"The King"--to quote the text--"acknowledged there might be reason in what they said, but replied that if he should consent to such a measure his name would be handed down to posterity as 'Mahmûd the idol-seller,' and he wished it to be 'Mahmûd the idol-breaker.' He therefore directed the troops to proceed in their work. The next blow broke open the belly of Som-nâth, which was hollow, and discovered a quantity of diamonds, rubies, and pearls of much greater value than the amount which the Brahmans had offered."<

Very dramatic, no doubt, but, unfortunately, none of these lingams are hollow. It is possible, however, that the story found base in the discovery of sacred vaults.

Be that as it may, Mahmûd, "having secured the wealth of Som-nâth," apparently fell in love with the country round about it; so much so that he proposed remaining there and sending his son Masûd back to reign at Ghuzni. It needed pressure on the part of his officers to induce him to stir; but after some difficulty in securing a Governor for Guzerât, he started to march direct towards Ghuzni by way of the desert.

This same difficulty gives us another picture.

Apparently there were two cousins Dabeshleems--fateful name, of what nationality or family absolutely uncertain--one a hermit, the other a rajah. The hermit was made governor, the prince became pretender.

Mahmûd, ere leaving, reduced the latter, and handed him over prisoner to the former. To this the hermit objected. But one course, he said, was open to him, since by the tenets of his religion no king could be put to death; he must build a vault under his throne and place the unfortunate gentleman therein for life. This would be inconvenient, therefore he prayed the conqueror to carry the rajah back with him to Ghuzni.

So Mahmûd, his army, and his vast loot, set out for the desert, set their faces for the last time away from the wealth and idolatry of India. Set them, as it turned out, very nearly away from all wealth, all faiths; for in the desert the whole army was misled for three days and three nights by a Hindu guide, "so that many of the troops died raving mad from the intolerable heat and thirst." A Hindu guide who, under torture, confessed exultantly that he was one of the priests of Som-nâth, and so died, satisfied with his measure of revenge.

Mahmûd, however, had only to prostrate himself once more, and lo! a guiding meteor, and after a long night-march, water! Water, even though it must have been the Great Salt Lake.

After this, time passed in comparative uneventfulness, until on the 23rd of April A.D. 1030, in the sixty-third year of his age, "this great conqueror gave up his body to death and his soul to immortality amid the tears of his people."

One of his last recorded remarks was his exclamation when, in answer to his enquiry, the Lord High Treasurer told him that before becoming extinct, the last dynasty had accumulated seven pounds weight of precious stones. "Thanks be to Thee, All-Powerful Being!" cried Mahmûd, prostrating himself yet once more. "Thou hast enabled me to collect more than a hundred pounds."

What did he do with all the vast wealth which in the course of his missionary work he managed to annex? We know that he built a magnificent mosque at Ghuzni called "The Celestial Bride"; but that could not have absorbed it all.

Indeed we know much of it was still in the treasury; for two days before his death he ordered all the gold and the caskets of precious stones to be brought before him, and "having seen them, he wept with regret, ordering them to be carried back, without exhibiting his generosity at that time to anybody."

Gold had evidently gripped at the heart and soul of this middle-aged, well-shaped, ugly man, who was strongly pitted with the smallpox. His was not a lovable personality in any way. Gifted with a touch of genius, gifted above all things with that marvellous vitality which is always as magic to the Indian, he was just, curiously callous, and absolutely sceptical.

He openly doubted if he was really the son of his father, and scoffed at the idea of a future state. Certainly annihilation would be a kinder fate than the one which the poet Sa'adi gives to him in the Gulistan, and which may be paraphrased thus:--

CAMPAIGNS OF THE CRESCENT

A.D. 1001 TO A.D. 1200

Part II

The Great Raider Mahmûd being now put past, the Campaigns of the Crescent continued in feebler fashion. In truth, for a few years Mahomed and Masûd, the dead king's twin sons, were occupied in settling the succession. Mahomed, the elder by some hours, mild, tractable, was his father's nominee and on the spot; Masûd, on the other hand, was a great warrior, bold, independent, and promptly claimed as his right those provinces which he had won by his sword. So they came to blows.

At the outset Mahomed's piety failed him; for having decorously halted his host during the whole of the Month of Fasting--Ramzân--Masûd thereinafter fell upon him, armed at all points, defeated him, and put out his eyes after he had reigned a short five months.

Masûd, the new king, appears to have been a man of considerable character and grim humour, for one of the first acts of his reign was in cold blood to hang an unfortunate gentleman who once, long years before, when the question of succession was the subject of conversation, had been heard to say crudely that if Masûd ever came to the throne he would suffer himself to be hanged.

So he suffered.

But in truth, as we read the story of this Ghuznevide dynasty, and of the Ghori dynasty which followed it, we rub our eyes and wonder how many centuries we have gone back. For these big, bold, burly men are fairly savages in comparison with the cultured Hindu whom they harried. And Masûd, though by repute an affable gentleman, generous even to prodigality, and of uncommon personal strength and courage, was as turbulent as a king as he had been as a prince.

His favourite maxim was, "Dominion follows the longest sword." His was not only long, but heavy. No other man of his court could wield it, and an arrow from his bow would pierce the hide of a mailed elephant. During the ten years of his reign he entered India with an army three times. But the first of these raids was followed, A.D. 1033, by a terrible famine, a still more terrible outbreak of plague, from which in one month, more than forty thousand people died in Isphahân alone.

This was in its turn followed by a severe defeat of the Ghuznevide arms by the Turkomâns on the north-east frontier; for it must not be forgotten that though these dynasties of which we are treating are counted as of India, they have in reality but little to do with it. They were but titular suzerains, and very often not that, of the more northerly provinces of Hindustan.

Apparently as a salve to resentment and shame at this defeat, Masûd began to build a fine palace at Ghuzni, over which he must have spent some of his father's treasures, for a golden chain and a golden crown of incredible weight appears as a canopy in the Hall of Audience.

It must have been this depletion of the royal treasures which led to his last and most successful campaign against the kingdom of Sivalak, where he is said to have found enormous wealth; and so on to Sônput, ancient Hindu shrine and city to the north of Delhi, whence he made a Mahmûd-like return laden with loot.

A quaint old city is Sônput, and a curious authenticity of its hoar antiquity turned up not long ago, when some cultivators were digging a well. This was a small clay image of the Sun-God, a deity to which there is now in India but one single shrine.

But here the star of Masûd's fortune touched its zenith. The Turkomâns, encouraged by success, renewed operations, finally forcing the king to abandon his border principalities and seek time in India to recover strength for renewed efforts.

Urged, perhaps, by kindness, perhaps by fear, he ordered his blinded and imprisoned brother to be brought to Lahôre, with the unforeseen result that his household troops suddenly revolted, and hoisting the blind prisoner on to their shoulders, incontinently proclaimed him once more King.

It was all over in a moment; and Masûd, whose life was spared by the mild Mahomed, found himself forced to beg a subsistence of his brother. His pride, however, would not stand the pitiful dole of £5 which was sent him, so he promptly borrowed £10 from his servants and bestowed them as bakshish on the messenger who had brought, and who took back, the shabby gift.

Not a very tactful way of beginning what was practically an imprisonment. But it was not to last long, for Prince Ahmed, Mahomed's son, in whose favour the blind king resigned the crown, would have no half-measures, and prevented further complications by burying Masûd alive.

The historian explains that the prince was suspected of a "strong taint of insanity."

In truth, homicidal mania appears to set in generally, for the remaining records of the Ghuznevide dynasty are as irrational, as murderous as transpontine melodrama.

Prince Ahmed was in due time murdered by the murdered Masûd's son, who reigned long enough to see his Indian empire almost reft from him; since with violent internal dissensions racking the body politic, there was naturally no time for foreign affairs. So in the year A.D. 1048 the Râjah of Delhi, taking counsel with his compeers of Ajmîr, Kanauj, Kalungar, Gwalîor, once more made themselves practically independent of the Crescent. Only Lahôre remained Mahomedan, repelling a siege of seven months, and after actual street fighting, succeeded in driving off the investing force.

Thus in a History of India there is small need to note that Masûd II., a child of four years, succeeding his father, reigned six days; or that Hussan Ali and Absal Raschîd between them numbered but four years.

In the general turmoil, wonder comes faintly how Ibrahîm--a worthy soul who, as the historian says, "begot 36 sons and 40 daughters by various women"--ever managed to rule for forty-two years. Apparently by a peaceful policy; but, as the same historian goes on to say that this monarch "was remarkable for morality and devotion, having in his youth succeeded in subduing his sensual appetites," one hesitates before accepting either the narrator's facts or his deductions.

Finally, after the Ghuznevide dynasty had touched a bakers' dozen, came one Byrâm, who was destined to lose the throne for his race by two useless and brutal murders. The first was the public execution of his son-in-law, an apparently harmless prince of Ghor--as the country of the Afghâns was then called. The reason of this act is obscure, though it seems probable he was suspected of high treason. Be that as it may, Kutb-din Ghori-Afghân was an ill man to assail, for he had two big brothers. The first of these, Saîf-ud-din, had no little success in his immediate campaign of revenge. Byrâm fled, Ghuzni was occupied; but finally, by a stratagem, the victor fell into his enemy's hands, whereupon the latter doubled and excelled his former crime, by blackening his captive's face, and sending him face tailwards round the town on a bullock as a preliminary to torturing him, beheading him, and impaling his grand wazîr.

Allah-ud-din, the last brother, then took up the gloves, after defying Byrâm in these words: "Your threats are as impotent as your arms! It is no new thing for kings to make war on their neighbours, but barbarity like yours is unknown to the brave, and such as none have heard of being exercised towards princes. You may therefore be assured that God has forsaken you, and has ordained that I, Allah-ud-din, should be the instrument of that just revenge denounced against you for putting to death the representative of the independent and very ancient family of Ghor."

A quaint touch! that of the "very ancient," showing the value set on blue blood in those days.

Allah-ud-din proved a true prophet. In the resulting battle the two "Khurmiels," gigantic brothers-in-arms, the Gog and Magog of those days, brought victory to his arms by the ripping up of elephants' bellies and other prodigies of strength and valour. Byrâm fled, to die miserably in India overwhelmed by misfortunes, while the conqueror earned for himself the title of "The Burner of Worlds," by the deadly revenge he took on Ghuzni and its inhabitants.

"The massacre," writes the historian, "continued for the space of seven days, in which time pity seems to have fled from the earth, and the fiery spirits of demons to actuate men. A number of the most venerable and learned persons were, to adorn the triumph, carried in chains to Ferôz-Kuh, where the victor ordered their throats to be cut, and tempering earth with their blood, used it to plaster the walls of his native city."

Allah-ud-din thus ended the House of Ghuzni; for though two descendants of Byrâm's kept a feeble hold on power from Lahôre during the space of a few years, he was the last real king. His actions are strangely at variance with his character, for he is said to have "been blest with a noble and generous disposition!"

We hear also of an uncommon thirst for knowledge. But in truth these wild, revengeful Mahomedans of the borderland were then very much as they are to-day; that is to say, proud, lawless, quick to respond in kind to good or evil, above all, possessed by a perfect devil of revenge--the cruel revenge which is ever associated with sensuality.

So, naturally, Allah-ud-din, after plastering the city walls with blood, spent the gold he had taken from Ghuzni on pleasure, until he died four years later, in A.D. 1156.

His son only reigned for a year. A fine fellow this, apparently, both physically and mentally, if we are to believe what is said of him; but, as usual, passionate, revengeful. So, seeing a chief who had fought against and defeated his father wearing some of the family jewels which had been stripped from his own wife after that occasion, he out with his sword and slew the offender forthwith. Whereupon the dead man's brother, choosing a convenient moment in the middle of a subsequent battle, out with his lance and ran the young king through the body.

Scarcely any of them, however, died in their beds. The procession of murders and sudden deaths becomes indeed monotonous, but was now to be broken for a while by the advent of another of those strong men who every now and again make, as it were, a landmark in Indian history.

This was Shahâb-ud-din who, counting the time during which he was his elder brother's deputy, was to reign for close on fifty years, and once more weld the principalities of India proper into one solid empire.

A strange history is this of the devoted brothers, who appear from their babyhood to have gone through life hand in hand in fortune and misfortune; but the house of Ghori seems to have been remarkable alike for its family feuds and for its family affection. The latter it was, be it remembered, which led to the establishment of the dynasty. Another peculiarity was their sonlessness. Ghiâss-ud-din, the elder brother, succeeded to the throne by virtue of cousinship only, and as neither he nor Shahâb-ud-din had sons, it passed at their death to a nephew.

Before that, however, India had to be reconquered, and for this purpose the Campaigns of the Crescent had to recommence.

The first was in A.D. 1176, when Mahomed Shahâb-ud-din--for ere commencing his task he added the name of the Prophet to his own, which signifies the "Meteor of Faith"--swept through the low-lying lands about the junction of the Punjâb rivers with the Indus. He must have had in his mind's eye the exploits of Mahmûd nigh on two hundred years before. Perhaps it was this memory which made him choose what is practically the same name; on the other hand, he may only have been seeking an excuse for plunder, like the dead conqueror had done in the religious enthusiasm roused by the name of the prophet.

Be that as it may, in reading the account of his exploits, one is tempted to rub one's eyes and ask, "Is this Mahmûd of Ghuzni, or Mahomed of Ghori?" So curiously alike are they in every way.

He did not, however, lead quite so many raids: on the other hand, he was more permanently successful in them, despite far more organised resistance than that which had opposed his great predecessor.

In fact, it is in this resistance that the real interest of the period lies, so it may be as well to make a complete volte face, and having viewed the introduction of Islâm to India through Mahomedan eyes, look at these final Campaigns of the Crescent from the Râjput side.

Before passing on to this, let us picture the man who, for close on half a century, found his sole occupation in a soldier's life. Here we have no added reputation of the arts or sciences. We are told he was a great king and a just man, but he appears to have been quite unscrupulous towards every one excepting his brother. Many of his successes were due to treachery, and when he died--an old man, assassinated in his sleep by those same wild tribes of the Punjâb Salt Range who inflicted so much damage on Mahmûd of Ghuzni--he was the richest king in the world. "The treasure," says the chronicler, "which this prince left behind him is almost incredible. In diamonds alone of various sizes he had five hundreds muns (at the lowest computation about 1,000 lbs.), the result of his nine expeditions into Hindustan, from each of which, excepting two occasions, he returned laden with wealth."

Yet India was still rich!

THE RAJPUT RESISTANCE

A.D. 1176 TO A.D. 1206

More than a hundred years had passed since Mahmûd of Ghuzni's strong grip had relaxed on India. During that time she had reverted, as she always will revert, to those ideals of life which suit her dreamy yet fireful temperament.

The fierce on-sweep of the Moslem scimitar had mowed down the tangle of petty chiefships which had grown up in the Dark Ages, and so left room for the spreading of four great kingdoms, Delhi, Ajmîr, Kanauj, Guzerât, which were all held by the representatives of certain Râjput clans.

Now the Râjputs are born soldiers. They represent the second, or military (called the Kshatriya) caste of ancient Vedic time; they have provided India for long centuries with her warriors, her nobles, her monarchs. Râj-pûtra means, in fact, a king's son. Their history is a magnificent one. They have faced and fought every enemy which Fate has brought to their native land in the past; they are ready still to face and fight whatever may come to it in the future. They are the Samurai of India, each clan led by a hereditary leader, and forming a separate community, bound by the strongest ties of military devotion and pride of race.

They claim to have sprung from the sun, or from the moon, or from the fire; and between them lies ever the faint jealousy of a different origin. Thus the Tomâras or Tuars of Delhi claimed the kinship of flame with the Chauhans of Ajmîr, while the Râthors of Kanauj stood by their distant sun-cousins of Guzerât. For to this day the pride of ancestry is the Râjput's most cherished inheritance. Often he has little else; but he stills scorns to turn his lance into a plough-share.

For the rest there is no people in the world whose history yields more pure romance. The chivalry of Europe seems strained and artificial beside the stern, straight-forward code of honour by which the early Râjputs regulated their dealings alike with women and with other men; and no roundel of troubadour or challenge of knight-errant could have roused more enthusiasm than did the wild love and war songs of the Râjput bards.

These, then, were the people whose resistance Mahomed Shahâb-ud-din of Ghor had to overcome, when, after an ineffectual attempt to reach the heart of India through the sandy deserts of Multân and Guzerât, and a further swoop on the country about Lahôre (in which, by treacherous stratagem, he seized on the persons who still prolonged the dying Ghuznevide dynasty and sent them northwards to imprisonment and death), he finally marched on Hindustan proper in the year A.D. 1191.

And here once more the pink-and-white mass of the huge fort of Bhatînda heaves into view as our mise en scene. The flowers of the dâkh trees had long since been picked as dye-stuff by the village women, when once more the hosts of hardy horsemen swept over the horizon. For, as ever, the Toovkhs--as the peasantry learned to call these wild raiders--came with the flights of winter birds. The fort gave in at once to the fierce attack of the Mahomedans. The filagree sugar-work on its battlements seems, indeed, to have infected the mass of stone beneath it with frailty, for despite its apparent strength, Bhatînda has been taken and retaken ofttimes. So, leaving a garrison there, Shahâb-ud-din commenced his return; for the hardy horsemen always seem to have been more afraid of melting in the heat of India than meeting the onslaught of her armies.

Ere he had gone far, however, news of recall came to him. The great Prithvi-Râj, conjoint King of Delhi and Ajmîr, with many other Indian princes, two hundred thousand horse, and three thousand elephants was behind him.

Here was challenge indeed! The heat was forgotten; he faced round to the relief of the garrison he had left, and boldly passing Bhatînda, paused to give battle on that wild plain between Karnâl and Delhi, where half the struggles for the possession of India have been fought to the bitter end.

He must have awaited his enemy with anxiety, for the fame of Prithvi-Râj had spread even amongst Mahomedans. To the Hindus he was a demi-god: the personification of every Râjput virtue, the pattern of all Râjput manhood. A bold lover, a recklessly brave knight-errant, the story of his exploits, as told by his bard, Chand, fills many books, and is still listened to of winter nights beside the smoke-palled fires by half the men and women in India. It will be sufficient to recount one here to show what manner of man he was, and how he comes still to hold the admiration, not only of the romantic Râjputs, but of all India.

Prithvi-Râj, then, was of the Chauhan, Fire-born race. Râjah of Ajmîr only, by father-to-son descent, the kingship of Delhi had come to him by the death of his maternal grandfather without male issue.

But the Râjah of Kanauj was also grandson, and elder grandson, of the dead king by another daughter. Hence arose envy and strife between the cousins; the more so, because the sixteen-year-old Prithvi carried all things before him with an élan not to be imitated. It was all very well to match the young hero's Great Horse sacrifice (the last one, it is believed, in India), with which he claimed empire, by instituting a Sai-nair, accompanied by a Self-choice (also the last), for one's only daughter, the Princess Sunjogâta of Kanauj. Now the ceremony of Sai-nair is a most august one. It is virtually a claim for universal supremacy, for divine honour. Every one concerned in it, even the scullion in the kitchen who helps to cook the feast, must be of royal blood. So all India's princes were bidden to take their part in it, excepting Prithvi-Râj, and in his place an image of clay was made and set to the lowest job--that of door-keeper.

Thus the Râjah of Kanauj strove to save his dignity, for the rites were equally old, equally honourable; but what man, even though he were king, could calculate on what a young girl, just blossoming into womanhood, would say or do?

As a matter of fact, the young Princess Fortunata (a literal translation of the name) did a very distressing thing. No doubt as she entered the splendid arena (decorated, possibly, in imitation of the celebrated one, described in the Mâhâbhârata as the scene of Drâupadi's Swayâmbara), where all the assembled princes of India--excepting, of course, her wicked cousin, Prince Prithvi--were eagerly awaiting her choice, she looked very sweet and innocent--quite entrancing, briefly, in her fresh young beauty, about which every one was raving; but who would have dreamed of the mischief which was lurking behind the eyes down-dropped as she stood hesitating, the marriage garland--which every prince longed to feel, even as a yoke, round his neck--in her dainty little hands.

And then? Hey presto! Her dainty little feet sped determinedly over the Court to the door, and there was the garland, not round any living man, but be-decorating the misshapen image of clay which Jai-Chand, her father, had caused to be put in absent Prithvi's place!

There must have been wigs on the green in the women's apartments that fateful day, with papa cursing and mamma upbraiding, while all the little culprit's female relations held up pious hands of horror. But the deed was done, and there in broad daylight, on the wings of fierce love and pride, awakened by the tale of that maiden garland on cold clay, was the twenty-one-year-old Prince Prithvi himself, the flower of Râjput chivalry, followed by youthful heroes, ready, like their chief, for soft kisses or hard blows. The last came first in that desperate five-days-running fight all the way back to Delhi, with willing Princess Fortunata in their midst, her cheek paling but her eyes dry, as one by one the dear, brave lads fell out from her cortege dead or dying.

But the bravest, the dearest, the best, held her close, unharmed, and so the soft kisses came at last.

For Prince Prithvi, though he lost some friends--lost, as the historians put it, "the sinews of India"--kept his prize, and gained for himself immortal memory in the hearts of all Râjput maidens even to the present day.

This, then, was the paladin who took the field against the bearded, middle-aged Mahomed Shahâb-ud-din, and deftly outflanking his wings, drove them back and back until the whole Mahomedan army showed a circle surrounded by the enemy. In the centre the great general himself, mad with passion at the counsel sent to him by his subordinates to save himself as best he could. His reply was to cut down the messenger, and calling on all who would to follow him, rush out on the enemy, dealing reckless, almost futile death. To no purpose. Prithvi's younger brother, marking down his quarry, drove his elephant full against the burly-bearded leader of the desperate sally; but Mahomed Ghori lacked no courage, and the charge was met half-way, horse against leviathan, lance couched to lance.

And the honours lay with the Moslem, for Châwand Rao took the lance-head full in his mouth, to the destruction of many teeth. But Prithvi was in support of his brother, and a well-aimed arrow twanged and quivered in the northerner's scimitar arm; he reeled in his saddle and would have fallen, had not a faithful servant, taking advantage of the wild, swift closing in of rescue for the wounded monarch, leapt up behind him in the saddle, and turning the horse's head to the open, carried the almost fainting king from the field. He was followed by his whole army, harassed for full 40 miles by the victorious Hindus.

Princess Fortunata's kisses must have been sweet that night to her victorious hero. But Mahomed Shahâb-ud-din's calm had gone. Smileless, he waited for the healing of his wound at Lahôre, then, returning to Ghor, publicly disgraced every officer who had not followed his forlorn hope, by parading them round the city like horses or mules, their noses in "nose-bags filled with barley, which he forced them to eat like brutes," and afterwards flinging them into prison. So two years passed in moody anger and sullen disgrace, crushed into forgetfulness by reckless pleasure and festivity. Then, taking heart of grace, he got together a picked force of 120,000 Toorki and Afghân cavalry recruits, for the most part men of his own class and calibre, whose helmets were encrusted with jewels, their cuirasses inlaid with gold; and so off Peshawur ways.

"Since the day of defeat," he said to an old sage, "despite external appearances, I have never slumbered with ease, or waked but in sorrow. I go, therefore, to recover my lost honour from these idolaters, or die in the attempt."

"My king," replied the wise old man, kissing the ground, "wherefore should not those whom you have so justly disgraced likewise have opportunity of wiping away the stain of their defeat?"

The plea struck him by its justice. He issued orders for the disgraced officers' freedom, and gave leave for those desirous of redeeming their character to follow his example. A picked force this, indeed, with a vengeance!

And on the other side was haughty defiance, marked still by the chivalrous sense of honour which, to such as Prithvi-Râj, was dearer than life.

A proud acceptance of the issues met the curt declaration of war should the Indians refuse to embrace the true faith, which the Mahomedan general sent to Ajmîr by accredited ambassador. A 'cute move this; one to enhance the martial ardour of his men; perhaps to still further inflame his own determination to turn past defeat to present victory. Then ensued a pause for parley, in which the Princess Fortunata had her share--a worthy share, as the following extracts will show. Till then her kisses had lulled Prithvi-Râj to forgetfulness of sterner things; now they were to rouse him from his dream. For this was her reply when her husband, leaving his War-Council to deliberate, sought wisdom where he had so often found pleasure:--

So the fiery cross sped round Râjputana, and ere long Prithvi-Râj could confront the enemy with an army of 300,000 horse, 3,000 elephants, and a large body of infantry. They encamped opposite and within sight of each other on the old battle-field, with the river Sarâswati, which was soon to lose itself in the desert sands beyond, running between the opposing armies. Despite the disparity in numbers the forces were not ill-matched, for the Indians were hampered by a thousand old traditions, old accoutrements, old scruples. The Mahomedans, on the other hand, were full up with desire for gold, for souls. But it was a holy war on both sides. The Hindus had sworn on Ganges water to conquer or die, the Moslem had sworn likewise on the Korân; so heads were bowed in humble prayer to the Lord of Hosts, and human hearts beat high with murderous hope. Quaint conjunction when all is said and done!

Thus far, well. Now comes Mahomed Shahâb-ud-din's diplomatic strategy, which some might call by another name, even though the account of what occurred comes to us through the pen of an ardent Mahomedan, and cannot, therefore, but put the best face on what happened. Prithvi-Râj, then, facing his foe, so much smaller in numbers, so altogether insignificant beside the splendid lavishness of the Râjput camp, wrote a letter to Mahomed Shahâb-ud-din. Whether dictated by mere pride or martial honour, by contemptuous pity, religious dislike to take life, or, as the Mahomedans aver, by mere brag, the terms of it are worth reading:--

"To the bravery of our soldiers we know you are no stranger: and to our great superiority in numbers, which daily increases, your eyes bear witness. If you are wearied of your own existence, yet have pity on your troops who may still think it a happiness to live. It were better, then, you should repent in time of the rash resolution you have taken, and we shall permit you to retreat in safety."

Not an undignified appeal, this first recorded attempt at peace with honour. Its reply was, as the historian puts it, "politic." It consisted in Mahomed Shahâb-ud-din's assertion that he was only the general of his brother's forces; that therefore he dare not retreat without orders, but he would be glad of a truce until such time as information could be sent to Ghuzni and an answer received.

A simple and admirable adjunct to the night-attack which followed, and which found the Râjputs unprepared, in fancied security.

About the false dawning, when even the noise of revelry in the opposite camp had quieted down to sleep, the Mahomedan army forded the river in silence, and drew up in order on the sands beyond. Some portion of it was actually within the Hindu lines ere the alarm was raised.

Even so, the Râjput cavalry was to the front immediately, and checked the advance.

For what followed, Mahomed Shahâb-ud-din deserves unstinted praise. It was good general-ship.

He formed his bowmen into four divisions, and placing them one behind the other, ordered the first to come into fighting line, discharge their arrows, and wheel to the rear, thus giving place to the second fighting line, the whole army to retreat slowly, giving ground whenever hard pressed.

All that day he fought, biding his time with such patience as he and his twelve thousand steel-armoured horsemen could muster. The sun was just setting when, judging the delusion of victory had done its work in the hot heads of the Râjputs, he gave the orders for one desperate charge.

It did its work!

"Din! Din! Fateh Mahomed!" once and for all overcame the Hindu war-cry of, "Victory, Victory!" In the years to come success and failure were to attend both; but only in detail. The great issue between Brahmanism and Mahomedism was fought out on the vast Karnâl battle-plain in A.D. 1193, when, as the chronicler of Islâm says,

"one desperate charge carried death and destruction throughout the Hindu ranks. The disorder increased everywhere, till at length the panic became general. The Moslems, as if they now only began to be in earnest, committed such havoc, that this prodigious army once shaken, like a great building tottered to its fall, and was lost in its own ruins."

How many thousand pagans "went below?" Who knows? But one is sure that Mahomed Shahâb-ud-din duly praised God from whom all blessings flow. His subsequent atrocities prove that he must have relied on something which he deemed Divine Guidance; mere humanity could never have been so cruel.

Half Râjput chivalry lay dead under the stars, but the flower of it was hiding in the sugar-cane brakes, stealing his way back to Delhi, to the Princess Sunjogâta his wife, who, as she had watched him go forth, lance in rest, his sword buckled on by her own steady hands, had said with foreboding courage to her maidens: "In Yoginâpur (Delhi) I shall see him no more: we will meet in Swarga." The tale of what happened is almost beyond telling.

Prithvi Râjah was murdered in cold blood, murdered ignominiously. The Princess Fortunata escaped a like, or a worse, fate by a funeral pyre, and Delhi was given over to such hideous devils work as even that long-suffering city has never seen before or since. The followers of the Prophet wiped out their own and their God's disgrace in torrents of blood, filled their pockets by the way, went on to Ajmîr, enacted a like tragedy, and so returned northwards when the pink clouds of the low-lying groves of dâkh trees began to blossom about the battle-field where the sun of the Hindus had set for ever.

But Mahomed Shahâb-ud-din left his pet Turki slave Kutb-din-Eîbuk behind him at Delhi, and he, assuming almost regal honours, "compelled all the districts around to acknowledge the faith of Islâm."

How many murders go to the making of a Moslem is a question which might fairly be asked. Converts, however, hardly came in fast enough for Shahâb-ud-din's zeal, so the next year saw him back again to help his slave in crushing the Râjah of Kanauj, who, doubtless, had not been of Prithvi-Râj's host. Thence he marched to Benares, in which hot-bed of idolatry he thoroughly enjoyed himself by smashing the idols in a thousand temples, which he subsequently purified by prayer and purgation, and thereinafter consecrated to the worship of the true God.

This was his last real outing, for Fate--can it have been that she dissociated herself from his doubtful use of the white flag--began to play him false. His slave-viceroy showed inclination to plunder on his own behalf, and though the master once more returned to India, it was but a flying visit, apparently to check independence. To no avail, for Kutb-din-Eîbuk, "ambitious of extending his conquests, led an army into Râjputana, where, having experienced severe defeat, he was compelled to seek protection in the fort at Ajmîr."

For the fighting spirit in the Râjput was not to be quenched by blood, or burned out by fire. It was to flame up fiercely for many a century to come, until the wisdom of Akbar won it over to his side.

Mahomed Shahâb-ud-din's hands were, however, too full to permit of his giving much attention to India. His brother, Ghiâss-ud-din, the mere figure-head of a king, died in A.D. 1202, and though Shahâb-ud-din was crowned in his stead without any opposition, bad luck seemed to attend him afterwards. His army was literally cut down to a mere body-guard of a hundred troopers in Khorassan, and though his fortunes were recovered in some measure, his time seems to have been taken up in quelling the rebellions of his favourite slaves whom he had promoted to honour.

In India, Kutb-din, it is true, remained faithful in name, though his power and prestige rose above his master's, and he was virtually king, not viceroy.

Finally, in A.D. 1206, the leader of the last real raid of the Crescent into India was assassinated by the Ghakkars of the Salt Range upon the banks of the Indus.

"The weather being sultry, the King had ordered the screens which surround the royal tents to be struck in order to give free admission to the air. This afforded the assassins an opportunity of seeing into the sleeping apartments. So at night time they found their way up to the tents and hid themselves, while one of their number advanced boldly to the tent door. Challenged by a sentry, he plunged his dagger in the man's breast, and this rousing the guard, who ran out to see what was the matter, the hidden assassin took that opportunity of cutting a way into the King's tent.

"He was asleep, with two slaves fanning him. They stood petrified with terror as the Ghakkars sheathed their daggers in the King's body, which was afterwards found to have been pierced by no fewer than twenty-two wounds."

THE SLAVE KINGS

A.D. 1206 TO A.D. 1288

"The Empire of Delhi was founded by a slave."

So runs the well-known jibe. And it is true; for although India, despite the combined resistance of the Râjputs, was overcome during the reign of Mahomed Shahâb-ud-din Ghori, the real glory of conquest belongs by rights to Eîbuk, the slave; Eîbuk of the "broken little finger," who took the name of Kutb-ud-din, or Pole-star of the Faith.

To those who know India the name conjures up one of the most marvellous sights in the world. A dark December morning in the Punjâb, when the Christmas rain-clouds gather black on the horizon, and on them, above the rolling, brick-strewn ridges of Old Delhi, rises a thin shaft of light--the Kutb Minâr, the finest pillar in the world.

It was built by the Turki slave Eîbuk, 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 Eîbuk, 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 Shahâb-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 Râjah, 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 Guzerât. 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 Ajmîr, 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 Afghâns, 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 râjah who was coming to terms with the M'lechcha instead of resisting the Unclean to the death, did not avail to preserve almost impregnable Kalûnjur; 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 Shahâb-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 Eîbuk the slave, the drums, the standards, the insignia of royalty, and the title of King of India.

Eîbuk 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 Râjput 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 Eîbuk unprepared, possibly drunk. Anyhow, there was no time to attempt a defence. He fled to Lahôre, 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 Mahmûd, he was generous. "As liberal as Eîbuk" is still a phrase in the mouth of India.

His son Arâm (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 Altâmish, a favourite slave of the slave Eîbuk, took his place by virtue of being son-in-law to the dead king.

Altâmish was also of Turki extraction. As a youth, the fame of his beauty and talents was noised abroad, and Shahâb-ud-din was in the bidding for him, but hung back at the price; whereupon Eîbuk 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!

Atlâmish 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 Ghâzi-dom.^[3] On the other hand, he was the barbarian who, taking Ujjain, destroyed the magnificent temple of Mâhâ-Kâli which it had taken three hundred years to build. The idols thereof, and also a "statue of Vikramadîtya, 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 Minâr, a monument to the slave Eîbuk who commenced it, the slave Altâmish who finished it.

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 Vikramadjît. How many a riddle might it not have solved concerning the Unknown King!

We are told that Altâmish 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 Râzia 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.