,

giving me their stupid, uninformed opinions?"

What indeed!

He gave them his in return at a full review.

"Are we to turn back from all we have accomplished and fly to Kabul

like men who have been discomfited! Let no man who calls himself my

friend ever again moot such a thing, but if there be any of you who

cannot bring himself to stay, let him go!"

Needless to say, this appeal to personal friendship was effectual,

though apparently pleasantry passed between the comrades-in-arms.

One wrote on the walls of the fort:--

"Could I but cross the river Sind,

Damned if I would return to Hind."

To which Babar sent the following reply:--

"Babar thanks God who gave him Sind and Ind,

Heat of the plains, chill of the mountain cold.

Does not the scorch of Delhi bring to his mind

Bitter bite of frost in Ghuzni of old?"

He was always writing verses; always, as he puts it, "wandering into

these follies. For God's sake, do not think amiss of me for them."

His determination to stick by what he had won proved a great factor

for peace. Many of the Mahomedan governors and petty kings

acknowledged him as suzerain; he forced others to submission, and, ere

the rains fell, bringing a welcome cessation to the fiery heat, he

found himself with only Hindus to conquer. He attempted this at first

by generosity and kindness. The son of Hassan-Khan, Rajah of Mewat

(who from his name must have been a converted Hindu), was a prisoner

of war. Babar returned him to his father with a friendly message; but

the overture failed. No sooner at ease about his son than the chief

overtly joined the enemy, and with Rajah Sanga of Mewar (sixth in

succession from Hamir, whose widow-wife won back Chitore), marched to

attack Babar. They met at the ridge of Sikri, about 20 miles from

Agra, where in after years Babar's grandson, the great Akbar, was to

found his city of victory.

We can imagine the meeting, for Rajah Sanga, though an old man, was,

in his way, Babar's double in chivalry and vitality. Both knew it was

war to the death. And the old "Lion of the Rajputs," minus an eye and

an arm, lame of leg and with eighty scars of battle on his body, must

have taken stock of his foeman with inward admiration.

Here was no weakling, unnerved by luxury, but a man after a Rajput's

heart. A man who swam every river he crossed for sheer joy in

breasting a strong stream, who lived in the saddle, who, if

challenged, would snatch up a comrade in either arm, and run round the

battlements of a fort, leaping the embrasures in laughing derision; a

man, too, well versed in warfare, better armed, if with a far smaller

force at his disposal.

But if Babar had advantages he had also disadvantages. The hot weather

had told on his troops, a preliminary reverse at Byana had unsteadied

their nerves, which broke down absolutely when an astrologer, arriving

unseasonably from Kabul, talked about the aspect of Mars and loudly

presaged disaster. It needed all Babar's marvellous vitality, all that

self-confidence which is the very essence of genius, to keep his

followers in hand. For he recognised the virtues of his enemies. He

saw that they were animated by one all-vivifying spirit of devotion,

of national pride.

To match this, if he could, in his own rough-and-ready hordes of

horsemen, he proclaimed a "Jehad," or Holy War. Yet something more was

needed to "stiffen their sinews, and summon up the blood." His own

mind reverted, despite his courage, to many a sin of omission and

commission. It was a time for repentance, for vows, for anything which

would, as it were, bring the fourth dimension into life. So one

evening he assembled his troops; before them he broke his jewelled

wine-cups and beakers, he emptied the wine of Shiraz, the wine of

Tabrez upon the dust, and solemnly made his confession of sin, his vow

of total abstinence. His manifesto began well--"Gentlemen and

soldiers! Whoso sits down to the feast of life must end by drinking

the cup of death."

It was an inspiration! Wine-cups poured on to the pile, oaths were

sworn, from that moment the army plucked up courage. There was no good

in further delay. Babar had staked his all on this chance, he was

eager to try conclusions. On 12th March he marched his army in battle

array for 2 miles, he himself galloping along the line encouraging,

giving special orders how each division was to act, how each separate

man was to proceed and engage. But it was not until Saturday, the 16th

March 1527, that the second great fight between the west and the east,

between Mongol and Aryan, Islamism and Hinduism began, this time on

the plains of Kanwaha. What the force of the imperial troops was is

unknown; most likely less than one-half of the two hundred thousand

said to have been ranged on the Rajput side. In truth, there were

almost too many there, and their interests were too divided.

So suspicion of some treachery is not lacking. Be that as it may, both

sides fought bravely; but Babar's unusual disposition of his troops,

by which fully one-half of his force was held in reserve, seems to

have turned the tide of fortune in his direction, and by evening (the

battle began at half-past nine in the morning) the last lingering

remnant of concerted Rajput resistance was swept away, and Babar was

unquestioned Emperor of India. Had he then pressed his victory home,

the Rajput power would have been shattered absolutely. But he

preferred to take the task in detail. It is a thousand pities that

Babar's desire to do justice to this great battle induced him to give

it in the grandiloquent and elaborate despatch of his Secretary,

instead of in one of his own inimitable descriptions, but we have at

least the satisfaction of reading the torrent of abuse with which he

greeted the astrologer who--"_most unwisely_"--came to congratulate

him on his victory. "Insufferable evil-speaker" is one of the mildest

of his epithets; but he gave him a liberal present, and bid him quit

the presence and the dominions for ever.

He spent the next few months in attempting to restore order to the

Government, and when winter brought the fighting season once more, he

marched on the town of Chanderi, which had become a stronghold of the

remaining Rajputs. Here he saw, almost contemptuously, the final

sacrifice of the _Johar_. It did not impress him, possibly because he

held the previous defence of the fortress to have been poor,

half-hearted.

About this time prolonged attacks of fever warned him that he could

not in India trifle with his health as he had trifled with it in the

north.

He thought once that he had hit on a marvellous febrifuge--the

translation of religious tracts into verse!--and he records with

interest how one bout ended before he had finished his task; but the

effect was not lasting. Still, nothing crippled his extraordinary

energy, and so late as March 1529 he writes in his diary:

"I swam across the Ganges for amusement. I counted my strokes, and

found that I swam over in thirty-three; then I took my breath and swam

back. I had crossed by swimming every river I met, except (till then)

the Ganges."

He was very happy, apparently, in these days. India was at peace under

stern military control. At Agra, where he had settled, beautiful

gardens were growing up, in which flourished many a flower he had

loved in the wild adventurous days of his youth. Nor did he confine

himself to old favourites. We read of a wonderful red oleander, unlike

all other oleanders, which he found in an ancient garden at Gwalior.

His old love of Nature, too, finds expression in a detailed account of

the fauna and flora of his new possessions.

Finally, he was happy in his domestic relations. In the Memoirs

of his daughter, Gulbadan, we read of the joyful evening when news

came to him that the long-expected caravan from Kabul was within six

miles of the city, when, without waiting for a horse, bareheaded, in

slipper-shoon, he had run out to meet his "Dearest-dear," had met her,

and walked the weary miles along the dusty road beside her palanquin.

In Babar's Memoirs this stands in a single sentence, pregnant with

meaning:--

"On Sunday at midnight I met Mahum again"--

Mahum being the pet name for the wife who had borne him the three

daughters whom he loved so well, the son Humayon of whom he was so

proud.

Concerning the latter he writes:--

"I was just talking to his mother about him when in he came" (from

Badakhshan). "His presence opened our hearts like rosebuds, and made

our eyes shine like torches. The truth is, that his conversation has

an inexpressible charm, he realises absolutely the ideal of perfect

manhood."

Brave words these; but Babar was ready to stand by them to the death.

The story is a strange one, but it is well authenticated. In October

A.D. 1530 Humayon was brought back to Agra, sick. The physicians

despaired of his life, the learned doctors declared that nothing could

save him save the Mercy of God, and suggested some supreme sacrifice.

Babar caught at the idea. "I can give my life," he said, "it is the

dearest thing I have, and it is the dearest thing on earth to my son."

And in spite of remonstrance--the learned doctors having apparently

intended a present to God (through them!) of money or jewels--he

adhered to his decision. He entered his son's room, he stood at the

head of the bed in prayer, then walked round it three times, solemnly

saying the while: "On me be thy suffering."

Was it the extreme nervous, tension acting on a constitution weakened

by fever, by hardships of every kind, which made his prayer effectual?

Who can say? Certain it is that he died in his forty-ninth year, and

Humayon lived on to die at the same age.

Babar, by his own request, was buried beside his mother in the Garden

of the New Year at Kabul. He rests there within hearing of the running

streams, within sight of the tulips and roses which he so dearly

loved, for which he had so often longed with a "deep home-sickness and

sense of exile."

So the most romantic figure of Indian history vanishes from our ken.

THE GREAT MOGHULS

HUMAYON

A.D. 1530 TO A.D. 1556

Humayon was practically the only son of his father. There can be no

doubt that Babar regarded Mahum, the mother of the four children of

whom he was so passionately fond, Humayon, Rose-blush, Rose-face,

Rose-body, from a different standpoint from his other wives, of whom

he seems to have had four. This, however, did not prevent there being

three other princes, Kamran, Hindal, and Askari, in the direct line of

succession. Apparently they must have been somewhat troublesome before

Babar's death, since one of his last words to his beloved heir was the

hope that kindness and forgiveness should ever be shown to them. And

right well did Humayon keep his promise. Had he been less

affectionate, less tender-hearted, he had been a better and a more

successful king. His patience was early tried. Almost before the deep

and sincere mourning for the kindly dead, which Lady Rose-body

describes in her Memoirs, was over, he had to decide between fraternal

war and Kamran's claim to supremacy in the Punjab. He chose the

latter, an initial mistake which cost him dear. There must, indeed,

have been some impression abroad that the new king had less fibre than

his father, for from the very first Humayon found himself enmeshed in

a perfect network of revolt and conspiracy. He was now a young man of

three-and-twenty, tall, extremely handsome, witty, and of the most

charming manners. Unfortunately, he had already contracted the opium

habit, which, though as yet it had not set its mark on his vitality,

undoubtedly disposed him to be more easy-going than even Nature had

intended him to be; and that is saying much, for his sweetness of

temper is surprising. His whole life appears to have been spent in

forgiving injuries which, by all the rules of justice and expediency,

he should not have forgiven. Succeeding to his father in A.D. 1530, he

was instantly engaged in war--fruitless war. Brave to a fault, not

without intelligence, something always seemed to stand between him and

success. The story of his failure to relieve Chitore is typical of

him. Its widowed Rani, in sore straits to save it for her infant son

from the hands of Bahadur-Shah, King of Guzerat (one of the many

kings who snatched at every opportunity of enlarging their borders),

sent a Ram-Rukhi, or Bracelet-of-the-Brother, to Humayon. Now this

Brother-Bracelet is in Rajasthan what a lady's glove was to chivalry.

Only in greater degree, for the recipient becomes a brother--a

bracelet-bound brother. There is no value in the pledge. It is generally

a thin silk cord, to which are attached seven differently-coloured

tassels; but once given and accepted by the return of a tiny silken

bodice, called a _kachli_, it is an inviolable tie. In her extremity

Kurnatavi sent hers to Humayon, whose fame as a puissant knight had

reached her ears. He was enchanted with the romance of the idea, and

instantly left the campaign on which he was engaged to go to her rescue.

And then? Then he dallied. Then he became involved in a wordy, witty,

pedantic war in verse with Bahadur-Shah, in which much point was laid on

the resemblance of the name Chitore to some other word; in the midst of

which the city fell, and suffered yet one more sack.

But the most memorable event of the early years of his reign was,

however, the siege of Chunar, where he found himself first matched

against the man who was eventually for a time to wrest his kingdom

from him, and send him out a wanderer on the face of the earth for

twelve long years.

This siege, which Humayon felt compelled to carry through before

marching on Bengal, was in reality a deep-laid plan of the rebel

Sher-Khan. It was a method--often adopted in modern warfare, but until

then unheard of in the East--of holding up his enemy's forces until

such time as he had consolidated his own powers. It answered

admirably. The rock of Chunar, detached outpost of the Vindhya

mountains which frowns over the Ganges, engaged all Humayon's

attention for months, and when, after reducing it, he pushed on,

Sher-Khan once more met brute-force by guile, and leading Humayon on,

left him to stew for the rainy season in the delta of the Ganges, a

prey to flood and fever, while he himself looked down on him from the

low hills of Northern Berars. It was a bitter beating! A prey to

mosquitoes, to malaria, it was with difficulty that Humayon's troops

managed to preserve their communications with their base. Every tank

was a lake, every brook a river. Their spirits sank, and no sooner

were the roads opened than they deserted in hundreds; Prince

Hindal--who, despite the virtue of being nearly always faithful to his

brother, appears to have been of little good to him--setting the

example by leaving ere the rains had stopped.

So when the dry season brought the possibility of campaign, Humayon

had no choice but to retreat from the now daily increasing boldness of

his enemy, and try to force his way back to Agra. In this he was

stopped by the river Ganges, which it was necessary to cross in order

to avoid an entrenched camp which he could neither pass nor hope to

reduce.

The bridge of boats took close on two months to complete, and then, a

night or two before retreat became possible, the imperial camp was

surprised about daybreak by the watchful enemy. It must have been a

very complete surprise, for the emperor himself had only time to mount

his horse, and after a vain appeal to his officers for one effort at

least to repel the attack, accept their advice and ride for his life

to the river-side. The bridge was not finished, there was no time for

hesitation, so Humayon urged his horse into the stream. It sank ere it

could reach the shore, and the emperor would undoubtedly have done so

likewise, but for the intervention of a water-carrier who was crossing

with his skin bag, inflated with air, doing duty as a float.

It proved enough to support two; Humayon's life was saved, but his

queen was left in Sher-Shah's hands. The whole story has a smack of

opium about it, and it seems more than probable that the young king,

roused out of a drugged sleep, had not his wits about him. Nothing

else can explain the fact of Babar's son running like a hare, and

leaving his womenkind behind him. His wife appears, however, not to

have suffered thereby in any way, not even in her affection for her

handsome, thriftless king, for it was she, a childless widow, who

after his death erected the splendid mausoleum at Delhi which bears

his name.

There is also something of opium in the promise which Humayon made to

the water-carrier, that _if_ he came to Agra, and _if_ he found

Humayon alive, he might, as a reward, claim to be king for a day.

He did come, so we are told, and for a day sate on the throne of the

Emperor of India. Humayon, always fond of a joke, made merry over this

one, and had prime fun in cutting up the water-carrier's skin bag into

wads (which were duly stamped as coin in the mint), and in other merry

antics, for he was light-hearted like his father. Nevertheless, the

jest cost him dear, for it drew down on him the wrath of his sour

brother Kamran, who always nourished the secret belief--not an

unfounded one--that he would have made a better king than his brother.

This, however, was after Humayon's generous condonation of both his

brothers' grievous faults, and should have closed their lips from

criticism. For both Kamran and Hindal, seizing the opportunity of this

disaster, claimed the throne, and marching on Agra from different

sides, fell out over the question, until recalled to a sense of their

common danger from the Bengal enemy.

Then the three royal brothers made friends, Humayon, as ever, eager to

clasp hands with those of whom he used to say: "How can I quarrel with

them? Are they not monuments of my dear, dead father?"

Practically this defeat on the banks of the Ganges was Humayon's

Waterloo. He held his head above water for a while, attempted another

campaign next year, lost once more on the banks of the Ganges near

Kanauj, and was, with his army, absolutely driven into the river.

Thence he escaped with difficulty, and but for the timely aid of two

turbans knotted and thrown out to him, would undoubtedly have been

drowned under the high bank which was too steep for his elephant to

climb. Joined by his brothers Hindal and Askari, he fled to Agra,

thence with his women and part of his treasures to Delhi, and so,

gathering what he could at the latter place, to Lahore. But he was no

welcome guest to Kamran, who, fearing to be embroiled in the quarrel

with Sher-Shah, withdrew to Kabul, leaving Humayon helpless. He turned

then to Sinde as a refuge, and after two and a half years of many

adventures, found himself a mere wanderer in the desert.

It was, then, at the lowest ebb of fortune, that Fate interfered to

make him--which is, indeed, his only real claim to remembrance--the

father of the greatest king India has ever known.

The story is romantic in the extreme. His brother Hindal was over the

Indus-water, in the rich province of Sehwan, and Humayon, who from

bitter experience had reason to doubt the former's loyalty, was

keeping an eye on his proceedings. He therefore crossed the river for

an interview at the town of Patar. He found Hindal in the midst of

festivities; for what purpose history sayeth not, but from what

followed it seems likely that it was preparatory to a marriage. His

mother, at any rate, gave an entertainment to all the ladies of the

court, and at this Humayon saw, and instantly fell in love with, a

girl of sixteen, called Hamida-Begum. Hearing she was not as yet

betrothed, he instantly said he would marry her. Then ensued a violent

quarrel between the brothers, from which it seems likely that

Humayon's fancy had chosen the bride-elect. The girl wept at both

brothers. They stormed; but finally Hindal's mother counselled her son

to yield, and the thirty-eight-year-old Humayon carried off the prize.

Their honeymoon cannot have been cloudless, for they spent it in

danger of their lives; but Humayon must from his temperament have been

a most beguiling bridegroom, and the little bride's tears soon dried.

She followed him bravely, early in the next year, through the Great

Desert of India, where horse and man nearly died of thirst.

That ceaseless marching from fresh enemies by day and night must have

been a terrible experience for the young wife, soon to become a

mother; but she had at least the consolation of her husband's deep,

absorbing devotion. Once when her palfrey fell never to rise again,

the king put her on his charger, and walked beside her bridle rein all

through the long, weary night-march. The stars must have looked down

kindly on them as they toiled along, hand fast in hand.

It is a pretty picture, anyhow. So, after unheard-of miseries, they

gained the quaint, stern old fort of Amarkot, which rises bare and

square out of the desert sand. One can imagine that August day, with

the parching wind beating the fine, sharp sand of the desert against

the purple-stained bricks, and grinding them to grey frostiness.

Here the Pathan chatelain, taking pity on the outwearied princess,

offered her asylum. Humayon, however, must go on; there was no rest,

no shelter for such as he. It was four days after the sorrowful

parting that a courier rode post-haste after the wanderer, telling him

that a son was born to him-his first, his only son. There was no gold

in the camp to give the messenger. All of regal pomp that could be

found was a bag of musk, and this the proud father broke upon an

earthenware platter, and distributed to his followers as a royal

present in honour of "an event which diffused its fragrance over the

whole habitable world."