When kings rode to Delhi

Front matter

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CORNELL

Preface

This book is an attempt to treat the history of Delhi as I had already treated the history of some of the states of Eajputana in a former book, 'From the Land of Princes.'

The principal sources from which it has been taken are, first and foremost, the eight volumes of the 'History of India as Told by its Own Historians ' (edited by Elliot and Dowson) ; Ferishta's ' History of Hindustan ' ; the Memoirs of Babar ; the Memoirs of Gul-badan Begam ; the Ain-i-Akbari, and Akbarnameh ; Manucci's ' Storia do Mogor ' ; Hawkins' Voyages ; Sir T. Roe's Embassy ; and Bernier's Travels. Among modern writers, Todd's 'Annals and Antiquities of Eajast'han'; Elphinstone's History of India; Keene's 'Turks in India,' and History of India; Erskine's ' Babar and Humayun ' ; Grant Duff's viii PREFACE.

'History of the Marathas'; S. Lane Poole's 'Mediaeval India'; J. B. Cunningham's 'The Sikhs'; W. L. Macgregor's 'Sikhs'; Forrest's 'Cities of India'; and Fanshawe's 'Delhi.'

The book is intended only for the general reader, or the traveller in India, and was written in the hope of making some of these realise a little of the fascination of the history of India in what a Kajput, speaking to the author, called "old-king- time." It is not intended for the scholar, but, should such a one take it up, he is entreated to remember that consistency in spelling is almost unattainable in a work of this kind. Certain names, such as "Meerut," have been left in an incorrect form because it was possible that the reader might have some association with them written thus ; others, probably unfamiliar in any spelling, appear in one of the forms approved by scholars and historians.

The illustrations are reproduced by permission from drawings and miniatures in the India Office. The portraits of Timur are merely conventional, since no genuine likeness of him was known to his descendant, the Emperor Jahangir. Though Manucci does not give her name, it

PEEFACE. IX

seemed allowable to suppose that the beautiful drawing catalogued as " Gul Saffa, the mistress of Dara Shekoh," represents the dancing- girl whose story he tells.

My thanks are due to Sir Theodore Morison for his great kindness in reading and revising the proofs of the book ; to Sir W. Lee-Warner ; to Mr Foster, the Superintendent of Records at the India Office ; to Dr Thomas, the Librarian at the India Office, for his kindness in facilitating and directing my search for drawings ; and to the officials of the London Library.

September 1912.

Contents

PROLOGUE : ON THE ROAD TO DELHI I. MAHMUD OF GHAZNI .

II. THE TRIUMPH OF THE CRESCENT HI. THE SLAVE KINGS OF DELHI IV. THE VENGEANCE FOR BLOOD V. SAINTS AND KINGS IN DELHI VI. A FLIGHT OF LOCUSTS VIL THE PRINCE 'WHO TENT TO SEEK HIS Till. THE ADVENTURES OF HUMATUN IX. AKBAR PADISHAH X. THE PASSING OF A DREAM .

XI. THE WEST IN THE EAST XII. THE LOVE OF AN EMPEROR

II. The Triumph Of The Ceescent— 1191-1206

"Surely nerer was a tragedy, not even of the house of Atreus, of deeper and more moving woe. It is the story of Juliet and her Borneo, hut involving in the pathetic fate of these Rajput lovers the doom of a great mediaeval Aryan empire." — Sir G. BIRDWOOD.

II.

In Delhi, long ago, there was a great raja, named Anangpal. At the entrance of his palace he had placed two stone lions, and by their side he had fixed a bell in order that those who sought justice might strike it, whereupon he would summon them before him, hear their complaints, and render justice.

One day, a crow came and sat on the bell and struck it, and the raja asked who it was that made complaint. "It is a fact, not unknown, that bold crows will pick meat from between the teeth of lions ; as stone lions cannot hunt for their prey, whence could the crow obtain food ? " So the raja ordered that as the crow had thus complained of hunger, some goats and sheep should be killed, upon which it might feed for several days.

This tradition of Old Delhi has come down to us through a Muslim poet of the early fourteenth century, whose high-spirited indifference to dates leaves it uncertain whether the raja were Anangpal I., the Tuar, who refounded Delhi in 730 A.D., and left the Arrangpur Band near Old Delhi as his memorial, or his namesake, Anangpal II., who repeopled the city in 1052, as an inscription on the Iron Pillar testifies, six-and-twenty years after Mahmud of Ghazni had led his last expedition into India.

Delhi is supposed to have been colonised from Kanauj, one of the oldest and greatest states in India, during the sixth century, and it was then that they set up the Iron Pillar which stands to this day in the court of the Kutb Mosque. The Hindus say that it rested upon the head of the great World-Serpent, who upheld Mount Meru and the seven divisions of the earth upon his great coils. There came a foolish King of Delhi of the Tuar race, who, not content to take the story upon trust, must needs move the pillar, in the hope of seeing the snake. Wherefore the curse fell upon him that his kingdom also should be removed.

If there be any foundation for this story, the hero is probably the last King of Delhi, defeated in battle by one of the Tomara race, whose line became Kings of Delhi in their turn. Tuar and Tomara alike were Eajputs, and Rajputs ruled what were the three other greatest kingdoms of

India at that time — the Chauhans at Ajmir, the Eathors at Kanauj, the Baghilas at Gujarat.

The Kajputs were all sprung of the Kshatriya or warrior caste — that caste which grew so powerful in the mythical ages of Hindu history that the god Vishnu became incarnate as Parasu Eama in order to destroy them, and restore the authority of the Brahmans. In these days, though Eajput communities are to be found all over India, they are the ruling race only in the deserts and sand wastes and rugged hills of the country that is called after them, Eajputana, whither they fled when the Muslim conquerors drove them from cities and plains. Chief of all is the Maharana of Udaipur or Mewar, whom men call " the Sun of the Hindus," descended from a prince who expelled the Arabs from Sind when they had been established there for just one hundred years.

In many ways the Eajputs bear such a strong resemblance to the Highlanders of Scotland that one might seem to be reading some of Walter Scott's stories, with trifling differences of names and costumes. They had the same reckless daring, the same devoted loyalty to the chief to whom they were bound by the ties of their clan, the same love of sport, the same readiness to take offence and quarrel among themselves when they could find no other enemy to give them employment, — a weakness which ruined them as it ruined the Highlanders. Their women held a verydifferent position from other women in India; queens and princesses went in and out freely among the men, sharing their sports and exercises, and even riding with them to battle, until they learned from the Muslims the custom of shutting up the women behind the curtain.

After all these centuries, the Eajput bearing remains what it was in their heroic age, something that marks them out from all other races of India ; the poorest is by birth a gentleman, and therefore the equal of the greatest. To see a Eajput on horseback, clattering through the streets that his ancestors cleared with the sword, or on foot, swaggering through the press in a market-place, is to realise a scene from the legends that tell how Prithwi Eaj or Goman Sing went forth " at the time of the year when kings go to battle."

The last Tomara King of Delhi had no sons, and when he came to die, he left his kingdom to his grandson, Eai Pithora of Ajmir, thereby uniting Chauhans and Tomaras under one head. Fiercely raged Jaya Chandra, Eaj a of Kanauj, the son of another daughter of the Tomara, who had looked to join Delhi to Kanauj and be over-lord of all the Hindus.

There was a solemn rite called the Aswamedha or Horse Sacrifice that only great kings might celebrate. The horse was consecrated and set loose to stray at its will, followed by the owner or his champion. If any man ventured to stop or turn it aside, the champion must give battle, and if it went unchecked till the period of its wandering was over, that was a sign that all men over whose territories it had passed acknowledged the supremacy of its owner. To these material difficulties were added religious ones ; as the celebrant of a hundred Aswamedhas became equal to Indra, lord of the firmament, " the golden god " was always on the watch against a rival, and usually carried off the sacred horse by fraud or by violence, before it could be sacrificed with solemn rites on its return.

In spite of all these obstacles, Eai Pithora succeeded in performing the Aswamedha, the last king, it is said, who was ever to celebrate it, and was acknowledged as " Prithwi Eaj " or sovereign lord. By way of retaliation, Jaya Chandra issued invitations to the wedding of his daughter, who, according to ancient usage, was to choose a husband from among the assembled princes. A solemn feast was to be made, and every one who took part in it, down to the scullions in the kitchen, must be of royal blood. Like the Aswamedha, this feast is a claim to supremacy on the part of the holder.

Eajas, princes, chieftains came from every part of the land, for not one but had heard of the beauty and wisdom of the Princess Sangagota. Some say that Prithwi Eaj was not invited, others that he refused to appear as the vassal of Kanauj. However it was, he came not, and so Jaya Chandra had his image modelled in clay and set up as doorkeeper — the lowest oflS.ce of all.

The princes were gathered in the great hall at Kanauj, and the Princess entered, bearing the garland that she was to fling round the bridegroom whom she chose. One glance round the assembly, and she had turned quickly to the right and thrown the wreath about the neck of the clay image. An armed figure rose in her path, strong hands swung her to the back of the horse that pawed at the gate, and Prithwi Eaj himself was carrying off his bride. Through five days they rode, while he and his companions kept up a running fight with their pursuers, and in the end he brought her safely to Delhi.

Some miles beyond modern Delhi stands "Kila Eai Pithora," the massive fort that he built to defend his city, and within the circuit of its walls remain many of the pillars of the twenty-seven Hindu and Buddhist places of worship that it contained in his time. He had need to strengthen his defences. Jaya Chandra, though he sent his daughter's wedding clothes after her, had not forgiven his son-in-law, and would give him no help against the enemy that advanced upon Delhi in the year 1191, — nay, some would have it that he actually invited Mohammad Ghori to chastise the prince who had robbed him of a kingdom and a daughter.

The Ghaznawid kings, the successors of the Idol-breaker, had continued to count the Punjab among their dominions, and one of its governors, who had been Mahmud's treasurer, made a raid upon Benares, farther east than any Muslim army had dared to go before his time. He only held it for a few hours, and was then obliged to retreat, but he and his men used those few hours to the best advantage, and returned with plunder that recalled the days of Mahmud. In the hundred years that followed, the kings of Ghazni dwelt among their hills, with little or no influence upon the history of India, until they were defeated and driven out by another hill clan, the Afghans of Ghor, who took Ghazni by storm, leaving scarcely one stone upon another. Only the marble tomb of the Idol-breaker and two tall

c minarets remain to show where stood the palaces, libraries, museums, and mosques that he and his successors founded.

The Ghaznawids took refuge in the Punjab, and made Lahore their capital. In 1186 the last of them was imprisoned by Mu'izz-ad-din, commonly known as Mohammad Ghori, who with his brother had succeeded to the chieftaincy of the Afghans of Ghor. The brothers were descended from Zohak, "the Snake," the first of kings to order oflfending subjects to be crucified or flayed alive, who was condemned to all eternity to be devoured by the two serpents that sprang from the place where Eblis had kissed his shoulders.

The elder brother, Ghiyas-ad-din, remained at Ghor, while Mohammad followed in the path of the Image-breaker. "Thirty years had Mahmud ravaged Hindustan from the Indus to the Ganges ; and for thirty years Mohammad Ghori harried the same country in the same way." i Beginning with the Arab colony in Sind, he worked systematically down to Lahore, and then advanced upon Sirhind.

With such an enemy on their borders it was time that all the Eajput powers forgot their diff'erences and united to expel him. Over and over again in their history had all their bravery bene-

' S. Lane Poole.

THE TRIUMPH OP THE CRESCENT — 1191-1206. 35

fited them nothing, because they would not lay aside some trivial quarrel for the common good. Jaya Chandra wished to see his son-in-law humbled, careless of what that humbling might bring to the other Eajput states. Gujarat was jealous of Delhi, and held aloof. Prithwi Eaj went forth alone to meet the invader at Narain, north of Kurnal, on the great plain outside Delhi.

Mohammad's men had had no experience of a Rajput charge, and at the first onset his right and left wings fell back. A breathless messenger rushed to him where he stood in the centre, and advised him to look to his own safety, since the day was lost. "Enraged at this counsel, he cut down the messenger, and rushing on towards the enemy with a few followers, committed terrible slaughter." He charged the elephant of Prithwi Raj's brother, the Viceroy of Delhi, and delivered his lance fuU into the prince's mouth, knocking out many of his teeth. Prithwi Raj, seeing his brother's danger, sent an arrow through Mohammad's right arm, and the Afghan, faint with loss of blood, would have fallen from his horse if a faithful servant had not leapt up behind him and carried him oflF the field. Some say that he actually fell, and lay unconscious among a heap of dead, until rescued by some of his bodyguard, who had returned under cover of night to search for his corpse. His army fled headlong, and was pursued by the exulting Eajputs for nearly forty miles.

Mohammad went back to Ghor, aching with the sense of defeat. The first thing that he did on his return was to disgrace every officer who had not followed him in his last desperate charge to the Rajput's elephant, parading them round the city like a string of horses or mules, with their noses thrust into bags filled with barley, "which he forced them to eat like brutes," and then throwing them into prison.

A year was spent " in pleasure and festivity " i then he gathered an army of 120,000 chosen horse, strong-limbed muscular Afghans and Turks, their helmets encrusted with jewels, their armour inlaid with gold and silver, and set off from Ghazni without deigning to tell any man whither he led them.

When he reached Peshawar, a wise old man of Ghor prostrated himself before him and cried, "0 King, we trust in thy conduct and wisdom, but as yet we know not thy design."

Mohammad answered him: "Old man, know that since the time of my defeat in Hindustan, notwithstanding what appeared to the eye, I have never slumbered in ease, or waked but in sorrow

THE TRIUMPH OF THE CEESCENT — 1191-1206. 37

and anxiety. I have therefore determined with this army to recover my lost honour from those idolaters, or die in the attempt."

Then the old man, kissing the ground, spake once more : " Victory and triumph be thine attendants, and fortune be the guide of thy paths ! But, 0 King, let the petition of thy slave find favour in thy ears, and let those whom thou hast justly disgraced be suffered with thee to wipe out the stain upon their reputation."

So word was sent back to Ghazni that the disgraced oflEcers should be set at liberty, and that any who wished to retrieve lost fame might join his army. One and all flocked to the camp, and Mohammad, who had learned wisdom from the old man, gave each a robe of honour according to his rank. King and army athirst to cleanse their tarnished honour in Hindu blood, they moved down to Lahore, whence Mohammad sent an ambassador to Prithwi Eaj, summoning him to accept Islam, or to meet the true believers in battle.

Now the sense of impending evil hung heavily over the Chauhan Eaj a, and by night the shadows of doom fell across his spirit. He dreamed that a woman, fairer than all the daughters of men, seized him and bore him from Sangagota ; then she disappeared, and he thought that a great war elephant bore down upon him and crushed him, and he woke with panting heart and quivering lips muttering the Rajput war-cry.

He told his dream to Sangagota in the morning, and she knew well that it portended death and disaster; but she answered him in the words handed down to us by the minstrel Chand Bardai, who had ridden with his master when Prithwi Raj brought the princess on his saddle-bow from Kanauj to Delhi.

"Victory and fame to my lord! 0 Sun of the Chauhans, in glory and in pleasure who has tasted so deeply as thou ? To die is the destiny, not only of man but of the gods. All desire to throw off the old garment ; to die well is to live for ever. Think not of self, but of immortality ; let the sword divide the foe, and I wUl be one with thee^ hereafter."

Then the Raja went forth and performed sacrifice to the gods : but neither prayers nor offerings could reverse the doom.

When Mohammad's ambassador reached him, Prithwi Raj saw that here was the danger which his soul had foreboded. He was not one to change his creed at an enemy's bidding, but he had seen enough of his enemy to fear that he would not easily be driven back again without

^ Lit. : " I will be your ardhariga " — your half -body.

the help that Kanauj and Gujarat refused to give. While his council deliberated, he went to the women's rooms and asked counsel of Sangagota.

" Who asks women for advice ? " she began, as if in mockery; and then cast self on one side and rose to his need. "We are at once thieves and sanctuaries, we are vessels of virtue and of vice, of knowledge and of ignorance. ... They say : ' In woman there is no wisdom.' Yet woman shares your joys and your sorrows. Even when you depart for the mansion of the sun, we part not. . . . We are as the lake, and you are the swans ; what are you when absent from our bosoms ? "

Then the Eaja understood that even though he went to death, his wife would follow him, and he mustered his hosts. When the day of parting came, Sangagota armed him for battle. " In vain she sought the rings of his corslet ; her eyes were fixed on the face of the Chauhan, as those of the famished wretch who finds a piece of gold. The sound of the drum reached the ear of the Chauhan; it was as a death-knell to her; and as he left her to head Delhi's heroes, she vowed that henceforth only water should sustain her. 'I shall see him again in the mansion of the sun; but never more in Delhi ! ' "

Only the Gehelot Eaja of Chitor waited with Prithwi Eaj upon the same field of Narain where

40 THE TRIUMPH OP THE CRESCENT — 1191-1206.

he had vanquished Mohammad in the previous year. Yet it was a goodly host that confronted the Afghans on the opposite bank of the river Sarasvati, with long miles of tents that covered the plain, and standards and pennons streaming against the eastern sky. So strong were they in their own eyes that they wrote to Mohammad Ghori pointing out their superiority in numbers, and oflfering to allow him to retreat in safety if he repented of his rashness in coming against them.

Mohammad returned a courteous answer; he was only the general of his brother, and could not retreat without leave. He would report their offer to the king, and until an answer should arrive, he should be glad if there might be truce between the hosts.

The Eajputs assented, and passed the interval in sports and revelling, till one night Mohammad crossed the Sarasvati ere break of dawn, and fell upon their camp.

Thrown into confusion at first, the Eajput cavalry rallied, and held the Afghans in play tUl the main body of the army had formed up. All day the fight raged, and it was sunset when Mohammad, who had learned something of Rajput tactics from his disaster, lured them out of their lines by a feigned retreat. As they thundered

THE TRIUMPH OP THE CRESCENT — 1191-1206. 41

headlong in pursuit, forgetting all else in the delight of riding down a flying enemy, Mohammad led his reserves — twelve thousand men in steel armour — upon the scattered host. Panic and confusion spread through the ranks of the Eajputs, and "this prodigious army, once shaken, like a great building tottered to its fall and was lost in its own ruins." " For miles the stricken field was bestrewn with castaway flags and spears and shields, and heaped bows, and jewelled swords, and plumed casques, and exquisitely chiselled and damascened gauntlets, greaves, and breastplates, and gaily dyed scarves, intermingled with the countless dead."

The Viceroy of Delhi, the Raja of Chitor, and nearly a hundred and fifty princes and chieftains, the flower of Rajast'han, lay dead upon the field. Mohammad identified the Viceroy's body by the mark of his own lance-blow, given in the former battle. Of Prithwi Raj's fate many stories are told. One says that he was surrounded and taken prisoner, sword in hand, and murdered in cold blood when the fight was over ; another, that sent in chains to Ghazni, to be exhibited to the populace when his conqueror should return in triumph, he died on the way by his own hand. Another story makes him dismount from his elephant when the day was lost, and flee on horseback towards Delhi, being cut down by his pursuers before he could reach Sangagota. A sadder legend still — probably without foundation — tells of a day when, grown old and blind in prison, he was brought forth, like Samson, to make sport for his enemies. However and wherever he died, Sangagota saw him no more on earth. Decked in her bridal jewels, she mounted the pyre, and went to meet him through the flames.

Ajmir was taken by assault, and its inhabitants put to the sword, or reserved for slavery. Mohammad's favourite slave, Kutb-ad-din Aybek, took Delhi, and was left as Viceroy of Hindustan while Mohammad went back to Ghazni for a while.

In the following year, when Mohammad returned to India, Jaya Chandra of Kanauj led an army against him. It was too late to save daughter and son-in-law, too late to save the Eajput dominion in Hindustan, — nothing was left to the miserable old man whose selfish resentment had opened the way to the invader, except to make a good end — and he made it, upon the banks of the Jumna, between Chandwar and Etawa, fighting to his last breath. His body was identified among the heaps of slain by his case of false teeth, held together by gold wire.

Benares feU ; the idols in more than a thousand temples were broken to pieces, the temples were purified and consecrated to Muslim worship before Mohammad's army, laden with treasure, took the road to Ghazni. The Rathors of Kanauj fled into the deserts of Marwar ("the region of death"), where they have remained ever since.

Ghiyas-ad-din's death, a few years later, made his brother king in name as well as in fact. By this time the greater part of northern India had fallen to him or to his lieutenants, and if Mohammad had been satisfied to enjoy it, he might have founded a great Muslim kingdom in Hindustan. But it was to the north, not to the south, that his ambition pointed, and in an expedition against the modern Khiva he met total defeat. Scarcely a hundred men of his army were left with him to cut their way through their enemies, and retire to Ghazni.

At the news of this disaster, the chief cities of his dominions promptly set up new rulers. The Ghakkars — a race of mountaineers living at the foot of the Sivalik range " without either religion or morality" — overran the Punjab and seized Lahore. Kutb-ad-din Aybek, faithful to his salt, came to his master's help. The Ghakkars, caught between two armies, were defeated and dispersed, Lahore was recovered, Multan and the other rebellious cities were reduced to order.

44 THE TRIUMPH OP THE CRESCENT — 1191-1206.

Gathering a fresh army, Mohammad was on his way to conquer Turkestah, when he was murdered in his tent upon the banks of the Indus, in 1206, by a band of twenty Ghakkars, sworn to avenge the death of their king. "His spirit flew above the eight Paradises and the battlements of the inner heavens, and found those of the ten Evangelists." "The treasure he left behind him," we are told, " is almost incredible ; he had in diamonds alone, of various sizes, four hundred pounds' weight."

Cut short in the middle of his career, he had yet achieved something. He had left a Muslim ruler at Delhi, and from that hour, until the proclamation of the White Queen, a Mushm has been king there.

Prithwi Eaj, too, has left his mark, not only in the massive lines of the fortifications he built to keep out the invader, but in the hearts of his countrymen, to whom he was " the personification of every Rajput virtue, the pattern of all Rajput manhood." To his story— so it is said— half the men and women in India still listen on winter nights.

It was afternoon on May 11, 1857— more than six hundred and sixty years since Prithwi Raj had fled from the stricken field at Narain. The companies of the 38th Native Infantry, set to guard

THE TKIUMPH OF THE CRESCENT — 1191-1206. 45

the powder magazine, broke from all control. They would not kill their officers, like other native regiments, but they would not wait inactive, when the Great Mutiny had woke the city at early morning. As they hurried to join the comrades who were looting and burning in all directions, their cry was the battle-cry never heard in Delhi since the days of the last Chauhan raja — " Prithwi Eaj ki jai ! " ^

' " Victory to the kingdom of Prithwi ! " or " Hail to the kingdom of Prithwi ! "

III. KUTB-AD-DIN Atbek . . 1206-1210

Shams- AD-DIN Altamish . 1211-1236 Eazita-ad-din . . . 1236-1240 Ghitas-ad-din Balban . 1266-1287

"The whole coimtry of India is full of gold and jewels, and of the plants which grow there are those fit for making wearing apparel, and aromatic plants and the sugar-cane, and the whole aspect of the country is pleasant and delightful. Now since the inhabitants are chiefly infidels and idolaters, by the order of God and his Prophet, it is right for us to conquer them." — Malfvzat-i-Tvmuri.

III.

THE SLAVE KINGS OF DELHI.

A WELL-MEANING friend once ventured to condole with Mohammad Ghori because he had no sons to come after him.

" What matters that ? " answered the Sultan. "Have I not thousands of sons in my Turkish slaves ? "

To Western minds it seems impossible that slaves could ever take the place of sons, whereas it was a matter of common experience in the East. Too often does the son of a great man fall as much below the common level as his father rises above it : the slave was selected for some special quality, owed his advancement to his wits, and knowing tjiat he was liable to be cast down in an instant if he failed his lord, took care not to disappoint him.

The slave whom Mohammad sent as his repre-

D sentative to Delhi was a Turkoman, Aybek ("Moon lord"). Sold in childhood to a rich merchant of Naishapur, his talents were soon discovered by his master, who sent him to school; sold, with the rest of the estate, after the merchant's sudden death, he passed into the hands of Mohammad Ghori.