Dissensions among the Hindu princes. Court pageant at Kanauj, 12th century A.D. A sway 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 Rahtor king of Kanauj, whose capital can still be traced across eight square miles of broken bricks and rubbish,1 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 nominally to make her swayamvara, or 'own choice' of a husband, a pageant survival of the reality 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 arrive, the Kanauj king set up a mocking image of him at the door. When amvara, or the princess entered the hall to make her choice, she looked calmly round the circle of kings, then stepping 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. maiden's choice. Distribu tion of Rajputs, circ. 1184. The tale serves to record the dissensions among the Rájput princes, which prevented a united resistance to Muhammad of Ghor. He found Delhi occupied by the Tomára clan, Ajmere by the Chauhans, 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 Ajmere 3 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 1 See article KANAUJ, The Imperial Gazetteer of India. * Aswa-medha, described in a previous chapter. 3 Descended from the eponymous Rájá 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 article AJMere-MerWARA, in The Imperial Gazetteer of India. MUHAMMADAN CONQUEST OF BENGAL. 277 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 Rajput 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 race-name, Rajputána, to this day. History takes her narrative of these events from the matterof-fact statements of the Persian annalists.1 But the Hindu court-bard of Prithwí Rájá left behind a patriotic version of the fall of his race. His ballad-chronicle, known as the Prithwiráj 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 heavy ransom. But the quarrels of the chiefs ruined the Hindu cause. madan conquest of Setting aside these patriotic songs, Benares and Gwalior mark the south-western limits of Muhammad of Ghor's own advance. But his general, Bakhtiyár Khilji, conquered Behar in 1199,2 Muhamand Lower Bengal down to the delta in 1203. On the approach of the Musalmáns, the Brahmans advised Lakshman Bengal, 1203. Sen, the King of Bengal, to remove his residence from Nadiyá to some more distant city. But the prince, an 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 Jagannáth.3 Meanwhile the Sultán, Muhammad Ghorí, divided his time between campaigns in Afghánistán and Indian invasions; 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, 1 Firishta (i. 161-187), the Tabakát-i-Násirí of Minháju-s-Siráj, and others; translated in Sir Henry Elliot's Persian Historians, vols. ii. v. and vi. 2 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's Persian Historians, vol. ii. pp. 307-309. 3 Stewart, p. 27. The Tabakát-i-Násirí merely says 'he went towards Sanknát' (sic) (Jagannáth?); Sir H. Elliot's Persian Historians, vol. ii. p. 309. Muhammad of Ghor's work in India, 1191-1206. Northern took Lahore,1 and devastated the whole Province.2 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 to death while asleep in his tent.3 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 Muhammadan generals, who on his death set up for themselves. His Indian Viceroy, Kutab-ud-dín, proclaimed himIndia sub- self sovereign of India at Delhi, and founded a line which lasted from 1206 to 1290. Kutab claimed the control over dued. Kutab-ud- all the Muhammadan leaders and soldiers of fortune in dín, India from Sind to Lower Bengal. His name is preserved 1206-10; at his capital by the Kutab Mosque, with its graceful first The Slave 1206-90. colonnade of richly - sculptured Hindu pillars, and by the Kutab Minár,1 which raises its tapering shaft, encrusted with chapters from the Kurán, high above the ruins of old Delhi. Kutab-ud-din had started life as a Túrkí slave, and several of his successors rose by valour or intrigue from the same low condition to the throne. His dynasty is accordingly known as that of the Slave Kings. Under them India became for the first time the seat of resident Muhammadan sovereigns. Kutab-ud-din died in 1210.5 The Slave Dynasty found itself face to face with the three Dynasty, perils which have beset the Muhammadan rule in India from 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; 1 Firishta, vol. i. pp. 182-184. 2 As far south as the country near Múltán, Táju-l-Ma-ásir; Sir II. Elliot's Persian Historians, vol. ii. pp. 233-235; Tárikh-i-Alfí, v. 163. The Muhammadan historians naturally minimize this episode. 3 Sir H. Elliot's Persian Historians, vol. ii. pp. 235, 297, 393. Brigg's Firishta, vol. i. pp. 185, 186. The Imperial Gazetteer of Indian, article DELHI CITY. 5 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 Persian Historians, translated by Sir Henry Elliot, vols. ii. iii. iv. and v. third, fresh invasions, chiefly by Mughals, from Central Asia. Altamsh, the third and greatest Sultán of the Slave line Its difficul(1211-36 A.D.), had to reduce the Muhammadan Governors of ties. 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 Changíz 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 Altamsh, had ceased for a time to struggle openly; and the Muhammadan 1211-36. Viceroys of Delhi ruled all India on the north of the Vindhya range, including the Punjab, the North-Western Provinces, Oudh, Behar, Lower Bengal, Ajmere, Gwalior, Málwá, and Sind. The Khálif of Baghdad 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.).1 Altamsh died in 1236. His daughter Raziyá was the only lady who ever occupied The the Muhammadan throne of Delhi (1236–39 A.D.). Learned Empress Raziya, in the Kurán, industrious in public business, firm and energetic 1236-39. in every crisis, she bears in history the masculine name of the Sultán Raziyá. But the favour which she showed to the master of the horse, an Abyssinian slave, offended her Afghán generals; and after a troubled reign of three and a half years, she was deposed and put to death.2 Mughal irruptions and Hindu revolts soon began to under- Mughal mine the Slave dynasty. The Mughals are said to have burst irruptions through Tibet into North-Eastern Bengal in 1245;3 and 1244-88. during the next forty-four years, repeatedly swept down the Afghán passes into the Punjab (1244-88). The wild Indian tribes, such as the Ghakkars 4 and the hillmen of Mewát, ravaged the Muhammadan lowlands almost up to the capital. 1 Chronicles of the Pathan Kings of Delhi, by Edward Thomas, p. 46 (Milne, 1871). Original materials for Shams-ud-dín Altamsh: Firishta, vol. i. pp. 205-212 (1829); Sir Henry Elliot's Persian Historians, vols. ii. iii. iv. Thomas' Chronicles of the Pathán Kings, pp. 104-108; Firishta, vol. i. pp. 217-222; Sir Henry Elliot's Persian Historians, vols. ii. and iii. 3 This invasion of Bengal is discredited by the latest and most critical historian, Mr. Edward Thomas, in his Pathán Kings of Delhi, p. 121, note (ed. 1871). On the other side, see Firishta, vol. i. p. 231, but cf. Col. Brigg's footnote; and the Tabakát-i-Násirí in Sir H. Elliot's Persian Historians, vol. ii. pp. 264, 344; 'In March 1245, the infidels of Changiz Khán came to the gates of Lakhnautí' (Gaur). For an account of the Ghakkars, vide ante, p. 186, chap. vii Rajput revolts. Balban, 1265-87. His cruelties to the Hindus. Rajput revolts foreshadowed that inextinguishable vitality of the Hindu military races, which was to harass, from first to last, the Mughal Empire, and to outlive it. Under the Slave kings, even the north of India was only half subdued to the Muhammadan sway. The Hindus rose again and again in Málwá, Rájputána, Bundelkhand, along the Ganges, and in the Jumna valley, marching to the river bank opposite Delhi itself.1 The last monarch but one of the Slave line, Balban (1265-87 A.D.), had not only to fight the Mughals, the wild non-Aryan tribes, and the Rájput clans; he was also compelled to massacre his own viceroys. Having in his youth entered into a compact for mutual support and advancement with forty of his Túrkí fellow-slaves in the palace, he had, when he came to the throne, to break the powerful confederacy thus formed. Some of his provincial governors he publicly scourged; others were beaten to death in his presence; and a general, who failed to reduce the rebel Muhammadan Viceroy of Bengal, was hanged. Balban himself moved down to the delta, and crushed the Bengal revolt with a merciless skill. His severity against Hindu rebels knew no bounds. He nearly exterminated the Jadún Rájputs of Mewát, to the south of Delhi, putting 100,000 persons to the sword. He then cut down the forests which formed their retreats, and opened up the country to tillage. The miseries caused by the Mughal hordes in Central Asia, drove a crowd of princes and His fifteen poets to seek shelter at the Indian court. Balban boasted that royal pen- no fewer than fifteen once independent sovereigns had fed on his bounty, and he called the streets of Delhi by the names of their late kingdoms, such as Bághdad, Kharizm, and Ghor. He died in 1287 A.D.2 His successor was poisoned, and the Slave dynasty ended in 1290.3 sioners. House of 1290-1320. In that year Jalál-ud-din, a ruler of Khilji, succeeded to the Delhi throne, and founded a line which lasted for thirty years (1290-1320 A.D.). The Khiljí dynasty extended the Muhammadan power into Southern India. Alá-ud-dín, the nephew and successor of the founder, when Governor of Karra, near Allahábád, pierced through the Vindhya ranges 1 Thomas' Pathán Kings, 131. 4 2 Materials for the reign of Balban (Ghiyás-ud-din Balban): Sir Henry Elliot's Persian Historians, vol. iii. pp. 38, 97, 546, 593 (1871); Firishta, vol. i. pp. 247-272 (1829). 3 Mr. E. Thomas' Pathan Kings, pp. 138-142. Forty miles north-west of Allahábád, once the capital of an important fief, now a ruined town. See The Imperial Gazetteer of India, article KARRA, |