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CHAPTER I.

THE EMPIRE OF THE GREAT MOGUL.

A.D. 1526-1857.

HERE has seldom appeared in the history of the

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world a succession of more splendid princes than the sovereigns of the Mogul dynasty during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; from the time when Babur effected the conquest of Hindostan down to the death of Aurungzebe in 1707. The deeds of the Emperor Babur are so full of romance, that they seem to warrant the trite saying of "truth being stranger than fiction." Sixth in descent from his lineal ancestor, Timour the Tartar, with a mother of the race of Ghengiz Khan, whose paternal inheritance was merely the city and district of Cabul, in Afghanistan, and who, shortly after his accession, was reduced to such straits of poverty, that even his servants abandoned him; Babur crossed the Indus, December 15th, 1525, at the head of only 10,000 picked horsemen, and after a series of brilliant victories captured Delhi, where he was proclaimed emperor, May 10th, 1526, and founded the Mogul dynasty, which gradually became possessed of so large a portion of Hindostan.

The extensive dominions possessed by the Mogul emperors in the time of Shah-Jehán and Aurungzebe

-which included the richest and most fertile portions of the earth, and in which they were not merely sovereigns, but possessors of so large a portion of the soil as to render unnecessary anything like the civil list of European monarchs in the present dayyielded them a revenue such as had never been known since the days of Solomon, when "silver and gold at Jerusalem were as plenteous as stones." Several of these Mogul princes were distinguished by a passion for architecture; and the unlimited means at their disposal enabled them to indulge their whims to the utmost extent. The very tombs which they raised over their deceased relations, such as TajMahal at Agra, the most splendid mausoleum in the world, and the most touching tribute of affection ever paid by a Mohammedan prince to the memory of a beloved consort, would elsewhere have been deemed palaces for the living, save among the ancient Egyptians, who appear to have entertained similar feelings of regard for their cherished dead.

No single edifice, however stately, can give an adequate idea of the scale on which the architectural operations of the Mogul emperors, by means of their boundless wealth, were carried on. They had but to speak the word, and in a few years a range of rocky hills became the site of a new metropolis, fitted for the reception of half a million of subjects; and history records more than one instance in which a creation of this kind was commenced and completed by one prince, just as the magnificent palace at Westminster of the Houses of Parliament will be known to posterity as the production of a single reign. Notwithstanding this unlimited outlay in

The Empire of the Great Mogul.

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architecture, the Mogul emperors are thought to have been embarrassed by their wealth, and to have been scarcely able to find sufficient use for their hoards of gold, silver, and jewels, without employing them as materials for building and the adornment of their gorgeous palaces. To mention only a few instances of this sort, some of the halls in the Emperor's palace at Delhi had their floors and ceilings covered with silver, while the walls and columns of the finest white marble were inlaid with elegant flower-work composed of cornelians and other precious stones most delicately and tastefully executed. In that place there existed the celebrated gallery which it had been intended to cover with the foliage of a golden vine, bearing emeralds and rubies, fashioned so as to represent the fruit at different stages of ripeness; though only three stocks of this vine were ever completed, the materials required for the remainder having been expended on those farfamed thrones which outshone all the other wonders of the palace put together.

Taverner, a French merchant who visited India in the middle of the seventeenth century, enumerates no less than seven of these thrones. He describes five of them as being entirely covered with diamonds and pearls. The remaining one was the most celebrated of all, known as the Tukt-Taous, or "peacock throne," so called from the golden peacock with tail outspread, and consisting entirely of sapphires and other precious stones, which crowned the top of an overhanging canopy. The throne, somewhat like a camp bed in shape, was composed of solid gold, adorned with 108 pale rubies, weighing nearly 200

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