India Through the Ages Part 13

But here the star of Masud's fortune touched its zenith. The Turkomans, encouraged by success, renewed operations, finally forcing the king to abandon his border princ.i.p.alities and seek time in India to recover strength for renewed efforts.

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

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

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

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

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

Prince Ahmed was in due time murdered by the murdered Masud's son, who reigned long enough to see his Indian empire almost reft from him; since with violent internal dissensions racking the body politic, there was naturally no time for foreign affairs. So in the year A.D.

1048 the Rajah of Delhi, taking counsel with his compeers of Ajmir, Kanauj, Kalungar, Gwalior, once more made themselves practically independent of the Crescent. Only Lah.o.r.e remained Mahomedan, repelling a siege of seven months, and after actual street fighting, succeeded in driving off the investing force.

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

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

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

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

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

Allah-ud-din proved a true prophet. In the resulting battle the two "Khurmiels," gigantic brothers-in-arms, the Gog and Magog of those days, brought victory to his arms by the ripping up of elephants'

bellies and other prodigies of strength and valour. Byram fled, to die miserably in India overwhelmed by misfortunes, while the conqueror earned for himself the t.i.tle of "The Burner of Worlds," by the deadly revenge he took on Ghuzni and its inhabitants.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A strange history is this of the devoted brothers, who appear from their babyhood to have gone through life hand in hand in fortune and misfortune; but the house of Ghori seems to have been remarkable alike for its family feuds and for its family affection. The latter it was, be it remembered, which led to the establishment of the dynasty.

Another peculiarity was their sonlessness. Ghia.s.s-ud-din, the elder brother, succeeded to the throne by virtue of cousinship only, and as neither he nor Shahab-ud-din had sons, it pa.s.sed at their death to a nephew.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yet India was still rich!

THE RAJPUT RESISTANCE

A.D. 1176 TO A.D. 1206

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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