For over a hundred and twenty years India remained free from a master hand. It is true that the puppet-king Mahmûd, who had fled from Delhi on that fateful night of the 15th of January 1389, returned to it, first as a mere pensioner, afterwards as nominal ruler; but the whole continent had split up into petty principalities governed by Mahomedan rulers. Guzerât, Mâlwa, Kanauj, Oude, Kârra, Jaûnpur, Lahôre, Dipalpûr, Multân, Byâna, Kalpi, Mahôba, these were but a few of the countless kings who rose up and warred with one another.
Beyond these, again, to the southward, lay the great kingdom of the Dekkan, which one Allah-ud-din Hassan had reft bloodlessly from Mahomed Toghluk. This Hassan had a curious history. The servant of a Brahman astrologer, he appears to have lived a life absolutely without colour, until one day, when ploughing, the share caught in a chain attached to an old copper vessel full of antique gold coins. This treasure trove introduced him to the king's notice; he was made captain of a hundred horse, so rose gradually to power. And wherever he went he took with him his former master, the Brahman Ganga, who long years before had predicted for him great distinction. When Hassan reached royalty, the Brahman became finance-minister, and from this fact the whole dynasty was called Bâhmani, or Brâhmani. It lasted for close on two hundred years; a most unusual stability for India. But ere the period now before us had closed, the Dekkan also had split up into five separate states--Bîjapur, Golcônda, Berâr, Ahmudnâgar, Hyderabâd.
About the time of Timur's invasion, the Brâhmani dynasty was in the zenith of its fortunes. We have in the description of it, then, a picture of Eastern despotism that fits in with the preconceived ideas of most Westerns on this subject. Absolute power, untold wealth, munificence, cruelty, passion, pride, prejudice; all the concomitants of an Eastern potentate are there. The celebrated Turquoise Throne itself fills the imagination with its "enamel of a sky-blue colour, cased in gold which was in time totally concealed by the number of precious ornaments"; but when we add to this the golden ball over the throne "all inlaid with jewels, on which sate a bird of paradise composed entirely of precious stones, in whose head was a ruby of inestimable price," we desire no more. The Eastern glamour is complete.
So the kings of the Dekkan went on ruling, every now and again letting themselves loose on some minor râjah, and killing a few thousand Hindus for the sake of the Faith; every now and again ruling wisely and well, but as often as not badly and brutally. Sometimes they combined the epithets, as in the case of Mahomed Shâh Bâhmini, A.D. 1358-1375, during whose reign it is said "all ranks of the people reposed in security and peace," and that "nearly five hundred thousand unbelievers fell by the swords of the warriors of Islâm, by which the population of the Carnatic was so reduced that it did not recover for several ages"!!!
Some of these precious potentates died in their beds, a larger proportion of them were assassinated. This much, at any rate, may be said of Indian public opinion in these times, that it sided with morality, for the most condign punishments on record are invariably meted out to the biggest villains. Perhaps the most picturesque of these records is that concerning King Ghiâss-ud-din Bâhmini and Lâlchi, one of the principal Turki slaves of the household. This man possessed a daughter of exquisite beauty, whom the seventeen-year-old young monarch happened to see and instantly desired. The father refused, the king persisted. So Lâlchi laid his plans. He invited the passion-struck lad to an entertainment at his house, plied him with wine, and then induced him to order his attendants to withdraw, in order that the exquisite beauty might appear. The half-intoxicated prince attempted flight when Lâlchi returned from the harem not with a girl, but a naked dagger, rolled down some steps, and the next instant both his eyes were blinded; whereupon Lâlchi coolly sent for the royal attendants one by one, as if by the king's order, and put them to death severally as they appeared. As these were mostly nobles and officials of high rank, he found no difficulty in deposing Ghiâss-ud-din, who had only reigned for six weeks!
The history of the Dekkan finds echo in the kingdoms of Kandeish, Mâlwa, Guzerât, all of which came into existence about the same period. But in addition to these Mahomedan principalities a great and powerful Râjput confederacy--for the semifeudal system of the race was antagonistic to empire--was springing up among the hills in Mêwar, the "middle mountain" country now called Oudipur, and in the deserts of Mârwar or the "Region of Death," now called Jodhpur and Jeysulmeer. The two former kingdoms were ruled by princes of the Sun, but Jeysulmeer claimed, as it does now, descent from the Moon.
Such slight differences, however, were as naught before a common enemy, and ever since Mahmûd of Ghuzni had defeated Anangpal, Lunar king of Delhi--representative of a dynasty which, legend has it, had lasted since the days of Yudishthira of Mâhâbhârata fame--down through the time when Mahomed Ghori had annihilated Prithvi-Râj, grandson of the last Anangpal, and Kutb-uddin Eîbuk, his Slave-general, had carried on his butchery, until the present day, the common enemy of every Râjput had been the Mahomedan.
So, naturally, the conflict of the conquerors was the opportunity of the vanquished.
It is true that the young Ajey-si, saved from the sack of Chitore by so much bloodshed, did not fulfil his father's hope that the child should recover what the man had lost, but his appointed heir, Hamîr, more than redeemed the promise; for, during the two centuries following on the recapture of his kingdom, it rose to a pitch of power and solidarity never before touched, and received the homage of all surrounding principalities. The story of Hamîr's success is a strange one, and is reminiscent of the legend of Sir Gawaine, or the Knight of Courtesy, since the success came as a consequence of chivalry to womanhood.
Hamîr's perseverance had brought him to the very walls of Chitore, but the real struggle for possession was before him. At this juncture the city gates opened, and a peaceful procession passed out, bearing the recognised symbol of a marriage proposal, a cocoa-nut. It came from the mercenary but highborn Hindu Governor of Chitore, offering his daughter as a preliminary to peace. The young prince's advisers voted for a return of the offer. Hamîr bid its retention, boldly saying that, come what might, his feet would thus tread the rocky steps which his ancestors had trodden.
Forth, therefore, with but the stipulated five hundred horse, went the Bridegroom-Prince. He was met at the gate by the bride's five brothers, gloomy of face, solemn of mien. But on the city portal was no mystical triangle of marriage, no wedding garlands decorated the streets. Yet ceremony was not absent. The ancient hall of his ancestors was filled with chiefs awaiting him with folded hands; the bride's father welcomed him gravely. One can imagine the young man, ready to take what the gods chose to give for the sake of a hold on Chitore, waiting while the bride was led forth.
No cripple this! The young heart must have breathed more freely as the slim, veiled figure stood silent by his side. A promise of beauty here, surely! The young blood shivered through his veins, as the strong sword-hand met the soft, slender fingers; then seemed to flow almost tumultuously towards the new, the unknown, as the attendant priest knotted the marriage garments together. Yet still no smile, no word of congratulation. What did it mean? What matter! it was for the sake of Chitore.
So to the marriage chamber, where the family priest lingered hesitatingly to preach patience.
Patience! with a bride before one, every fold of whose veiled figure told of beauty!
Beauty indeed! but--one glance was enough--she was a widow!
He had been tricked indeed! A virgin widow, no doubt, and beautiful, exceedingly; yet still a widow, and accursed, almost unclean.
What did she say to him? History does not tell us. All we know is that "her kindness and vows of fidelity overcame his sadness."
Doubtless, the pity which is akin to love swayed him, but it was her cleverness, and not her kindness that gained the victory. For that strange marriage night was spent in a woman teaching a man how to win back his ancestral kingdom. Not by war, that was too crude. The people must be won over. Let her husband ask next morning as the marriage gift which no Râjput bridegroom is refused, for one Jâl, a humble scribe of the city.
So Hamîr went home burdened by a widow-wife and a scribe.
A year passed, and a prince was born; another year spent in what wiles and guiles only the widow mother and her scribe adviser knew, and the little prince, sick, had to be taken back to Chitore in order to be placed for healing before the shrine of Vyan-Mâta. Taken, oddly enough, while his grandfather, the mercenary governor, was away with most of the troops on an expedition.
A beautiful injured queen, a lovely baby prince, a hero husband ready to regain the throne of his ancestors, a devoted adherent prepared for every emergency; these were the factors in the sudden acclaim by which Hamîr, in consequence of his courtesy, was able once more to raise the standard of the Sun on the walls of Chitore. Where it remained for long years gloriously, comparatively peacefully; for while in Mahomedan Delhi no less than twenty-five monarchs were needed--such was the perpetual procession of assassinations, rebellions, dethronement--to bridge the period between Kutb-ud-din's seizure of Delhi and Timur's invasion of India, in Chitore--that is to say, Mêwar, or as it is now called, Oudipur--eleven princes had sufficed to fill the throne.
But in addition to Mêwar we have to reckon with Mârwar, or Jodhpur and Jeysulmeer. The former, however, was at this time a comparatively modern principality. After the defeat of Jâichand, the Râjah of Kanauj--who had so unavailingly performed the Sai-nair rite at which Prithvi-Râj had carried off the Princess Sunjogâta--his grandsons Shiv-ji and Sâyat-Râm, set out towards the great Indian Desert, hoping to carve fresh fortune from its barren stretches. They succeeded; but it was not until A.D. 1511 that Prince Jodha laid the foundation of a new capital, and brought Mârwar into line with the other great Râjput powers.
Jeysulmeer had a longer record. Headquarters of the Bhatti clan, its legendary history goes back to the eighth century; but from A.D. 1156 the chronicle is fairly continuous, and is full of romance and interest. Proud, passionate, clean-lived princes, these descendants of the Moon--for they were of the Yâdu race--seem to have been. One of them, still quite a lad, giving way to Berserk rage, struck his foster-brother. The blow was returned; whereupon, stung with shame, both at the insult and the lack of self-control which brought it about, the offender stabbed himself with his dagger. Another still more typical story is told of the passing of Râwul (an honorific title equalling Râjah) Chachîk, who, finding disease his master, sent an embassy to the Mahomedan ruler of Multân, begging from him the last favour of jûd-dan, or the gift of battle, "that his soul might escape by the steel of his foeman, and not fall sacrifice to slow disease."
The challenge was accepted, after the Mahomedan had been assured that honourable death was the sole end and aim.
So on the appointed day Râwul Chachîk, followed by seven hundred nobles, who, having shared all his victories, were prepared to follow him to death, marched out "to part with life."
"His soul was rejoiced, he performed his ablutions, worshipped the sword, bestowed charity, and withdrew his thoughts from this world. The battle lasted four hours, and the Yâdu prince fell with all his kin, after performing prodigees of valour. Two thousand Mahomedans fell beneath their swords, and rivers of blood flowed in the field; but the Bhatti gained the abode of Indra, who shared His throne with the hero."
Such, then, were the people who were gradually recovering some of the possessions and the prestige which they had lost when Prithvi-Râj fell victim to Mahomed Shahâb-ud-din Ghori.
Meanwhile, at Delhi the thirty-six years of kinglessness passed into seventy-three, during which the government was in the hands of three comparatively strong men, Belôl Lodi, Secûnder Lodi, Ibrahîm Lodi.
The first was a warrior, the second a bigot, the third a tyrant. Of the three, Belôl did most for his country, since at his death his empire extended eastwards as far as Benares.
Secûnder seems to have subordinated policy to religion. He destroyed every image and temple which he could see, or of which he could hear, and promptly put to death a Brahman who preached that "all religions, if sincerely practised, were equally acceptable to God."
Tolerance was not a virtue in those days.
It was during the reign of Ibrahîm Lodi that Babar, the first of the great Moghuls, entered India in A.D. 1514; but this was an event of such vast importance that it will be necessary to hark back some thirty years to the little kingdom of Ferghâna, where Babar was born on the 14th of February, A.D. 1483.
Map: India to A.D. 1483
Born on St Valentine's Day, A.D. 1483, the boy-baby, who was hereafter to be called Zâhir-ud-din Mahomed, and nicknamed Babar, must have been plentifully supplied with fairy godmothers, for he was gifted with almost every possible gift.
To begin with, he had good looks, even judging by the curious portraits of those days. Then, there can be no question of his ability as a soldier, while intellectually he would have been remarkable in any age. Besides this, he was possessed of the true artistic temperament to a quite unusual degree; he was painter, poet, author, and in the smallest thing that he wrote showed unerring literary skill and taste.
Beyond, and above all, however, he had that nameless charm which makes him, surely, the most delightful personality known to history.
Given such a man, it would be sheer perversity to treat of him solely in reference to the part he played in India, as this would be to deprive ourselves of no less than thirty-six years of the very best of company.
So let us begin at the very beginning. It is possible to do this with an accuracy unobtainable with any other Indian king--or, indeed, with any king of any clime--because Babar left to the ages an autobiography of himself, his thoughts, his acts, his failures, his successes, which is, truly, a quite extraordinary record. Between the covers lies a whole, real, live, human being.
It opens, however, with these words, "In the year 1494, and in the twelfth year of my age, I became King of Ferghâna." We have therefore to go back eleven years for the birth of Babar. Before doing this, a glance round the world will give us the milieu in which our hero was to play his part.
Briefly, then, Vasco da Gama had but just discovered India, Henry VII. was King of England. Michelangelo was revolutionising the world of art, Copernicus creating that of science. For the rest, a hundred years had passed since Timur the "Earth Trembler" had shaken literally the whole world; for his grip on it had reached West to Moscow and East to China. Yet a hundred years further back again Chengiz Khân had swept over the same ground like a devastating flame.
Babar had both these unamiable ruffians as ancestors, but, apparently, was by no means proud of his Mongal or Moghul descent. He called himself a Turk, and wrote hardly of the race whose name, by the irony of fate, was to be attached to the dynasty he founded.
"If the Moghul race had an angel's birth,
It still would be made of the basest earth;
Were the Moghul name writ in thrice-fired gold,
It would ring as false as it did of old;
From a Moghul's harvest sow never a seed
For the seed of a Moghul is false indeed!"
Babar was the son of Omâr-Shaîkh, King of Ferghâna, or as it is now called, Khôkand. At his birth a courier was sent post-haste to inform his maternal grandfather, the Khân of the Mongols, who, despite his seventy years, came back post-haste to join in the festivities, and--his uncouth, Mongolian tongue trippling over the polished Persian name Zâhir-ud-din (the Evidence of Faith)--to dub the child Babar, or "the tiger," a nickname which stuck to him for life. A fine old man this grandfather of Babar's, and a fine old woman his grandmother must have been. A woman not to be trifled with, to judge by her action when one Jâimul-Khân, having for a time defeated her husband, seized her and made her over to one of his officers.
Isa-Begum raised no puerile objections. She received her new master quite affably, but once he was within her chamber door she locked it, bade her maids stab him to death, fling the body to the street, and send this message to Shâikh-Jâimul: "I am the wife of Yunâs. Contrary to law, you gave me to another man, so I slew him. Come and slay me if you choose."
The erring Jâimul must have had good in him, for, struck by her courage, he restored her honourably to her husband.
At the age of five Babar was betrothed to his cousin Ayêsha, and the next six years must have been spent at the millstone of education, since this was all the schooling Fate granted him, and he emerged from it with two languages at his fingers' end, and an amount of literary skill and general knowledge which was fairly surprising. His father, still in the prime of life, was killed by an accident while away from his capital, and the incident is thus described by the boy-king, who, 36 miles away, "immediately mounted in the greatest haste, and, taking such followers as were at hand, set out to secure my throne."
"The river flows under the walls of the castle, which is situated on the very edge of a high precipice, so that it serves as a moat. And some of the ravines down to it being scarped to support the castle, in all Ferghâna stands no stronger fortress. Thus one of the walls giving way, my father, feeding his pigeons, was, with the pigeons and the pigeon-house, precipitated from the top of the steep, and so himself took flight to another world."
A quaint description, giving a picture which lingers in the mind's eye. The fortress hanging over the abyss, the king, in Eastern fashion, making his pigeons tumble for their corn. Then the sudden slip, and a startled soul among the startled white wings on its way to another world. Even the body which the soul had left remains alive for ever in Babar's words:--
"My father was of lowish stature, had a short, bushy beard, and was fat. He used to wear his tunic very tight, and as he drew himself in when he put it on, when he let himself out the strings often burst. He plaited his turban without folds, and let the end hang down. He was but a middling shot with the bow, but had such uncommon force with his fists that he never hit a man but he knocked him down. His generosity was large, and so was his whole nature. He was a humane king, and played a great deal at backgammon."
Peace be to thine ashes, oh, Omâr-Shâikh! Even after all the centuries we seem to know the man himself, as we read the words in which his son has pictured him.
So, let us hark back to Ferghâna, the little kingdom watered by the river Jaxârtes, and give one more extract from Babar's journal to show what manner of place it seemed to the eleven-year-old king.
"Ferghâna is situate on the extreme boundary of the habitable world. It is a valley clipped by snowy mountains on all sides but the west, whither the river flows, and on which side alone it can be entered by foreign enemies. It is of small extent, but abounds in grain and fruits. Its melons are excellent and plentiful. There are no better pears in the world. Its pheasants are so fat that four persons may dine on the stew of one and not finish it. Its violets are particularly elegant, and it abounds in streams of running water. In the spring its tulips and roses blow in great profusion, and there are mines of turquoise in the mountains, while in the valley the people make velvet of a crimson colour."
Surely this description is sufficient, not only to show us Ferghâna, but also to give us a clear idea of the boy who saw it thus. Truly the temptation to quote from this delightful record is well nigh irresistible, but space forbids, for there is much to say of Babar as poet, painter, musician, astronomer, knight-errant, soldier-lover, king, and bon vivant. He was all of these in turn; and in addition, kindly, valorous, courteous. A real paladin if ever there was one.
From the very first he gripped the reins of kingship with a firm hand. And it was no easy task to guide the little kingdom through the dangers which beset it; but he succeeded "through the distinguished valour of my young soldiers" (he himself being but twelve!) in besting his uncles the Kings of Samarkhûnd and Tashkûnd, so holding his own. Shortly after this the young king nearly fell a victim to conspiracy, owing to his confidence in one Hassan-Yukûb, "the best player of leap-frog I have known." From this infatuation he was rescued by his shrewd old grandmother, of whom Babar speaks with sneaking awe: "She was uncommonly far-sighted; few of her sex equalled her in sagacity." This incident evidently sobered him, for he "began to abstain from forbidden meats, and seldom omitted midnight prayers."
For there is always something absolutely translucent in Babar's accounts of himself, and of everything which he heard and saw. It is impossible even for a moment to doubt their accuracy. His self-revelation is frankness itself, and his views of men and manners bring conviction with them.
Ambition seems to have seized on him early, for ere he was fifteen, his uncle the king having died, he marched on Samarkhûnd to make a bid for the throne. And he succeeded. He was Emperor of Samarkhûnd, as his ancestor Timur had been, for exactly one hundred days, during which he appears to have enjoyed himself hugely. One is apt to think of these Eastern cities beyond the verge, as they are now--half-ruined, dreary, dead-alive. But in those days they were centres of commerce, learning, and art. To Samarkhûnd Timur had brought the untold riches of India, her clever craftsmen, her skilled artisans. It was a beautiful, a cultured city, and Babar came to the conclusion "that in the whole habitable world there are few places so pleasantly situated."
His dream of success lasted but those hundred days; then evil news of rebellion at Ferghâna and an appeal for help came from his mother. "I was ill," he writes, "but had not the heart to delay an instant, so being unable to nurse myself, I had a relapse."
He came so near death, indeed, that some of his followers, despairing of life, shifted for themselves, and brought the news of his demise to Ferghâna. Thus when the young king came back to consciousness, it was to find himself without a kingdom; for his friends, believing him dead, had surrendered.
"Thus for the sake of Ferghâna I had given up Samarkhûnd, and now found I had lost the one without securing the other."
Such is his philosophical comment. But Babar's remarks are always inimitable. When they hanged his envoy over the gate of the citadel, he sets down his instant belief that "without doubt Khwaja Kazi was a saint: he was a wonderfully brave man--which is no mean proof of saintship. Other men, brave as they may be, have some nervousness or trepidation in them. The Kazi hadn't a particle of either."
This reverse necessitated two years of wandering in the hills. He took his mother with him and his old grandmother, giving them the best shelter he could find. And wherever he wandered, he himself was always cheerful, always kindly, always ready to enjoy the beauties and the gifts of Nature; especially "a wonderful delicate and toothsome melon, with a mottled skin like shagreen."
Until one day, just as the sun was setting, a solitary horseman bearing a message sped up the valley towards his mountain fastness, and in less than half an hour Babar was up and away through the deepening night in response to those who loved him; and there were many of them. Indeed his capacity for winning over most men to his side is one of his most salient characteristics. He was bon camarade with half his world.
An eventful ride this over hill and dale, through darkness and through light. "We had passed three days and three nights without rest, neither man nor horse had strength left," when, hanging on the edge of a hill, the city of his hope showed rose-red in the dawn. Then for the first time fear came. Had he been over-hasty? What if this were a trick to decoy him and his handful of followers to their death?
But "there was no possibility of retreat, no refuge even to which we could retreat. So, having come so far, on we must go. (Nothing happens but by God's will.)"
The trite little sentence of consolation was justified. Babar found himself once more King of Ferghâna; but he promptly lost his kingdom again by attempting to make his ill-disciplined Mongolian troops make restitution to the peasantry of the loot they had taken from them.
He admits his error frankly.
"It was a senseless thing to exasperate so many men with arms in their hands. In war and in statecraft a thing may seem reasonable at first sight, but it needs to be weighed and considered in a hundred lights before it is finally decided upon. This ill-judged order of mine was, in fact, the ultimate cause of my second expulsion."
This was in A.D. 1500, when he was seventeen years old. Still his buoyancy remained, despite his evil fortune, and for the next few months his itinerary is full of the joys of "a capital hunting-ground, with good covers for game," in which he coursed, and shot, and hawked, to his heart's content.
Not for long, however. Samarkhûnd tempted him again in the summer; but he had to retire and seek shelter in the hills once more,
"by dangerous tracks among the rocks. In the steep and narrow ways and gorges which we had to climb, many a horse and camel dropped and fell out. After four or five days we came to the col of Sir-i-Tuk. This is a pass! Never did I see one so narrow and steep, or follow paths more toilsome and strait. We pressed on, nevertheless, with incredible labour, through fearful gorges and by tremendous precipices, until, after a hundred agonies and losses, at last we topped those murderous steep defiles and came down on the borders of Kân, with its lovely expanse of lake."
When eighteen he finally managed to conquer Samarkhûnd, and in the same year his first child, a daughter, was born; for he had wedded his cousin Ayêsha while in hiding in the hills. He called the baby "The Glory of Womanhood," and chronicles regretfully that "in a month or forty days she went to partake of the Mercy of God."
Marriage, however, appears to have roused him to no emotion, for he admits first that he had "never conceived a passion for any woman, and indeed had never been so placed as even to hear or witness words of love or amorous discourse"; secondly, that in the beginning of his wedded life, shyness almost overcame affection; "and afterwards," he adds quaintly, "as my affection decreased my shyness increased."
A curious record of clean-living this for an Eastern king in the very hey-day of youth.
Babar's success did not last for long. Two years after he was once more a fugitive, and this time he did not succeed in saving all his womenkind. His favourite sister, older than he was by some years, remained behind, part of the price paid for bare freedom, and entered his victorious enemy's harem. This was a bitter pill to swallow, and Babar never forgot it. This sister figures in the Memoirs of Babar's daughter, Gulbadan, as "Dearest Lady." She seems to have kept her brother's deep devotion to the last.
So for three long years Babar wandered once more. This is perhaps the most exciting portion of his Autobiography. It is absolutely packed full with hair's-breadth escapes, crowded in each word with human interest. We see the young king, now in the very prime of his manhood, standing stripped for his bathe in "a stream that was frozen at the banks, but not in the middle, by reason of its swift current." We watch him "plunge in and dive sixteen times, but the biting chill of the water cut through me." We follow breathlessly the vain endeavour made by him and three trusted friends to induce his frightened troops to rally: "I was constantly turning with my three companions to keep the enemy in check, and bring them up short with our arrows; but we could not make the men stand anyhow." We mourn with him on another occasion his ignorance that "the horsemen who followed were not above twenty or twenty-five, while we were eight." We agree with him that had he "but known their number at first, he would 'have given them warm work.'" We share his faith in his own nimbleness in climbing a hill as the only escape from the arrows of bowmen, and we positively hold our breath in the amazing story of the Garden at Tambal, where he waited for Death, and found Life, and friends, and new hope.
This was the capture of Kâbul. The kingly blood in him craved a kingdom. He felt he must have one if he died for it.
Surely never was claimant for royalty worse fitted out for the quest than was Babar! Even Prince Charlie, with his head in Flora Macdonald's lap, does not come up in forlornness with Zâhir-ud-din Mahomed Babar, who gave his only tent to his mother, and whose followers, "great and small, were more than two hundred and less than three. Most on foot with brogues to their feet, clubs in their hands, and tattered cloaks over their shoulders." Yet a short time afterwards he finds himself, "to my own great surprise," at the head of quite a respectable army.
A short time, again, and he is King of Kâbul; such are the amazing ups and downs of this most unfortunate, most fortunate of princes.
By this time his wife, Ayêsha, had left him, giving as her reason the perfectly true plaint that he did not love her. He had, however, fallen in love with some one else; the woman who was to be the mother of his son Humâyon, and of his three daughters, who were named by Babar's express wish, "Rose-face, Rose-blush, Rose-body." It was at Kâbul that Humâyon was born. At Kâbul, also, Babar lost his mother, whom he helped to carry shoulder high to her grave in the Garden of the New Year, outside the city, "the sweetest spot in all the neighbourhood."
He remained King of Kâbul until he made his first expedition to India in 1514. He gives us detailed accounts of his new kingdom. He seems to know everything that is to be known about it. The names and habits of every animal, bird, and beast, even to the fact that in stormy weather the migratory birds are stopped by the everlasting snows of the Hindu-Kush hills, and so are taken in hundreds by the bird-fowlers. He knows the place where the rarest tulips are to be found, and is unceasing in his praise of three-and-thirty different kinds, one "yellow, double, scented like a rose." Doubtless, the parents of that favourite in modern gardens, "Yellow Rose."
He knows also of the different clans and people of Kâbul, their past history, their present languages. In fact, he knows all things that are possible to vivid vitality, all things that are given to friendly hand and seeing eye.
It was from Kâbul that he went on a visit to his cousins, the Princes of Herât. Here, for the first time, he learnt what luxury meant, for Herât was the home of culture and of ease. At first he is somewhat shocked. There are so many things "contrary to the institutions of Chengiz Khân"--that sacred rule from which his family never deviated.
Then he began to meditate that after all "Chengiz had no divine authority," and that if a "father has done wrong, the son should change it for what is right."
From this to doing at Rome what Rome did is but a step; and yet it seems as if he had kept his vow of drinking no wine sacred while at Herât. Pity he did not keep it so always.
It was in returning to Kâbul by the mountains from his twenty days' visit to the most charming "city in the whole habitable world," that Babar met with the following adventure which shows him at his best. He and his army were lost in the snow, and "met with such suffering and hardship, as I have scarcely endured at any other time of my life."
The poem about it which he sat down to write has not survived, but Babar's prose is sufficient for most things.
"For about a week we went on trampling down the snow. I helped with Kâsim Beg, and his sons, and a few servants. Each step we sank to the waist, or the breast; but still we went on. After a few paces a man became exhausted, and another took his place. Then we dragged forward a horse without a rider. The horse sank to the stirrups and girths, and after advancing ten or fifteen paces, was worn out and replaced by another. It was no time for using authority. Every one who has spirit does his best at such times, and those who have none are not worth thinking about.
"In three or four days we reached a cave at the foot of the Yerrin pass. That day the storm was terrible, and the snow fell so heavily, we all expected to die together. When we reached the cave the storm was at its worst. We halted at the mouth. It seemed small, so I took a hoe and, clearing away the snow, made a resting-place for myself about as big as a prayer-carpet, and found a shelter from the wind in it. Some were for my going into the cave, but I would not. I felt that for me to be within in comparative comfort while my soldiers were in snow and drift would be inconsistent with that fellowship and suffering which was their due. So, remembering the proverb, 'Death in the company of friends is a feast,' I continued to sit in the drift. By bedtime prayers 4 inches of snow had settled on my head and lips and ears."
The description is excellent, and gives a delightful background to the quaint comment with which it finishes: "N.B.--That night I caught a cold in my ear."
Then once again the haunting dream of Samarkhûnd, the desire to possess the throne of his ancestor Timur, came to obsess him, and bring disaster. He gained the throne once more, only yet once more to lose it. Whether by his own fault, or because Fortune's wheel had turned for the time, we know not. The Autobiography is silent.
All we know is that in A.D. 1519--that is, when he was thirty-six years of age--he finally gave up the thought of Samarkhûnd, and turned his eyes to India.
Timur had conquered it; why should not he?
These eleven years are all that India really can claim of Babar's life; yet ever since the day when, after a fatal battle in 1503, he had taken refuge in a shepherd's hut on the Kuh-i-Sulimân hills, and (as he sate eating burnt bread like another Alfred, and looking out to where in the dim distance the wide plain of Hindustan rose up like a sea ending the vast vista of mountains) an old woman, ragged, decrepid, had told him tales of her youth when the earth trembled under Timur--ever since then the idea of India had been part and parcel of his adventurous mind.
To do as his great ancestor had done; that became his ambition. At thirty-six he tried to make that ambition a reality.
How the last twelve years from A.D. 1507 had passed, we have no record. The Memoirs are silent, the Diary has ceased to be written. Why, it is impossible to say. Perhaps Babar felt his life too tame and commonplace for record, especially after his melodramatic youth.
We left, therefore, a young man of four-and-twenty, inclined to be shocked at a wine party, we find him again a man of thirty-six and an inveterate toper. Anything and everything is an excuse for the wine-cup. "Looking down from my tent on the valley below, the watch-fires were marvellously beautiful; that must be the reason, I think, why I drank too much wine at dinner that evening." For Babar is still translucently frank. "I was miserably drunk," is an oft confession, and he does not hesitate to record the fact that he and his companions "sate drinking wine on the hill behind the water-run till evening prayers; when we went to Târdi-Beg's house and drank till midnight--it was a wonderfully amusing and guileless party."
It was the vice of his age. He had resisted it apparently until he was six-and-twenty, and he had every intention of giving it up at a stated time, for he writes in 1521: "As I intended to abstain from wine at the age of forty, and as I now wanted somewhat less than a year of that age, I therefore drank copiously."
One thing may be said in his favour: he never let wine interfere with his activities, either of body or of mind. He was ready, as ever, to detail the flowers he saw in his marches, to expatiate on a beautiful view, to turn a ghazel or quatrain, to rise ere dawn, to spend arduous days in the saddle or on foot.
The portraits of him belong to this period, and they show us a man tall, strong, sinewy, with the long straight nose of his race, a broad brow, arched eyes, and a curiously small, sensitive mouth.
Such was the man who conquered India, and in the beginning of his conquests set Timur before himself as an example to such purpose that it is hard to believe that the ardent and bloodthirsty Mahomedan of his first campaign is our sunny, genial Babar.
In fact the taking of Bajâur is sad reading. "The people," writes Babar, "had never seen matchlocks, and at first were not in the least afraid of them, but, hearing the reports of the shots, stood opposite the guns, mocking and playing unseemly antics."
By nightfall, however, they had learnt fear, and "not a man ventured to show his head."
This was, nevertheless, not the first time that we hear of guns and matchlocks in Indian warfare, although it is the first absolutely authentic mention of them. But a hundred and fifty years before this, Mahomed-Shâh Bhâmani, King of Guzerât, is said to have employed them. As a digression, it may be observed that Babar's Memoirs give us an interesting account of the casting of a big gun by one Ustâd-Ali, "who was like to cast himself into the molten metal" when the flow of it ceased ere the mould was full! Babar, however, "cheered him up, gave him a robe of honour," and "succeeded in softening his humiliation." Which, by the way, was unnecessary, since when the mould was opened the mischief was found to be reparable, and the gun, when finished, threw over 1,600 yards.
To return to Bajâur. The influence of Timur was strong upon Babar, and though women and children were spared, the less said about the fate of the town the better. Once or twice in his life the Tartar which lay beneath his culture showed in Babar's actions; but only once or twice. Ere he arrived at the next town he had found an excuse for clemency. He claimed the Punjâb as his by right of inheritance. "I reckoned," he writes, "of the countries which had belonged to the Turk as my own territory, and I permitted no plundering or pillage." An admirable compromise, which allowed him to read his great ancestor's account of his campaign with a clear conscience.
After a short expedition he returned to Kâbul, having set a faint finger-mark on the extreme north of India. In the next five years he is said to have made three more expeditions into the Punjâb, but the Memoirs are again silent as to these, and they appear to have been insignificant. But the idea of Indian conquest was not dead, and in A.D. 1524 it burst forth again into sudden life. The cosmic touch which roused it being the appeal of the rightful heir to the Kingdom of Delhi for help against his nephew Ibrahîm Lodi, who, he said, had usurped the throne. At the same time Babar's governor in the Punjâb begged the emperor to come to his aid.
It was the psychic moment, and Babar was prepared for it. He marched instantly on Lahôre, and finding affairs unsatisfactory, paused ere going further to return to Kâbul, and beat up reinforcements with which to secure his line of retreat. Coming back, he found it necessary to settle the governor, an old Afghân, who had broken into rebellion, and who, girding on two swords, swore to win or die. He did neither, for Babar, catching him red-handed in rebellion with the two swords still hanging round his neck, forgave him--as he was inclined to forgive all men.
So, free at last, he set his face towards Delhi. What the state of India was at this time we know. It was one of countless jealousies, seething rebellions, open disunion--on all sides conquest seemed possible; but Delhi had been the goal of Timur, so it must be the goal of his descendant.
Curiously enough, this last, and in all ways most decisive attack from the North-West on India did not come as those of Mahomed of Ghuzni, of Mahomed Shahâb-ud-din Ghori, and of Timur had come, with the returning flight of migratory birds from the summer coolth of the high Siberian steppes. The birds were winging westward in this April A.D. 1526, when Babar, choosing with the eye of a general the old battle-field on the plain near Panipût, set to work entrenching himself in a favourable position. This was a new method of battle to the Indians. So was the laager which he made out of his seven hundred gun-carriages linked together by raw cow-hide to break a possible cavalry charge, and strengthened by shield shelters for the matchlock men. For a whole week, though the army of Delhi--consisting of a hundred thousand troops and a thousand elephants--lay before him, Babar, whose total force numbered twelve thousand, was neither let nor hindered in his work. But then Sultân-Ibrahîm, who commanded the enemy himself, is briefly dismissed by the man whose whole life had been one long fight, as being "inexperienced, careless in his movements, one who marched without order, halted or retired without method, and engaged without foresight."
It was on the 21st that Babar accepted the challenge which followed on a repulsed night-attack which he attempted in order to draw the enemy.
It is interesting to note the formation Babar adopted. The laagered guns in front; behind them--the line broken at bowshot distances by gaps through which a hundred horsemen could charge abreast--the right and left centre, right and left wing. Behind that again the reserve, and the cavalry left over from the flanking parties at the extreme right and left.
On came the Indians at quick march, aiming at Babar's right; finding the enemy entrenched, they hesitated, and pressure from behind threw them into disorder. In an instant the Mongol cavalry charged through the gaps, took them in rear, discharged their arrows, and galloped back to safety. This is their national manœuvre, and proved once more of deadly effect, as it had done in the days of Timur.
But the battle waged fiercely, uncertainly. At one time Babar's left, over-rash, might have been overwhelmed, but for his watchful eyes, his instant support.
So as the sun rose high, the wavering victory chose the side of the Northerners. The Southerners, driven into their centre, were unable to use what strength they possessed, and by noon Sultân-Ibrahîm himself lay dead, with fifteen thousand of his finest troops. The rest were in full flight. It had been "made easy to me, and that mighty army in the space of half a day was laid in the dust."
So wrote the victor modestly, though there can be no question that the battle was won by superior generalship.
The way was now clear before him. He seized on Delhi and Agra without, apparently, much bloodshed, and immediately distributed the treasures gained amongst his followers, only reserving sufficient for the State to send a silver coin to every living soul in Kâbul, bond or free, and to pay the army and the Government.
He kept nothing for himself; he was not of those to whom gold brings pleasure. Yet in Hindustan he found few things for which he cared. There can be no question that it was a disappointment to him.