phallic emblem, to Ghazní,1 and on the way nearly perished with his army in the Indus desert. But the famous 'Sandalwood gates of Somnáth,' brought back as a trophy from Ghazní by our troops in 1842, and paraded through Northern India, were as clumsy a forgery as the story of the jewel-bellied idol himself. Mahmúd died at Ghazní in 1030 A.D. Mahmud's As the result of seventeen invasions of India, and twenty- Results of five years' fighting, Mahmúd had reduced the western districts invasions, of the Punjab to the control of Ghazní, and left the remem- 1030 A.D. brance of his raids as far as Kanauj on the east and Guzerat in the south. He never set up as a resident sovereign in India. His expeditions beyond the Punjab were the adventures of a religious knight-errant, with the plunder of a temple- The city, or the demolition of an idol, as their object, rather than Punjab conquered serious efforts at conquest. But as his father had left Pesháwar as an outpost garrison, so Mahmúd left the Punjab as an outlying Province of Ghazní. The Muhammadan chroniclers tell many stories, not only of Mahmud's his valour and piety, but also of his thrift. One day a poor thrift. justice and woman complained that her son had been killed by robbers in a distant desert of Irak. Mahmúd said he was very sorry, but that it was difficult to prevent such accidents so far from the capital. The old woman rebuked him with the words, 'Keep no more territory than you can rightly govern; ' and the Sultán forthwith rewarded her, and sent troops to guard all caravans passing that way. Mahmud was an enlightened patron of poets, and his liberality drew the great Ferdousi to Ferdousi. his court. The Sultán listened with delight to his Sháh-námah, or Book of Kings, and promised him a dirham, meaning a golden one, for each verse on its completion. After thirty years of labour, the poet claimed his reward. But the Sultán finding that the poem had run to 60,000 verses, offered him 60,000 silver dirhams, instead of dirhams of gold. Ferdousi retired in disgust from the court, and wrote a bitter satire which tells of the base birth of the monarch to this day. Mahmud forgave the satire, but remembered the great epic, and, repenting of his meanness, sent 100,000 golden dirhams to the poet. The bounty came too late. For as the royal messengers bearing the bags of gold entered one gate of Ferdousi's city, the poet's corpse was being borne out by another. 1 Of the four fragments, he deposited one in the Jama Masjid at Ghazní, another at the entrance of his palace, the third he sent to Mecca, and the fourth to Medina. Tabakát-i-Násiri. House of Ghor, 1152-1186. Obtains the Punjab, 1186. Muham mad of Ghor's His first defeat, 1191. Dissensions among the Hindu princes. During a century and a half, the Punjab remained under Mahmud's successors, as a Province of Ghazní. But in 1152, the Afgháns of Ghor1 overthrew the Ghaznívide dynasty; and Khusrú, the last of Mahmúd's line, fled to Lahore, the capital of his outlying Indian territory. In 1186, this also was wrested from him; 2 and the Ghorian prince Shaháb-ud-dín, better known as Muhammad of Ghor, began the conquest of India on his own account. But each of the Hindu principalities fought hard, and some of them still survive seven centuries after the torrent of Afghán invasion swept over their heads. On his first expedition towards Delhi, in 1191, Muhammad of Ghor was utterly defeated by the Hindus at Thanesar, invasions, badly wounded, and barely escaped with his life. His scat1191-1206. tered hosts were chased for 40 miles. But he gathered together the wreck at Lahore, and, aided by new hordes from Central Asia, again marched into Hindustán in 1193. Family quarrels among the Rájputs prevented a united effort against him. The cities of Delhi and Kanauj stand forth as the centres of rival Hindu monarchies, each of which claimed the first place in Northern India. A Chauhán prince, ruling over Delhi and Ajmere, bore the proud name of Prithwí Rájá or Suzerain. The Ráhtor king of Kanauj, whose capital can still be traced across 8 square miles of broken bricks and rubbish, celebrated a feast, in the spirit of the ancient Horse-sacrifice, to proclaim himself the Over-lord. At such a feast, all menial offices had to be filled by royal vassals; and the Delhi monarch was summoned as a gatekeeper, along with the other princes of Hindustán. During the ceremony, the daughter of the King of Kanauj was to make her swayamvara,5 or 'own choice' of a husband, as in the Sanskrit epics. The Delhi Rájá loved the maiden, but he could not brook to stand at another man's gate. As he did not Court pageant at Kanauj, 12th century A.D. 1 Ghor, one of the oldest seats of the Afghán race, is now a district and ruined town of Western Afghánistán, 120 miles south-east of Herát. The feud between Ghor and Ghazní was of long standing and great bitterness. Mahmud of Ghazní had subdued Ghor in 1010 A.D., but about 1051 the Ghorian chief captured Ghazní, and dragged its chief inhabitants to Ghor, where he cut their throats, and used their blood in making mortar for the fortifications. After various reprisals, Ghor finally triumphed over Ghazní in 1152. 2 Tabakát-i-Násiri. Sir H. Elliot, vol. ii. p. 281. 3 See article KANAUJ, Imperial Gazetteer, vol. v. p. 204. ♦ Aswa-medha, ante, pp. 127, 131, 166. amvara, arrive, the Kanauj king set up a mocking image of him at the A swaydoor. When the princess entered the hall to make her choice, or maiden's she looked calmly round the circle of kings, then stepping choice. proudly past them to the door, threw her bridal garland over the neck of the ill-shapen image. Forthwith, says the story, the Delhi monarch rushed in, sprang with the princess on his horse, and galloped off towards his northern capital. The outraged father led out his army against the runaways, and, having called in the Afgháns to attack Delhi on the other side, brought about the ruin of both the Hindu kingdoms. The tale serves to record the dissensions among the Rájput Distribu tion of princes, which prevented a united resistance to Muhammad of Rájputs, Ghor. He found Delhi occupied by the Tomára clan, Ajmere circ. 1184. by the Chauháns, and Kanauj by the Ráhtors. These Rájput States formed the natural breakwaters against invaders from the north-west. But their feuds are said to have left the King of Delhi and Ajmere, then united under one Chauhán Overlord, only 64 out of his 108 warrior chiefs. In 1193, the Afgháns again swept down on the Punjab. Prithwí Rájá of Delhi and Ajmere1 was defeated and slain. His heroic princess burned herself on his funeral pile. Muhammad of Ghor, having occupied Delhi, pressed on to Ajmere; and in 1194, overthrew the rival Hindu monarch of Kanauj, whose body was identified on the field of battle by his false teeth. The brave Ráhtor Rájputs of Kanauj, with other of the Rájput Rájput clans in Northern India, quitted their homes in large migrations into Rájbodies rather than submit to the stranger. They migrated putána. to the regions bordering on the eastern desert of the Indus, and there founded the military kingdoms which bear their name, Rájputána, to this day. History takes her narrative of these events from the matter-of-fact statements of the Persian annalists. But the Hindu court-bard of Prithwí Rájá left behind a patriotic version of the fall of his race. His balladchronicle, known as the Prithwíráj Rásau of Chánd, is one of the earliest poems in Hindi. It depicts the Musalmán invaders as beaten in all the battles except the last fatal one. Their leader is taken prisoner by the Hindus, and released for a 1 Descended from the eponymous Kájá Aja of Ajmere, circ. 145 A.D. ; and on the mother's side, from Anang Pál Tuar, Rájá of Delhi, who adopted him; thus uniting Delhi to Ajmere. See Imperial Gazetteer, vol. i. pp. 93, 94. 2 Firishta (i. 161-187), the Tabakát-i-Násirí of Minháju-s-Siráj, and others; translated in Sir Henry Elliot's 2d, 5th, and 6th volumes. Muhammadan conquest of Bengal, 1203. Muhammad of Ghor's work in India, 1191-1206. heavy ransom. But the quarrels of the chiefs ruined the Hindu cause. Setting aside these patriot songs, Benares and Gwalior mark the south-western limits of Muhammad of Ghor's own advance. But his general, Bakhtiyár Khiljí, conquered Behar in 1199,1 and Lower Bengal down to the delta in 1203. On the approach of the Musalmáns, the Bráhmans advised Lakshman Sen, the King of Bengal, to remove his capital from Nadiyá to some more distant city. But the prince, a religious old man of eighty, could not make up his mind until the Afghán general had seized his capital, and burst into the palace one day while his majesty was at dinner. The monarch slipped out by a back door without having time to put on his shoes, and fled to Purí in Orissa, where he spent his remaining days in the service of Jagannath.2 Meanwhile the Sultán, Muhammad Ghorí, had divided his time between campaigns in Afghánistán and Indian invasions. Ghazní was his capital, and he had little time to consolidate his Indian conquests. Even in the Punjab, the tribes were defeated rather than subdued. In 1203, the Ghakkars issued from their mountains, took Lahore, and devastated the whole Province. In 1206, a party of the same clan swam the Indus, on the bank of which the Afghán camp was pitched, and stabbed the Sultán while asleep in his tent.5 Muhammad of Ghor was no religious knight-errant like Mahmud of Ghazní, but a practical conqueror. The objects of his distant expeditions were not temples, but Provinces. Subuktigín had left Peshawar as an outpost of Ghazní (977 A.D.); and Mahmúd had reduced the western Punjab to an outlying Province of the same kingdom (1030 A.D.). That was the net result of the Túrkí invasions of India. But Muhammad of Ghor left the whole north of India, from the delta of the Indus to the delta of the Ganges, under skilful Muhammadan generals, who on his death set up for them 1 History of Bengal from the first Muhammadan Invasion to 1757, by Major Charles Stewart, p. 25 (Calcutta, 1847). The nearly contemporary authority is the Tabakát-i-Násirí (1227-41); Sir H. Elliot, vol. ii. pp. 307-309. 2 Stewart, p. 27. The Tabakát-i-Násirí merely says 'he went towards Sanknát' (sic) (Jagannáth?); Sir H. Elliot, vol. ii. p. 309. 3 Firishta, vol. i. pp. 182-184. As far south as the country near Múltán, Táju-l-Ma-ásir ; Sir H. Elliot, vol. ii. pp. 233-235; Tárikh-i-Alfi, v. 163. The Muhammadan historians naturally minimize this episode. * Sir H. Elliot, vol. ii. pp. 235, 297, 393. Brigg's Firishta, vol. i. pp. 185-6. India sub dued. selves (1206 A.D.). His Indian Viceroy, Kutab-ud-dín, pro- Northern fortune in India from Sind to Lower Bengal. His name is dín, 1206-10; preserved at his capital by the Kutab Mosque, with its grace- Slave The Slave Dynasty found itself face to face with the three The Slave perils which have beset the Muhammadan rule in India from Dynasty, 1206-90. the outset, and beneath which that rule eventually succumbed. First, rebellions by its own servants, Musalmán generals, or viceroys of Provinces; second, revolts of the Hindus; third, fresh invasions, chiefly by Mughals, from Central Asia. ties. Altamsh, the third and greatest Sultán of the line (1211-36 Its difficulA.D.), had to reduce the Muhammadan Governors of Lower Bengal and Sind, both of whom had set up as independent rulers; and he narrowly escaped destruction by a Mughal invasion. The Mughals under Changiz Khán swept through the Indian passes in pursuit of an Afghán prince; but their progress was stayed by the Indus, and Delhi remained untouched. Before the death of Altamsh (1236 A.D.), the Hindus had Altamsh, ceased for a time to struggle openly; and the Muhammadan 1211-36. Viceroys of Delhi ruled all India on the north of the Vindhyá range, including the Punjab, the North-Western Provinces, Oudh, Behar, Lower Bengal, Ajmere, Gwalior, Málwá, and Sind. The Khalif of Baghdád acknowledged India as a separate Muhammadan kingdom during the reign of Altamsh, and struck coins in recognition of the new empire of Delhi (1229 A.D.).3 Altamsh died in 1236. 1 Imperial Gazetteer, vol. iii. p. 88. 2 * The original materials for Kutab-ud-din Aibak's reign are to be found in Firishta, vol. i. pp. 189-202 (ed. 1829); and the Indian Historians, translated by Sir Henry Elliot, vols. ii. iii. iv. and v. 3 Chronicles of the Pathan Kings of Delhi, by Edward Thomas, p. 46 (Milne, 1871). Original materials for Shams-ud-din Altamsh: Firishta, vol. i. pp. 205-212 (1829); Sir Henry Elliot, vols. ii. iii. iv. |