hereafter." When the Rajpoot's hosts were ranged to advance against the Islamite, Sunjogta armed her husband. "In vain she sought the rings of his corslet; her eyes were fixed on the face of the Chohan, as those of the famished wretch who finds a piece of gold. The sound of the drum reached the ear of the Chohan; it was as that of a death-knoll on that of Sunjogta and as he left her to head Delhi's heroes she vowed that henceforward water only should sustain her! I shall see him again in the region of Surya, but never more in Yoginipoor (Delhi).' Her prediction was fulfilled; her lord was routed, made captive, and slain; and, faithful to her vow, she mounted the funeral pyre." By this act of faith the Sati not only made atonement for the sins of her husband and secured the remission of her own, but had the joyful assurance of reunion to the object whose beatitude she procured. A Princess of Haravati, one of the queens of the illustrious Jey Sing, is the Rajpoot conception of true female modesty. Her manners and garb, in accord with the simplicity of her provincial capital, subjected her to the badinage of the more refined court of Amber, whose ladies had added the Imperial costume to their own native dress. "One day, being alone with the prince, he began playfully to contrast the sweeping jupe of Kotah with the more scanty robe of the belles of his own capital; and, taking up a pair of scissors, said he would reduce it to an equality with the latter. Offended at such levity, she seized his sword, and assuming a threatening attitude said, 'that in the house to which she had the honour to belong they were not habituated to jests of this nature; that mutual respect was the guardian not only of happiness, but of virtue'; and she assured him that if he ever again so insulted her, he would find that the daughter of Kotah could use a sword more effectively than the prince of Amber the scissors." The Queen of Ganore is as grand as Lucretia. After having defended five fortresses against the foe, she retreated to her last stronghold on the Nerbudda River. She had scarcely left the boat when the assailants arrived in pursuit. The garrison were few in number, and the fortress was soon in possession of the enemy. The fame of the radiant beauty of the Queen of Ganore had reached the Muslim conqueror, and he begged her to reign over the fortress and himself. Denial was useless. The Khan awaited her reply in the hall below. "She sent a message of assent, with a complimentary reflection on his gallant conduct and determination of pursuit, adding that he merited her hand for his bravery, and might prepare for the nuptials, which should be celebrated on the terrace of the palace. She demanded two hours for unmolested preparation, that she might appear in appropriate attire, and with the distinction her own and his rank demanded." The two hours sped away. The Khan was summoned to the terrace. "Robed in the marriage garb presented to him by the Queen, with a necklace and aigrette of superb jewels from the coffers of Ganore, he hastened to obey the mandate, and found that fame had not done justice to her charms. He was desired to be seated, and in conversation full of rapture on his side, hours were as minutes while he gazed on the beauty of the Queen. But presently his countenance fell— he complained of heat; punkas and water were brought, but they availed him not, and he began to tear the bridal garments from his frame, when the Queen thus addressed him: Know, Khan, that your last hour is come; our wedding and our death shall be sealed together. The vestments which cover you are poisoned; you had left me no other expedient to escape pollution.' While all were horrorstruck by this declaration, she sprung from the battlements into the flood beneath. The Khan died in extreme torture, and was buried on the road to Bhopal." An ancient pagan scene, yet not without a charm even to the modern Christian world. And now, as the sun threw a violet haze over the mountains, we descended the hill, and cast a last look on the massive walls, the fairy kiosks, the slender balconies of the Royal Fortress, a fit home for knights of old. VI DELHI D ELHI is the Empress of Indian cities. She has often been sacked and left naked and desolate. But she could not be despoiled of the incomparable situation which marks her for the metropolis of a great Empire. Standing on her high battlements, the eye can sweep over a wide expanse of yellow country scarred by ravines and dotted with trees and gardens till it reaches a long range of barren hills bathed in orange and lilac. Scattered over this wild stretch of land are surviving ruins, remnants of mighty edifices, tombs of warriors and saints, which convey a more impressive sense of magnificence than Imperial Rome. They are memorials not of a single city but of supplanted nations. Eight centuries before the Latins settled on the plains of Latium and Campania a band of Aryans drove from here aboriginal savages and founded on the left bank of the Jumna the city of Indrapastha, which grew into a mighty kingdom. Then the Muslim appeared on the scenes, and Hindu civilization disappeared in smoke and ruin, and of all that it contained there is nothing left but an iron pillar which records that Raja Dhava, who erected it, "obtained with his own arm an undivided sovereignty on the earth for a long period." An old prophecy declared that the Hindu sovereigns should endure as long as the pillar stood. Quamdiu stabit Colyseus stabit et Roma, quando cadit Colyseus cadit Roma "While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand, When Delhi first became the capital of a Muhammadan Empire (1206) the founder Kutb-ud-Din (the Pole-star of religion), originally a Turki slave, was told the prophecy, but he showed his contempt for it by allowing the pillar to remain, for it was more gratifying to the pride of the Muslim conqueror to allow the idolater's pillar to stand in the courtyard of a great mosque built with the spoils of innumerable Hindu shrines. The great mosque is now in ruins, but the remaining arches, with their granite pillars, covered with inscriptions in the florid Cufic character, Bishop Heber considered to be "as fine in their way as any of the details of York Minster." Ibn Batuta, the Tangier traveller who saw the mosque little more than a century after its erection, describes it as having no equal either for beauty or extent. The Turki slave, not contented with erecting a mosque from the materials of the infidel temples, determined to build a tower which should mark the triumph of Islam over the foul worship that prevailed in them, and from whose summit the Faithful should hear the Muezzins (criers) proclaim the Ezan or public invitation to prayer in the name of God and His prophet. Far over the ruins of Delhi soars the tapering shaft which bears his name. By sublime massiveness and subtle alterations of proportion the architect has created a transcendent building. The purplish red of the sandstone at the base is finely modulated through a pale pink in the second story to a dark orange at the summit, which harmonizes with the blue of an Indian sky. Dark bands of Arabic writing round the three lower stories contrast with the purple red. The Hindus whom the Muslim conquerors employed to erect and embellish their buildings wrought cunningly and with knowledge. His great aim, as Ram Raz points out in his work on Hindu architecture, was to produce beauty by geometrical proportion. The height of the column (238 feet 1 inch) is exactly five times the diameter, and that of the lower story |