\d ^ ~y^J^< THE BRITISH WORLD IN THE EAST. VOL. I. THE BRITISH WOELD IN THE EAST A GUIDE HISTORICAL, MORAL, AND COMMERCIAL, TO Xtttiia, Cl^ma, aiusftralia, ^outft 9itvitn, AJrimi- tive rock are covered with eternal snow. In the names given to different parts of the range — Himadri, Himarat, Hiraachil, and Himalichil — snow is always the distin- guishing expression. Himalaya (the grand collective appellation), it need hardly be added, is one of the gods of the country, the father of the holy Gunga, and the step- father of Siva the Destroyer. Running for a certain distance nearly parallel with this range, there is another of inferior elevation, composed of the same materials, Ijut with sand-stone as the principal surface rock, which forms the southern barrier of the valley of the Ganges and Jumna. There are also three mountain ranges disposed in a very remarkable manner along the sides, and across the base CHAP. I.] HISTORY OF INDIA. 5 of Peninsular India.* The western, or Malabar range, commences at Kandeisli, and stretches along the coast, at a distance averaging about forty miles, till it terminates near Cape Comorin, overlooking the Indian Ocean. During this course, the primitive rocks are frequently seen above the surface, sometimes in peaks of granite six thousand feet (and one, it is said, seventeen hundred feet more) above the level of the sea ; but the distinguishing- geological feature is the superincumbent trap in the northern part of the range, and the iron clay, or laterite in the south. The former of these basaltic formations confers upon the landscape a character of wild and romantic beauty, the hills sometimes rising in vast ter- races, and sometimes in tabular masses, with deep gulfs between; the whole clothed with forests of teak, and the other majestic trees of India. The primitive rocks of the Continent rise again in the island of Ceylon, the elements, however, which compose them being frequently in such unusual proportions as to confuse the geologist. Quartz, hornblende, and dolomite are found, but not in mountain masses ; with the recent formations of lime-stone and sand-stone, the latter forming a belt round the whole island, between low and high- water mark. The mountains here are in continuous chains, like those of the main land, and rise in some cases to the elevation of five thousand feet, with one or two peaks a thousand feet higher. Returning to the Peninsula, the eastern, or Coromandel range commences at the valley of Coimbatoor, where it may be said to issue from the western, or Malabar range ; and it extends northward to about the same latitude, where the latter begins. Its general elevation is lower, * No part of India is a peninsula, but tlie application of the name is now so generally received, that it would be difficult to get rid of it. 6 THE BRITISH AVORLD IN THE EAST. [BOOK I. and for this reason tlie rivers wliicli have tlieir sources in the lofty table land between the two ranges (which are commonly, though improperly termed ghauts) descend, with few exceptions, through its valleys and gorges into the Bay of Bengal. The loftiest portions yet surveyed, do not greatly exceed three thousand feet. The sides and base of the mountains are composed of granite, gneiss, and mica slate, interspersed occasionally with clay slate, horneblende slate, flinty slate, chlorite and talc slate, and |)rimitive or crystalline lime-stone. The Vindhya range stretches across the country in such a manner as to form the base of an irregular triangle, the two other sides of which are the Coromandel and Malabar chains. The Vindhya mountains, however, have comparatively little geological connexion with the penin- sula farther than the Krishna river, and should rather be considered as a portion of the general scheme of Central India. The grand and peculiar feature of the whole of this surface is the superincumbent trap, which is said to cover an area of two hundred thousand square miles. The other rocks are granitic, wdth sand-stone; but the whole of India is peculiarly barren of more recent forma- tions than the latter. The coal strata are numerous throughout the entire country ; but of these and other mineral riches, we shall have to treat in another place. A thing worthy of mention, however, and hardly suscep- tible of explanation is, that the rarity of organic remains, both in the stratified rocks and diluvial soil, is the most striking phenomenon in Indian geology. Connected with the western limits of the Vindhya range, by a curved line of hills, are the Aravulli moun- tains, which stretch almost to Delhi, and serve as a barrier between Central India and the Avestern desert. These mountains rarely exceed two thousand feet above CHAP. I.] HISTORY OF INDIA. 7 the level of the sea, although Mount Aboo, in the neigh- bourhood, is supposed to rise to the height of five thou- sand. Their composition is granite, including sienite. The Indian Desert, a geological feature of a different kind, but quite as remarkable as the others, extends laterally from the Aravulli range to the valley of Sinde. On the north it meets the valley of the Sutledge, and on the south is lost in the Runn, or great salt marsh of Cutcli. From Hyderabad, as far north as Ooch, in looking eastward from the river, the visible horizon is a bulwark of sand, frequently two hundred feet high, guarding the valley of the Indus like the wall of a fortress. This is the commencement of the Desert, which is well characterized by its native name, Maroosthali, or the Region of Death. It consists, with the exception of a few oases, of hills of loose and heavy sand, which some- times change their position and shapes at the caprice of the wind, and which, but for the intervention of the Aravulli mountains, would long ago have submerged the whole of Central India. The Runn is an immense morass of salt and mud, the area of which is estimated at eight thousand square miles. The salt deposits are chiefly formed by the river Looni, rising in the Aravulli ; and in some places the incrustations are so thick as to have the appearance of snow. This line of desert, whether of land or salt, stretching northward to the Sutledge, is the grand defence of India on the west. It is skirted by the valley of the Indus, beyond which the sandy desert is continued. The country of the Punjab, therefore, forming the north-west corner between the desert and the Himalaya, affords the only point of access in this direction for an army. It is obvious that a region so securely enclosed within natural barriers must have remained for a considerable 8 THE BRITISH WORLD IN THE EAST. [dOOK I. period unknown to the rest of the world. Before the veil was withdrawn India had arrived at maturity ; and the wandering Europeans found, in the country of the Eastern " barbarians," a civilization as refined as their own, though so strange and peculiar as to perplex as much as it astonished them. Long before this period, however, the productions of India were known in the west by means of the southern Arabians, who appear to have been the first carrier-merchants of the world ; and even that early caravan which purchased the favourite son of Jacob for twenty pieces of silver was loaded with " spiceries" as well as the balm and myrrh of Canaan and Arabia. But in the first ages of foreign commerce the dealers knew little of each other, their transactions being carried on with mutual distrust, and frequently in pro- found silence ; and for this reason the wealthy and voluptuous Egyptians continued for centuries to enjoy the luxuries of the East without learning anything of the country whence they derived them. Five hundred and fourteen years before Christ, Darius the son of Hystaspes, if we may depend upon the sole authority of Herodotus, extended the Persian sovereignty to the Valley of the Indus ; but even if there is no ex- aggeration in this statement, the fact does not seem to have dissipated in any considerable degree the ignorance which prevailed respecting the country and the jjeople. One hundred and eighty-seven years later, however, Alexander the Great obtained at least a glimpse of that region of mystery which had so long stimulated the curiosity of the world. After establishing his authority in Persia, the conqueror marched towards the Indus by the way of Candahar, and probably Caliool, and crossed the river at the site of the present city of Attock. Tlie Jailum he is supposed to have passed at Rotas, the CHAP. I.] HISTORY OF INDIA. 9 Chenaub probably lower down, and the Eavee at Lahore. These three rivers are mentioned in classical story as the Hydaspes, the Acesines, and the Hydraotes. He pro- ceeded thence to the Sutledge (Hyphasis), where his en- campment is supposed to have been somewhere between Adjodin and Debalpoor : at all events it must have been as far southward as the commencement of the Desert. He next re-crossed the Ravee and encamped on the banks of the Chenaub till the flooding of the country in the rainy season compelled him to move higher up, to so great a distance that five days were afterwards occu- pied in dropping down the river to its confluence with the Jailum. He next proceeded to Moultan and Ooch, and descended the Indus to Patala, the modern Tatta ; whence he turned away with his army to return through the desert to Persepolis, leaving Nearchus to conduct the fleet along the coast to the Euphrates. This expedition threw some light upon the condition of the frontier countries of India, but the vast region within the boundary line remained still a land of dreams. Even the intelligence collected, apparently with so much care and minuteness, by Alexander's officers respecting the Punjab and the Valley of the Indus, must be received with caution. The army was harassed by numerous and powerful enemies, and suffered so greatly by the rains and inundations peculiar to a season of the year when the operations even of the native troops are sus- pended, that at length its vexation terminated in down- right mutiny. This could not have induced a state of mind favourable for general inquiry ; and accordingly we find the casualties of the seasons described with a minuteness which is true to this day, while the reports concerning the inhabitants, their numbers, manners, and institutions, may reasonably be suspected of exaggeration. 10 THE BRITISH AVORLD IN THE EAST. [bOOK I. A modern Indian might in his jierson be taken for the original of the portrait drawn by Alexander's generals of the Hindoo of the Valley of the Indus ; but this fidelity in a matter which came under the cognizance of tlie senses, is no reason why we should bestow implicit confi- dence upon the fact reported by Arrian on the same authority, that India to the west of the Sutledge was in- habited by one hundred and eighteen nations, or that the kingdom of Porus, one of the princes of the Punjab whose dominions consisted of the doab between the Jailum and the Chenaub, contained three hundred cities. All we can say with truth is, that the country was populous ; that the inhabitants lived under regularly- constituted governments ; that some of the more striking- customs and institutions of the jieople, such as the sati, and the distinctions of caste, were the same as in our own day ; and that a considerable traffic was in all probability carried on throughout the Punjab, and down the whole course of the Indus. As for the country now called Hindostan, it appears to have been divided among various petty princes, although one powerful kingdom, known to the Macedonians as the territory of the Prasij, extended for some distance on both sides of the Ganges. This people were prepared to oppose the western adventurers with an army of twenty thousand cavalry, two hundred thousand infantry, two thousand armed chariots, and many elephants ; a force greatly superior to that of Alexander himself, which, when he descended the Indus, consisted of a hundred and twenty thousand men and two hundred elephants. It is probable, however, that the powers of Central India had heard as little of the Macedonian hero as he had of them ; or if any report at all reached them of his advent, they perhaps looked upon the event with more curiosity than CHAP. I.] HISTORY OF INDIA. 11 (li-ead. After leaving- the Punjab, he had no further opportunity of acquiring a knowledge of the inner country, for the great desert of Maroosthali intervened ; and on his part he left no inemorials whatever of his visit. His footsteps may be said to have been lost in the inundations of the Indus. His march elsewhere may be traced to this day by the tumuli and coins which are found in its course ; and if the written history of the expedition were lost, the traveller, judging by the monu- ments and sites of forgotten cities, might be able at least to say, " Here passed a concpieror." But on the line of the Indus, where so many stupendous events took place, — where Alexander, sweeping down the magnificent river with his fleet of two thousand vessels and his long array of warriors and elephants marching on either bank, probably felt himself in a position of greater dignity than he had ever occupied before, — and where the ambitious spirit, which, unsatisfied with the honours of earth, aspired to a place even among the gods of his country, felt no doubt its fiercest cravings after posthumous fame, — here a few uncertain etymologies are all the evidences of his career. The histories of Aristobulus and Ptolemy the son of Lagus live again in the pages of Arrian and Quintus Curtius ; but not one monument, not one physical frag- ment of antiquity, however minute, survives on the banks of the Indus to attest the facts they chronicle. This mighty and capricious river has obliterated the traces of the hero, but the revolutions of two thousand years have left those of the author as distinct as ever. After the death of Alexander, the countries on the west of the Sutledge, which had been annexed to the Macedonian dominion, made no effort to regain their independence ; but the Gangetic people we have men- tioned, the Prasij, had not relaxed from their warlike 12 THE BRITISH WORLD IN THE EAST. [bOOK I. attitude, and Seleucus undertook in person an expedition against them. He is supposed to have succeeded in penetrating into Hindostan, but no authentic record of this event has come down to our time. He concluded a treaty, however, with Sinsarchand, the king of the Prasij, whom the Greeks called Sandracotta, by which botli parties retained their territories. Seleucus afterwards sent Megasthenes (one of Alexander's officers) as his ambassador to Sandracotta ; but the mixture of truth and fable in such parts of his relation as are preserved by Strabo and others, renders him of little use as an authority. In some geograjihical points he is sufficiently correct ; but he tells also of men who used their enor- mous ears for a cloak, who were born with only one eye, who were without noses, or mouths, whose heads were shaped like a wedge, who were only three sj^ans in height. Another embassy, attended with even smaller results in the acquisition of knowledge, was the last communication of the Syrian kings with India. They appear to have abandoned their possessions in the Punjab and on the Lower Indus soon after the death of Seleucus, but at what precise date, or under what circumstances, is unknown. The intercourse of the princes of Bactria, a Greek kingdom, between the Punjab and the Caspian, is in like manner involved in obscurity. Some say that they re- covered the delta of the Indus subdued by Alexander, and lost by his successors ; and some, that they made extensive conquests even in the heart of India. No more trace, however, was left by them than by the hero, of some inconsiderable fragments of whose empire theirs was formed ; and after the latter had existed for about a hundred and thirty years, a horde of Tartars from the confines of China swept away for ever from that part of Asia the dominion of the Greeks. CHAP. I.] HISTORY OF INDIA. 13 From this period to the invasion of the Mahoniedans the political history of the extraordinary people whose destinies we have undertaken to sketch is a blank, which the learned have in vain endeavoured to fill up. During a great part of the space their own chronicles are silent, although to make up for this they are surprisingly minute in their description of the events of myriads of years before. Shut up by natural barriers from the rest of mankind, their imagination had full leisure to expatiate in the abysm of antiquity. Possessing no relations with other countries, which elsewhere serve for evidences and corrections of history, they were able to construct with- out contradiction a chronology of their own. But no people in the world had less need of exaggeration in that point ; for it is evident that in the time of Alexander the Great their civilization had already reached its culminating point, after which all is degradation, however slight, and decline, hoAvever gradual. The Hindoo chronology cannot be received in j^art and rejected in part, for it is perfect in its construction : we must believe it to be either a sequence of facts, or a well- imagined fiction. Those writers who use this very per- fection as an argument in its favour, forget that the Brahmins are as perfect in other matters about which they can know as little. Their system of geography, for instance, with its seven deeps, or continents, sepai-ated from each other by an almost infinite ocean, is not more wild than their system of mortal time : and it is not more true. The sea, in fact, was to 'this hermit nation, a field as vague and limitless as the Past, and they plunged into both with all the fervour of an oriental imagination. If we receive no guidance, however, from the native chroniclers, we are at least able to determine, as nearly as is necessary, the social position of the people when 14 THE BRITISH WORLD IN THE EAST. [bOOK I. tliey first came in contact with Europeans, and to deduce from liistorical analogies tliat it must have taken many centuries to attain to the pitch of civiHzation to which they had arrived. The extravagant accounts given by the ancients, how- ever, of the virtue, wisdom, and happiness of the Indians, must be classed with their report of the stature of the Punjab nations. The former, they tell us, were philo- sophers, and the latter giants ; by which we merely understand that Porus and his subjects were tall, and the people generally ^^rosperous, and living under an orderly government. The laws themselves, however, have come down to our day, and they throw a still more distinct light upon the condition of the inhabitants of India long before the dawn of authentic history. The laws of Menu, the date of whicli may be vaguely stated at about a thousand years before Christ, evidently refer to a nation long past the age of barbarism. Among the subjects of legislation are the interest on loans, and the nature of pledges and other securities ; the division of heritable property, partnership in business, purchase and sale, non-performance of agreements of various kinds, slander, disputes between husband and wife, respect and politeness, and other matters Avhich could occupy the attention only of a people in an advanced stage of civiliza- tion. It should be remarked, however, that a body of laws does not form national character, but is formed by it. In all probability, the code of Menu merely reduced to writing, in a collective form, the existing regulations of the country ; and this is the more probable, from the religious respect Avhich they inculcate throughout to "immemorial custom." If at the date of the compilation, the Hindoos had been in a state of barbarism within the memory of man, this remarkable injunction would never CHAP. I.] HISTORY OP INDIA. 15 have hcen given. Tlie laws of Menu, tlicreforc, although indicating the state of civilization a thousand years before the Christian era, render us little or no assistance in determining how long that state had then existed; and the question of the antiquity of their refinement will probably remain for ever a debatable ground for the speculations of the learned. All we know is, that at some period so remote as to mock the usual calculations of chronology, the Hindoos must have attained to a high degree of civilization, although its kind may be hardly intelligible to another people, refined not like them by the revolutions of time, but by the collisions of the world. The grand distinctive feature in Hindoo civilization, and tlie circumstance to which it owes its arrest at a certain point of progress, is the system of caste. Among other ancient nations the same system existed, however difter- ently modified, at the commencement of the march of refinement ; but with them, after having performed its office, it gradually gave way under the influence of cir- cumstances. Among the Hindoos, on the contrary, it was part and parcel of the religion of the country ; it could only be overwhelmed in the ruins of the temples ; and it therefore grew with the growth, and strengthened with the strength of civilization. The Brahmin pro- ceeded from the mouth of the Divine Being, and it was his province to pray, to read, and to instruct, — to be, in fact, the representative of God upon earth ; the Chsatrya issued from his arm, and it was his to fight and to govern ; the Vaisya from his thigh or belly, and his duty it was to provide the necessaries of life by agriculture and traffic ; the Sudra from his feet, and his portion was labour and servitude. This classification belonging essen- tially to an early stage of society, was not, as elsewhere, a mere step, however important, in the progress of the nation, 16 THE BRITISH WORLD IN THE EAST. [dOOK I. for it existed, as we have said, in the permanence of the Braliminical faith itself. After permitting, therefore, as much scope as Avas jiossible, under the circumstances, to the natural expansiveness of the human mind, it operated like a chain upon the people, confining their social progress within a certain limit, which only its rupture could permit them to pass. Let us observe further, for this is an important point which seems to have received little attention from historians, that it is to the same system of caste, and neither to the na- ture of their climate, nor the indolence of their disposition, that we ought to attribute the supineness of the great body of Hindoos under foreign invasion. The standing armies of the princes comprehended, it is to be supposed, nearly the whole of the soldier caste, and the great mass of the people were not merely ignorant of the use of arms, but forbidden to use them. The merchants, husbandmen, and artificers, had no sympathies in common with the fighters. Their occupation was as much forbidden to them as that of teaching or governing ; they had nothing whatever to do with it ; and they cared little about the event of a battle, provided they were permitted to buy and sell, and labour as usual. After a defeat, the soldiers had no resources to fall back upon, no allies to fly to, no recruits to muster, and it was hopeless to rally. A single battle, therefore, was sufficient to decide the fate of an empire ; and the myriads of the people, taught from infancy to believe that it was not their province to inter- fere, submitted without a murmur to a new dynasty of which perhaps they knew not the name. It is related by Strabo, that Avhile two hostile armies were fighting in one field, the peasants were ploughing or reaping in the next field in perfect tranquillity ; and from this fact Robertson takes occasion to eulogise CHAP. I.] HISTORY OF INDIA. 17 the paternal nature of the government " which paid such attention to all the different orders of which the society was composed, particularly the cultivators of the earth." It is manifest, however, that this form of government was originally adapted only for a rude people isolated from the other nations of the earth. Their first collision with a different race was fatal. The first blow struck at their empire by warriors who acknowledged no such laws of caste or of religion, laid it prostrate in the dust. After the supposed Bactrian expeditions into India, the natives of the west appear to have relinquished all thoughts of conquest, and to have contented themselves with the peaceful emulation of trade. This intercourse we shall treat of at large in another place ; but before dismissing the subject of ancient India, in its political phasis, we are tempted by the paucity of materials just to mention the visit of the sophist, Apollonius Tyaneus, three- hundred and seventy-three years after Alexander's expe- dition. This strange person, if we are to believe his biogra- pher Philostratus, on entering the Punjab, found himself in the dominions of the very beau ideal of a royal philo- sopher. He was surprised at the noble simplicity of the palace of Phraotes, but observing no guards, nor other ensigns of royalty around, he supposed it to be the house of some noble citizen. Being undeceived, however, he entered with three or four persons who demanded an audience ; and struck with the majestic air of the king, who was accompanied by a very slender retinue, he accosted him through an interpreter, and congratulated him on his apparent attachment to philosophy. " The law and my own taste," replied the prince, " alike keep at a distance from me the vanities of royalty, I use with moderation the little our ancestors have permitted us to have, and although one of the most puissant of monarchs, c 18 THE BRITISH WORLD IN THE EAST. [bOOK I. I am contented with that little. But it is not only to my friends that I give up a portion of my riches, for I abandon, also, a portion to my enemies, that they may suffer my subjects to live in tranquillity. I drink no wine but when making libations to the sun. I give away the spoils of the chase, finding my own reward in the exercise. A few vegetables are my ordinary food." The King then dismissed the rest of the company, and becoming more familiar, addressed him in Greek, and begged Apollonius to entertain him at supper. This the astonished stranger would not hear of; and the royal philosopher, at length, modestly consenting to appropriate to himself the honour of exercising hospitahty, gave him an elegant entertainment, accompanied with music. This simplicity, however, was sometimes contrasted by the opposite vice, an example of which is given by Plii- lostratus himself; but the most remarkable example of luxury and effeminacy is to be found in Quintus Curtius and Strabo, on the authority of Onesicritus, who accompa- nied the expedition of Alexander. The king of the country near the Delta of the Indus was continually surrounded by a train of women. He was passionately fond of the chace, but in following it did not alight from his chariot, he and his concubines shooting with the bow as they sat. Censers of silver were carried before him to perfume the road, and branches covered with singing- birds waved around him. While giving audience to ambassadors, and j udging causes, his women were occu- pied in combing his hair and perfuming his feet and hands ; and so jealous was he withal that the crime of earnestly looking at these handmaids, or approaching them within a certain distance, was punished with death. Such were the tales with which the ancient world was entertained respecting India. On both sides they no CHAP. I.] HISTORY OF INDIA, 19 doubt possessed some foundation in truth ; but when the light of history begins to reappear, we shall see that although the vestiges of luxury and tyranny are evident enough, we may search in vain for those of the philo- sophical simplicity of the Taxeles. It will be hardly possible to recognise the Gymnosophists of Alexander in the mendicants of a later age. To the Greeks the natives appeared good soldiers, good farmers, sober, peaceful, simple, honest and veracious. Only a portion of this character remained to the period we are now ap- proaching. The civilization of the Hindoos had long reached the highest point permitted by their politico- religious system, and already all was decrepitude and decay. c 2 20 THE BRITISH WORLD IN THE EAST. [dOOK I. CHAPTER II. FROM THE FIRST INROADS OF THE MAHOMEDANS TO THE FALL OF GHIZNI. Many centuries elapsed, and India, althongli the source whence the western world derived its dearest luxuries, remained still a sealed book to the curiosity of Europe. Debarred by the nature of its institutions from that pro- gression of civilization which had elsewhere changed the character and condition of nations, it seemed also to be protected by its natural barriers from those tides of con- quest which in other countries had dissolved into one indistinguishable mass so many of the families of man- kind. When, however, the first ten centuries, of the Christian era had nearly passed away, the crisis of its fate arrived ; and we may be permitted to pause here for an instant to bestow a glance upon the nature of the power which operated such mighty changes both in the east and the west. The boundaries of the country which the ancients CHAP. II.] HISTORY OF INDIA. 21 called Scythia were not a geographical limit imposed by science, but merely the line at which their own know- ledge terminated. Scythia extended in reality from the embouchure of the Danube to the Sea of Japan, a dis- tance of five thousand miles ; and laterally from the northern frontiers of China to the deserts of Siberia, and from the base of the Himalaya to the further steppes of Mount Imaus. This vast region was occupied by various denominations of Tartars, for the most part known as Huns, who were distinguished from other barbarians by living in tents, and roaming from pasture to pasture. Their only wealth consisted in the moveable property of flocks and herds, and their only power in their courage and their swords. In their foreign wars they were always the invaders, for it was unlikely that they should themselves be hunted, for nothing more valuable than cattle, in the pathless deserts of Central Asia. Robbers from choice and vagabonds from ne- cessity, the wild life they led rendered them daring, hardy, and relentless to a degree which civilized men can scarcely comprehend. In the third century before our era a wall fifteen hundred miles in length was built, and in vain, to protect the Chinese empire from the incursions of the Tanjous, then the dominant power of this Scythian race. A tribute of money, and silk, and beautiful virgins, was found to be more effective by some of the emperors ; till at length Vouti, the fifth of the Han dynasty, after a series of successful wars, succeeded in breaking up the dominion of the Huns, which may be said to have been utterly destroyed before the end of the first century of the Christian Era. Some of the vanquished tribes re- tired towards the south, and were permitted to guard the empire they had formerly insulted ; some mingled 22 THE BRITISH WORLD IN THE EAST. [bOOK I. with their enemies, the Sienpi, now the dominant tribe of Tartars; some, marching westward, overthrew, (as we have ah-eady noticed) the Bactrian kingdom of the successors of Alexander ; and some, whose destiny it was to revolu- tionize Europe, pushed forward to the banks of the Volga. The fortunes of barbarians, however, are always hidden in mj^stery till they receive reflected light from the con- tact of ci^^lized nations ; and for this reason we know little of the history of the Huns till the fourth century, when we find them, in conjunction with the Alani, a great Scythian people of the north whom they had sub- dued, sweeping like a tempest upon the empire of the Goths between the Caspian and the Euxine. Their appearance spread everywhere terror and dismay. Alike hideous in aspect and brutal in manners, these wandering shepherds seemed to have little in common with our nature, and were supposed by their victims to have sprung from the horrible loves of human sorceresses with the demons of the Scythian desert. The resistance of the Goths against such enemies was feeble, and they at length fled to the Danube and implored permission of Valens to take refuge within the charmed circle of the Roman empire of the East. The fated emperor com- plied, but with a generosity strangely mingled with insult and outrage ; the Goths turned their arms against their quasi protectors ; and soon the mighty Attila followed with his countless Huns to precipitate the downfall of the colossus of the world. The next rulers of the shepherd nations of Scythia were the Turks of Mount Imaus, who entered into relat- ions both of i^eace and war with the Chinese, Persians and Romans ; and who conquered the Huns of Bactria, by that time no longer a horde of wandering Tartars but a commercial and a warlike people who ruled in Eastern CHAP. II.] HISTORY OF INDIA. 23 Persia and to tlie banks of the Indus. This early Turkish empire, however, lasted only two hundred years ; hut even after its dissolution, the fragments, each a great and inde- pendent state, played an important part in the history of the Scythian desert, while many of the thrones of Asia continued to be filled by sovereigns of Turkish extraction. We may here observe that the word " Tartar" is used with little discrimination by European writers to desig- nate generally the inhabitants of the vast Scythian region. In reality there are in that region at least three distinct languages, and consequently as many nations, viz., the Turks, Moguls, and Manchous, besides various branches exhibiting greater or less evidence of consanguinity with the parent stock. These nations, however, can hardly be said to have a country. From the first movement which resulted in the devastation of the distant west down to a late period, they appear to have been constantly changing their position according to the fortunes of war. At pre- sent the Turks, whether under the name of Uzbeks, Turcomans, or Ottomans, are in the west, the Manchous in the east, and the Moguls in the centre. In the seventh century, when on one hand the Roman colossus was already in ruins, and on the other the great empire of Persia tottered to its fall through internal decay, a new and extraordinary power arose in that peninsular corner of Asia which divides it from the African continent. Arabia, with the partial exception of the line of country bordering on the Indian sea, is nothing- more than a great desert dotted here and there with oases of comparative fertility ; and from these solitudes, the natural cradle of a wild independence, there came forth a prophet-king who was destined to exercise a mighty influence not merely on the hordes of the Scythian desert, but on the civilised world. The Christianity of 24 THE BRITISH WORLD IN THE EAST. [BOOK I. the holy Scriptures was by this time a forgotten dream. The mother of Jesus, a poor, weak, helpless woman, whom in dying he had bequeathed to the love and protec- tion of one of his disciples, had nearly driven her eternal Son out of the temple. The images of saints and virgins had taken the place of those of the gods and goddesses of profane antiquity, and many of the splendid absurdi- ties which had drawn down upon Paganigpm the thunders of Paul were forcibly dove-tailed into the pure and sim- ple gospel of the fishermen of Galilee. The Catholic Church was no longer Catholic ; it was divided into sects and schisms ; and instead of love and charity, all Chris- tendom was full of hatred and persecution. At this moment, there came a voice crying from the wilderness of Arabia, There is but one God. This, and this alone, was the original message of Mahomed ; although when persecution had compelled him to draw the sword, and the zeal of proselytism became powerful even to phrenzy, many fables were appended. His religion was the reli- gion of simplicity and nature as contradistinguished from that of myths and symbols ; and although it had little effect upon refined or sophisticated minds, or upon those of the vulgar which were filled even with a spurious Christianity, it found ready converts among the Asiatic nations. Mahomedanism was soon the faith of all Arabia, and the standard of the Prophet went forth from its native deserts conquering and to conquer. By the middle of the seventh century all Persia was subdued by the Arabs, who pushed their frontier to the Oxus, the Indus, and the sea ; their eastern dominion comprehending those branches of the Hindoo Koosh called the mountains of Ghor, the Solimaun mountains of the AfFghans, and the Meci*an mountains of the Beloo- ches. Their religion, however, was not confined by the CHAP. II.] HISTORY OF INDIA. 25 boundaries of empire, but spread gradually throughout the Tartar nations, and penetrated into China, the Malay country, and the Eastern Archipelago, where their arms were never heard of. In the beginning of the eighth century, the Arabs 'subdued a portion of the Hindoo territory along the line of the Indus, and contemplated, it is said, an expedition to Canouj ; but in thirty-six years, by some revolution of which the particulars remain unknown, they were driven out of India by the Rajpoots. After the death of the Caliph Haroun Alraschid, the Arabian empire began to fall in pieces, and most of the governments of provinces became hereditary. Among these viceroys the most distinguished was Ismael Sa- mani, who thus founded the Samanian dynasty of the kings of Persia ; which race of princes continued one hundred and twenty-five years, till their power in turn was set aside by one of their own provincial governors. This was Alptegin, a Turkish slave, who ruled for the empire in Khorasan, a province which comprehended the whole of the Bactria of the ancients ; and who in general had a substitute in Ghizni, the capital of Zabulistan, in order to keep possession of the mountainous region extending to the Indus. It appears, however, that at this time the wilder portions of the Affghan territory were only nominally subject to the Persian government ; the chiefs living in the same kind of rude independence which is observable to-day. Alptegin took up his residence at Ghizni, and forced his former master to ratify by treaty the right of his family to the possessions they had seized ; and after his death, and that of his son, who survived his father only two years, the army raised to the throne of Ghizni their general, Sebektegin, also a Turkish slave, who was origin- ally a private horseman in the service of him whom he succeeded in the kingdom. This prince carried his arms 26 THE BRITISH WORLD IN THE EAST. [bOOK I. across tlie Indus into Lahore ; but his son, Mahmood of Ghizni, was tlie first — though not the last — of the Tartar race who became memorable in the wars of India. In order to com})rehend more easil}' the Indian opera- tions of Mahmood, which paved the way for tlie AfFghan conquest two centuries afterwards, and two centuries later still for the dynasty of the shepherd-kings of Scythia, the shadow of which mocks the throne of Delhi to tliis day, it will he necessary to inquire into tlie jiolitical state of Hindostan at the period at which we have now arrived. The country appears to have been then divided, and ])crhaps was so for centuries before, among a host of subordinate chiefs, each owning homage to one of four considerable states. These four were, Delhi, under the Chohans ; Canouj, under the Rahtores; Mewar under the Ghilotes; and Anhulwarra under the Chauras and Salankhis. Dellii included the territory westward from the Ara^^Illi to the Indus, and northward to the Hima- laya ; Canouj extended eastward to Benares, and com- prehended a portion of Bundelkund; and Mewar and Anhulwarra consisted probably of the present Mewar iuid Malwa, and thence to the Lower Indus and the sea. In this scheme, for which we are indebted to Colonel Tod, the whole of Peninsular India, and a great })art of Ben<2:al, it will be observ^ed, are not mentioned. Canouj was the principal city of India, and is said to have been thirty miles in circumference, and of extraordinary grandeur; but its principal interest with the scholar consists in its claim to l^e considered the Palibothra of the ancients. The geographer D'Anville pronounces against this claim, and in favour of Allahabad, and Robertson follows the authority. Major Rennel, however, adduces a variety of evidence, showing the probability of its having been the CHAP, n.] riisTony of inuia. 27 place (mentioned as Palibothra) where the ambassadors of Seleucus were received ; and he might have added — as no one doubts the contemporaneous existence of Canouj — that even so inaccurate an observer as Eratosthenes coulf] hardly have passed without mention this vast city, which he must have approached within a trifling distance on his route to Allahabad. Such considerations are of especial weight in a question where science is at fault. The distan- ces of Ptolemy relied upon in this instance by Major Rennel, are usually so inaccurate as to deserve no credit at all ; while, on the other side, the changes which take place in Indian rivers are so great, that but little import- ance can be attached to the fact that the Calini presents no longer to-day the appearance of that third-rate stream, near the confluence of which with the Ganges Palibothra was said two thousand years ago to be situated. How- ever this may be, Canouj was now, no doubt, the capital of one of the greatest of the Indian kingdoms, and its monarch is reported to have defeated the king of Anhul- warra, and extended his dominions beyond the Nerljiidda. Megasthenes relates that he had an audience of Sandra- cotta, in the midst of an encampment of four hundred thousand troops ; and the Sooraj Prakas, a bardic history, quoted by Colonel Tod, computes the army of Canouj at eighty thousand men in armour, thirty thousand horse covered with quilted mail, three hundred thousand in- fantry, and two hundred thousand bowmen and battle- axes, besides "a cloud of elephants, bearing warriors." This will admit of enormous reductions, and still leave Canouj a great military state. It was a feudal state, however, embroiled in perpetual wars with its neighbours, and carefully hedged round by the laws of caste from that principle of democracy which in Europe converted clans of robbers into great nations. The four 28 THE BRITISH WORLD IN THE EAST. [bOOK I. kings of India worried each other with incessant strife ; while the great mass of the population looked calmly on, sowing and reaping as usual, and neither caring nor per- haps knowing under which government they lived. Thus the wheel of fortune went round, and Hindostan became more and more prepared every day to receive the yoke of a stranger. Who could foresee that all this splendour of feudality should one day fade at the approach of the wan- dering shepherds of Scythia? Who could dream that Tar- tar and Hindoo alike should eventually quail before the genius of some western islanders, whose sires were naked and painted savages, shivering in their ancestral woods at a time when the refined Greeks were astonished to behold beyond the Indus a people more refined than themselves ? Mahmood's first expedition into India took place in the year 1000. He was met in the neighbourhood of Peshawur by the monarch of Lahore, whom he defeated and took prisoner, but afterwards released. He then penetrated to Butinda beyond the Sutledge, said to have been one of the royal residences of Lahore, with the spoils of which he returned to Ghizni, The conquered king, upon these reverses, transferred his crown to his son, and died upon a funeral pile which he kindled with his own hands. In the second expedition, the Rajah of Bhattia, on the southern side of Moultan, was defeated, though with great difficulty, and after the decisive conflict fell upon his own sword. Another expedition, from which he was called to repel an invasion of the Tartars, sufficed to re-conquer Moultan, which had revolted ; but the fourth was of a more important nature, as he had to meet a confederacy of native princes, some of them the rulers of the principal kingdoms of India. Mahmood was discon- certed by the appearance of the greatest army he had CHAP. II.] HISTORY OF INDIA. 29 yet seen, and which did not wait for his entering its country, but marched to the confines of Peshawur to give him battle. The Ghiznivide halted, and entrenched himself in his camp for forty days, exposed to continual assaults and the loss of thousands of his troops. The enthusiasm of the Hindoos increased as this inaction of their enemy continued. It was not a war of prince against prince, but of faith against faith ; and even the women at a distance contributed their golden ornaments towards the defence of the gods of their country. An accidental circumstance, however, rendered all unavailing. The elephant of the prince of Lahore, who was the Indian commander-in-chief, was seen to wheel suddenly and fly from the field ; and the Hindoos, supposing them- selves to be deserted by their general, were seized with a panic, and after a faint effort to recover dispersed in all directions, and were slaughtered to the number of twenty thousand in their flight. In Colonel Dow's Ferishta the cause of the elephant's terror is said to have been " the report of a gun ;" and in General Briggs's translation, the excellencies of which have rendered the former work nearly obsolete, it is made *' cannon and musketry," which, however, he suggests, a very slight change in the diacritical points in the Persian, would turn into " naphtha balls and arrows." Mr. Elpliin- stone, in his excellent History, calls it simply " flights of arrows," but this merely evades without explaining the supposed anachronism. There is nothing improbable in the supposition that a kind of Greek fire may have been used by the Persians. That fire-arms of some kind were found in India by Alexander, may be inferred from a passage in Quintus Curtius ; and their use in battle is prohibited in the most ancient laws of the Hindoos, being therein classed with deceitful machines and poisoned 30 THE BRITISH WORLD IN THE EAST. [bOOK I. weapons. The word in Sanscrit, Mr. Halhed tells us, is agnee shastu, a weapon of fire, which is described as an arrow tipped with fire, and discharged upon the enemy from a bamboo. Cannon, in the same idiom, are the shet-agnee, the weapon that kills a hundred men at once. Mahmood left the Indians no time to rally, but fol- lowed them promptly into the Punjab, where he directed his arms against a temple in the Kohistan, or hilly country. This place was in the territory of Nagarcot, and near the town of Kangra, and was supposed by the Hindoos to have been the immediate workmanship of the divinity. Abul Fazel relates, as an instance of its sanctity, that the pilgrims who frequented it in his time were in the habit of cutting out their tongues, which grew again in two or three days. In the time of Mah- mood the offerings seem to have been of more value, for the booty carried off by the illustrious robber in gold, silver, pearls, corals, diamonds, and rubies, was so prodigious, that on liis return to Ghizni he held a magnificent festival for the purpose of displaying to his subjects the riches of India. A short time Avas now spent in reducing the Ghorian country, (and thus establishing a feud which was destined to have prodigious consequences both for the slave-kings of Ghizni and for India), and in another expedition to Moultan, Avhence Mahmood, whose grand object through- out seems to have been plunder, directed his march against Tanesar, near the Jumna, where there was another rich and holy temple of the Hindoos ; and not- withstanding the remonstrances of the Delhi prince, with whom he was allied by treaty, he sacked both city and temple before any means could be taken to oppose him. The interference, however, of the Rajah of Delhi, and his despatch of messengers to acquaint the other chiefs CHAP. II.] HISTORY OF INDIA. 3i Math the sacrilegious purpose of Mahmood, drew upon him the indignation of the conqueror. Marching from Tanesar he captured the city, and but for prudential con- siderations connected with the uncertainty of the submission of Moultan, would have annexed the kingdom to his dominions. He returned, therefore, to Ghizni, loaded with new riches, and encumbered with forty thousand captives. The conquest of Transoxiana next occupied the Sultan ; but as soon as this was completed, he returned to the cherished business of his life, and at the head of a hundred thousand horse, and twenty thousand foot, set out on a new and more ambitious expedition into India. He marched upon Canouj, a journey of three months, and presenting himself suddenly before this celebrated capital, the Rajali, in utter consternation, came out and delivered himself and family into his hands. Mahmood spared the city, and then proceeded to Mattra, or Mathura, a town on the west bank of the Jumna, which is mentioned by the Greek geographers, and celebrated in mythology as the scene of the birth and early adventures of Krishna, one of the most popular of the Hindoo deities, and the hero of the poem called the " Maha Bharat." Here the idols were broken and the temples plundered ; the images yielding an incredible quantity of gold and silver, and their eyes precious stones of incalculable value. Munj met with a similar fate ; and the Sultan then returned to Ghizni loaded as usual with spoil. Two other inroads into the interior of India produced no result, but the important one of the permanent occu- pation of the Punjab, to which circumstances gave rise ; and then the mighty Iconoclast set out on his last expedi- tion for the overthrow of idols, and the plunder of the Pagan temples. Somnath was this time his destination. It was situated near the southern extremity of Guzerat, and was 32 THE BRITISH WORLD IN THE EAST. [l300K I. the richest and best frequented place of worship in the country. His army reached Mouhan in October, 1024, and crossed the desert, three hundred and fifty miles in breadth, to Ajmeer, which they plundered ; and thence, skirting southward the Aravulli mountains, they came to Anhulwarra, the capital of Guzerat, which the Rajah abandoned with precipitation. They at length reached Somnath, a lofty fortress seated on a narrow peninsula, washed on three sides by the sea. The defenders, trusting to their own strength, and that of their gods, were undismayed at the approach of the enemy, and the assault was repeated without effect for three days. On the third day the neighbouring princes, coming to the relief of the temple, gave Mahmood battle without the walls, and were defeated with great slaughter; on seeing AA'hich, the garrison suddenly gave up hopes of defence, and took to their boats, to the number of four thousand men, leaving the victorious Sultan to enter the temple unopposed. Somnath, in the time of eclipses, we are told, numbered forty or fifty thousand worshippers at one moment ; it was endowed with the revenue of two thousand villages ; and every morning and evening the idol was bathed in water brought from the Ganges, upwards of a thousand miles distant. There were two thousand Brahmins who officiated as priests ; five hundred dancing-girls, remark- able either for their beauty or birth, the Rajahs considering it an honour to have their daughters admitted ; three hundred musicians, and three hundred barbers to shave the devotees before they were allowed to enter the presence of the idol. The lofty roof was supported by fifty-six columns, richly carved and ornamented with precious stones ; and in the midst, upheld by a golden chain, hung a lamp capable of illuminating the whole CHAP. I.] HISTORY OF INDIA. 33 The idol, according to Professor Wilson, was merely a cylinder of stone, the symbol of the reproductive power of nature, but in Ferishta's account, it was a hollow image five yards high, two of which were buried in the ground, and the interior filled with jewels, which burst forth at the blows of the Iconoclast. Mahmood, it is said, was tempted by the offer of a mighty ransom to spare the idol ; but disdaining to be a seller of images, he struck the blow which produced a torrent of riches greatly ex- ceeding in value all his former captures. After this, he spent some time in Anhulwarra, moved thereto by the report that there were diamond mines in Guzerat, or as others say, to concoct plans for possessing himself, by means of a fleet, of the gold and ruby mines of Ceylon and Pegu. But it was at length necessary to attend to his own safety, for the dispossessed princes were gathering like vultures round his wearied and diminished army ; and instead of proceeding by the banks of the Indus (which Mr, Elphinstone considers may have been rendered impossible by the Runn being in that age covered by the sea) he took the route of the desert to the Punjab. In addition to fatigue and thirst, to the burning sun and the scorching sand, they were led out of their way by the guides, who, on being tortured, confessed that they were priests of Somnath ! Some dropped down dead upon the desert, some became raving mad, — all were in despair, till at length they fell in with a pool of water, and were able to pursue their dreadful journey to Moultan. During the decline of the Caliphate, various movements had taken place among the eastern Turks, which ought to have caused some alarm ; but those Turkish slaves who aspired to the Persian throne, or set its power at 34 THE BRITISH WORLD IX THE EAST. [bOOK I. defiance, rather encouraged than otherwise tlie immigra- tions of their wild countrymen, who recruited their armies, and from whom they hoped to derive assistance when necessary. This short-sighted jjohcy was pursued to so dangerous an extent by Mahmood, that Avhen at lengtli it was necessary to send an expedition against the Seljuk tribe, his general was met by them in the field and defeated in a bloody action. This brought the Sultan himself to the spot, and he succeeded in clearing the country, and sending away the more obnoxious tribes beyond the Oxus ; but the ferment had only changed its scene, not its character ; and in the reign of his son we shall arrive at the still bloodier day of Zendecan, which seated on the throne of Persia the dynasty of the shepherd kings, whose descendants fill that of Constantinople at this day. Mahmood's last transactions were the invasion of Persian Irak, the territory extending westward from the frontiers of Khorasan, the seizure of its prince and his treasure, and the slaughter, in cold blood, of some thousands of the inhabitants who had opposed him. He then returned to Gliizni, where he was seized with a mortal illness. Feeling the approach of death, he commanded those treasures which it had been the business of his life to amass, to be brought before him, and took leave of them with tears and lamentations. The next day his army, his elephants, camels, horses, and chariots, all were paraded before him, and the dying monarch wept again as he fixed a long last look upon the trappings of his power, and the instruments of his ambition. On the 29th of April, 1030, he expired. The character of Mahmood of Ghizni, has probably been over-rated by historians. To the native courage of the Turkish soldier he united the skill and forethouoht of CHAP. II.] HISTOT?Y OF INDIA. 35 tlie general, but this is his highest praise. All the elements of power were within his grasp, — the whole eastern world seemed to offer itself to his sceptre ; but his low ambition was satisfied with the plunder of India. He did not fight for conquest, but for gold, and with the exception of some patronage which he bestowed upon literature and the arts, his treasure was spent ujjon no objects of public utility. Even this patronage derives a great part of its lustre from its rarity in that age ; and the sums which he awarded to learned men, if compared with his enormous wealth, appear mean and insignificant. A great epic poem was produced by Ferdousi, under his auspices ; but on its completion after thirty years' labour, the taste, and even the justice of Malimood was overruled by his avarice, and the reward he offered was so inade- quate, that the illustrious Persian, rejecting the pittance, retired from the court, and gave vent to his scorn and indignation in a burning satire. It must be said, however, that the Sultan afterwards forgave the satire, and sent its author a sum as ample as his original expec- tations ; although the royal bounty unhappily arrived just when the bier of the poet was borne out of his house. Panegyrics, notwithstanding, were always sure of their reward, for Mahmood possessed the usual vanity of kings, and sometimes a few verses addressed at the proper moment to his personal feelings, were worth an epic to the author. An instance of this gives a curious picture of the manners of the Ghiznivide court. Mahmood, while drinking one night with his favourite mistress, cut off" the long tresses of her hair in the folly of intoxication, and the next day was so maddened by his reflections, that people were terrified to approach him. At length Unsuri ventured to accost him in some consolatory stanzas, the point of which was to the effect that " the elegant form of 36 THE BRITISH WORLD IN THE EAST. [bOOK I. the cypress is best disclosed by the pruning of its branches," and Mahmood was so dehghted with the wit and the rhyme, that he caused the poet's mouth to be filled three times with jewels, and then sat down with him to drink away the remembrance of his indiscretion. But his genius went no farther than the encouragement of literature and architecture. He did not attempt any reform of the rude institutions of his country, or otherwise seek to identify himself with the progress of the nation. Without views beyond the passing moment, without order in his government, and without system in his con- quests, his empire was held together only by his military fame and his treasure, and almost the instant he died it fell in pieces. In fine, surrounded by all the circum- stances which make a great king, Mahmood of Ghizni must be considered by the philosophical historian as little better than a great brigand. The sudden decline of the house of Ghizni was at- tended by important effects to India. Masoud, the son of Mahmood, neglected the spirit of insurrection among the Seljuks so long, that " the swarm of ants," as he was warned by his omrahs, "became little snakes, and then serpents," which he in vain attempted to crush. After a war of two years, the decisive battle of Zendecan, in 1039, sent him a fugitive across the Indus, where he was robbed by his own troops, and assassinated by his own relations. These eventually rendered the Punjab the most important province in the kingdom, and after numerous and bloody conflicts, both with Hindoos and Turks, the Ghiznivide dynasty began in the year 1100 to make Lahore the seat of government, thus introducing into India the Persian language, manners, and institutions. In 1152, these princes were driven permanently across the Indus by the CHAP. II.] HISTORY OF INDIA. 37 sultan of the Ghorlan Affghans, who utterly destroyed Ghizni, at that period the greatest city in Asia. The inhabitants of the mountains of Ghor were Affghans, who had been in continual feud with the Ghiznivide princes, almost from the commencement of this dynasty. They were not long satisfied with their triumph over these mortal ene- mies, but in 1176, under Shahab-u-din, better known in history as Mahomed Ghori, pursued them into India. The last of the Ghiznivides soon sunk before the genius of the Ghori Sulan, but the ambition of this prince was not satisfied with the reduction of Lahore, and the valley of the Indus. In 1193, with an army inured to the Tartar wars, he marched against Pirthi Rajah of Delhi, whom he encountered in that fatal plain between Thanesir and Kurnal, where India has been so often lost and won. This time the Mahomedans were defeated, and returned across the Indus in disgrace ; but in two years, having mustered another army, composed of a mingled force of Affghans, Persians, and Tartars, Mahomed made his appearance again on the same field of battle, and partly by stratagem, and partly by valour, overthrew the mightiest army that had yet been collected in India. Pirthi Rajah himself was taken prisoner, and slain in