Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official Part 57

Government, from motives of benevolence, has here attempted to apportion out the pension they a.s.sign to the Emperor, to the different members of his great family circle who are to be subsisted upon it, instead of leaving it to his own discretion. This has perhaps tended to prevent the family from throwing off its useless members to mix with the common herd, and to make the population press against the means of subsistence within these walls. Kings and queens of the house of Timur are to be found lying about in scores, like broods of vermin, without food to eat or clothes to cover their nakedness. It has been proposed by some to establish colleges for them in the palace to fit them by education for high offices under our Government. Were this done, this pensioned family, which never can possibly feel well affected towards our Government or any Government but their own, would alone send out men enough to fill all the civil offices open to the natives of the country, to the exclusion of the members of the humbler but better affected families of Muhammadans and Hindoos. If they obtained the offices they would be educated for, the evil to Government and to society would be very great; and if they did not get them, the evil would be great to themselves, since they would be encouraged to entertain hopes that could not be realized. Better let them shift for themselves and quietly sink among the crowd. They would only become rallying points for the dissatisfaction and multiplied sources of disaffection; everywhere doing mischief, and nowhere doing good. Let loose upon society, they everywhere disgust people by their insolence and knavery, against which we are every day required to protect the people by our interference; the prestige of their name will by degrees diminish, and they will sink by and by into utter insignificance. During his stay at Jubbulpore, Kambaksh, the nephew of the Emperor, whom I have already mentioned as the most sensible member of the family,[30] did an infinite deal of good by cheating almost all the tradesmen of the town. Till he came down among them with all his ragam.u.f.fins from Delhi, men thought the Padshahs and their progeny must be something superhuman, something not to be spoken of, much less approached, without reverence. During the latter part of his stay my court was crowded with complaints; and no one has ever since heard a scion of the house of Timur spoken of but as a thing to be avoided--a person more p.r.o.ne than others to take in his neighbours. One of these _kings_, who has not more than ten shillings a month to subsist himself and family upon, will, in writing to the representative of the British Government, address him as 'Fidwi Khas', 'Your particular slave'; and be addressed in reply with 'Your majesty's commands have been received by your slave.'[31]

I visited the college which is in the mausoleum of Ghazi-ud-din, a fine building, with its usual accompaniment of a mosque and a college. The slab that covers the grave, and the marble screens that surround the ground that contains it, are amongst the most richly cut things that I have seen. The learned and pious Muhammadans in the inst.i.tution told me in my morning visit that there should always be a small hollow in the top of marble slabs, like that on Jahanara's, whenever any of them were placed over graves, in order to admit water, earth, and gra.s.s; but that, strictly speaking, no slab should be allowed to cover the grave, as it could not fail to be in the way of the dead when summoned to get up by the trumpet of Azrail on the day of the resurrection.'[32] 'Earthly pride,' said they, 'has violated this rule; and now everybody that can afford it gets a marble slab put over his grave. But it is not only in this that men have been falling off from the letter and spirit of the law; for we now hear drums beating and trumpets sounding even among the tombs of the saints, a thing that our forefathers would not have considered possible. In former days it was only a prophet like Moses, Jesus, or Muhammad, that was suffered to have a stone placed over his head.' I asked them how it was that the people crowded to the tombs of their saints, as I saw them at that of Kutb Shah in old Delhi, on the Basant, a Hindoo festival. 'It only shows,' said they 'that the end of the world is approaching. Are we not divided into seventy-two sects among ourselves, all falling off into Hinduism, and every day committing greater and greater follies? These are the manifest signs long ago pointed out by wise and holy men as indicating the approach of the _last day_.'[33]

A man might make a curious book out of the indications of the end of the world according to the notions of different people or different individuals. The Hindoos have had many different worlds or ages; and the change from the good to the bad, or the golden to the iron age, is considered to have been indicated by a thousand curious incidents.[34] I one day asked an old Hindoo priest, a very worthy man, what made the five heroes of the Mahabharata, the demiG.o.d brothers of Indian story, leave the plains and bury themselves no one knew where, in the eternal snows of the Himalaya mountains. 'Why, sir,' said he, 'there is no question about that. Yudhisthira, the eldest, who reigned quietly at Delhi after the long war, one day sat down to dinner with his four brothers and their single wife, Draupadi; for you know, sir, they had only one among them all. The king said grace and the covers were removed, when, to their utter consternation, a full-grown fly was seen seated upon the dish of rice that stood before his majesty. Yudhisthira rose in consternation.

'When flies begin to blow upon men's dinners,' said his majesty, 'you may be sure, my brothers, that the end of the world is near--the golden age is gone--the iron one has commenced, and we must all be off; the plains of India are no longer a fit abode for gentlemen.'

Without taking one morsel of food,' added the priest, 'they set out, and were never after seen or heard of. They were, however, traced by manifest supernatural signs up through the valley of the Ganges to the snow tops of the Himalaya, in which they no doubt left their mortal coils.' They seem to feel a singular attachment for the birthplace of their great progenitrix, for no place in the world is, I suppose, more infested by them than Delhi, at present; and there a dish of rice without a fly would, in the iron, be as rare a thing as a dish with one in the golden, age.

Muhammadans in India sigh for the restoration of the old Muhammadan regime, not from any particular attachment to the descendants of Timur, but with precisely the same feelings that Whigs and Tories sigh for the return to power of their respective parties in England; it would give them all the offices in a country where office is everything. Among them, as among ourselves, every man is disposed to rate his own abilities highly, and to have a good deal of confidence in his own good luck; and all think that if the field were once opened to them by such a change, they should very soon be able to find good places for themselves and their children in it. Perhaps there are few communities in the world among whom education is more generally diffused than among Muhammadans in India. He who holds an office worth twenty rupees a month commonly gives his sons an education equal to that of a prime minister. They learn, through the medium of the Arabic and Persian languages, what young men in our colleges learn through those of the Greek and Latin--that is, grammar, rhetoric, and logic. After his seven years of study, the young Muhammadan binds his turban upon a head almost as well filled with the things which appertain to these branches of knowledge as the young man raw from Oxford--he will talk as fluently about Socrates and Aristotle, Plato, and Hippocrates, Galen and Avicenna: (_alias_ Sokrat, Aristotalis, Aflatun, Bokrat, Jalinus, and Bu Ali Sena); and, what is much to his advantage in India, the languages in which he has learnt what he knows are those which he most requires through life.[35] He therefore thinks himself as well fitted to fill the high offices which are now filled exclusively by Europeans, and naturally enough wishes the establishments of that power would open them to him. On the faculties and operations of the human mind, on man's pa.s.sions and affections, and his duties in all relations of life, the works of Imam Muhammad Ghazali[36] and Nasir-ud-din Tusi[37] hardly yield to those of Plato and Aristotle, or to those of any other authors who have written on the same subjects in any country. These works, the _Ihya-ul-ulum_, epitomized into the _Kimia-i-Saadat_, and the _Akhlak-i-Nasiri_, with the didactic poems of Sadi,[38] are the great 'Pierian spring' of moral instruction from which the Muhammadan delights to 'drink deep' from infancy to old age; and a better spring it would be difficult to find in the works of any other three men.

It is not only the desire for office that makes the educated Muhammadans cherish the recollection of the old regime in Hindustan: they say, 'We pray every night for the Emperor and his family, because our forefathers ate the salt of his forefathers'; that is, our ancestors were in the service of his ancestors; and, consequently, were the _aristocracy_ of the country. Whether they really were so matters not; they persuade themselves or their children that they were. This is a very common and a very innocent sort of vanity. We often find Englishmen in India, and I suppose in all the rest of our foreign settlements, sporting high Tory opinions and feelings, merely with a view to have it supposed that their families are, or at some time were, among the aristocracy of the land. To express a wish for Conservative predominance is the same thing with them as to express a wish for the promotion in the Army, Navy, or Church of some of their near relations; and thus to indicate that they are among the privileged cla.s.s whose wishes the Tories would be obliged to consult were they in power.[39]

Man is indeed 'fearfully and wonderfully made'; to be fitted himself for action in the world, or for directing ably the actions of others, it is indispensably necessary that he should mix freely from his youth up with his fellow men. I have elsewhere mentioned that the state of imbecility to which a man of naturally average powers of intellect may be reduced when brought up with his mother in the seraglio is inconceivable to those who have not had opportunities of observing it.[40] The poor old Emperor of Delhi, to whom so many millions look up, is an instance. A more venerable-looking man it is difficult to conceive, and had he been educated and brought up with his fellow men, he would no doubt have had a mind worthy of his person.[41] As it is, he has never been anything but a baby. Raja Jivan Ram, an excellent portrait painter, and a very honest and agreeable person, was lately employed to take the Emperor's portrait.

After the first few sittings, the portrait was taken into the seraglio to the ladies. The next time he came, the Emperor requested him to remove the great _blotch from under the nose_. 'May it please your majesty, it is impossible to draw any person without _a shadow_; and I hope many millions will long continue to repose under that of your majesty.' 'True, Raja,' said his majesty, 'men must have shadows; but there is surely no necessity for placing them immediately under their noses. The ladies will not allow mine to be put there; they say it looks as if I had been taking snuff all my life, and it certainly has a most filthy appearance; besides, it is all awry, as I told you when you began upon it.' The Raja was obliged to remove from under the imperial, and certainly very n.o.ble, nose, the shadow which he had thought worth all the rest of the picture.

Queen Elizabeth is said, by an edict, to have commanded all artists who should paint her likeness, 'to place her in a garden with a full light upon her, and the painter to put _any shadow_ in her face at his peril'. The next time the Raja came, the Emperor took the opportunity of consulting him upon a subject that had given him a good deal of anxiety for many months, the dismissal of one of his personal servants who had become negligent and disrespectful. He first took care that no one should be within hearing, and then whispered in the artist's ear that he wished to dismiss this man. The Raja said carelessly, as he looked from the imperial head to the canvas, 'Why does your majesty not discharge the man if he displeases you?'

'Why do I not discharge him? I wish to do so, of course, and have wished to do so for many months, but _kuchh tadbir chahiye_, some plan of operations must be devised.' 'If your majesty dislikes the man, you have only to order him outside the gates of the palace, and you are relieved from his presence at once.' 'True, man, I am relieved from his presence, but his enchantments may still reach me; it is them that I most dread--he keeps me in a continual state of alarm; and I would give anything to get him away in a good humour.'

When the Raja return to Meerut, he received a visit from one of the Emperor's sons or nephews, who wanted to see the place. His tents were pitched upon the plain not far from the theatre; he arrived in the evening, and there happened to be a play that night. Several times during the night he got a message from the prince to say that the ground near his tents was haunted by all manner of devils. The Raja sent to a.s.sure him that this could not possibly be the case. At last a man came about midnight to say that the prince could stand it no longer, and had given orders to prepare for his immediate return to Delhi; for the devils were increasing so rapidly that they must all be inevitably devoured before daybreak if they remained. The Raja now went to the prince's camp, here he found him and his followers in a state of utter consternation, looking towards the theatre. The last carriages were leaving the theatre, and going across the plain; and these silly people had taken them all for devils.[42]

The present pensioned imperial family f Delhi are commonly considered to be of the house of Timur lang (the Lame), because Babur, the real founder of the dynasty, was descended from him in the seventh stage.[43] Timur merely made a predatory inroad into India, to kill a few million of unbelievers,[44] plunder the country of all the movable valuables he and his soldiers could collect, and take back into slavery all the best artificers of all kinds that they could lay their hands upon. He left no one to represent him in India, he claimed no sovereignty, and founded no dynasty there. There is no doubt much in the prestige of a name; and though six generations had pa.s.sed away, the people of Northern India still trembled at that of the lame monster. Babur wished to impress upon the minds of the people the notion that he had at his back the same army of demons that Timur had commanded; and be boasted his descent from him for the same motive that Alexander boasted his from the horned and cloven- footed G.o.d of the Egyptian desert, as something to sanctify all enterprises, justify the use of all means, and carry before him the belief in his invincibility.

Babur was an admirable chief--a fit founder of a great dynasty--a very proper object for the imagination of future generations to dwell upon, though not quite so good as his grandson, the great Akbar.

Timur was a ferocious monster, who knew how to organize and command the set of demons who composed his army, and how best to direct them for the destruction of the civilized portion of mankind and their works; but who knew nothing else.[45] In his invasion of India he caused the people of the towns and villages through which he pa.s.sed to be all ma.s.sacred without regard to religion, age, or s.e.x. If the soldiers in the town resisted, the people were all murdered because they did so; if they did not, the people were considered to have forfeited their lives to the conquerors for being conquered; and told to purchase them by the surrender of all their property, the value of which was estimated by commissaries appointed for the purpose. The price was always more than they could pay; and after torturing a certain number to death in the attempt to screw the sum out of them, the troops were let in to murder the rest; so that no city, town, or village escaped; and the very grain collected for the army, over and above what they could consume at any stage, was burned, lest it might relieve some hungry infidel of the country who had escaped from the general carnage.

All the soldiers, high and low, were murdered when taken prisoners, as a matter of course; but the officers and soldiers of Timur's army, after taking all the valuable movables, thought they might be able to find a market for the artificers by whom they were made, and for their families; and they collected together an immense number of men, women, and children. All who asked for mercy pretended to be able to make something that these Tartars had taken a liking to. On coming before Delhi, Timur's army encamped on the opposite or left bank of the river Jumna; and here he learned that his soldiers had collected together above one hundred thousand of these artificers, besides their women and children. There were no soldiers among them; but Timur thought it might be troublesome either to keep them or to turn them away without their women and children; and still more so to make his soldiers send away these women and children immediately. He asked whether the prisoners were not for the most part unbelievers in his prophet Muhammad; and being told that the majority were Hindoos, he gave orders that every man should be put to death; and that any officer or soldier who refused to kill or have killed all such men, should suffer death. 'As soon as this order was made known,' says Timur's historian and great eulogist, 'the officers and soldiers began to put it in execution; and, in less than one hour, one hundred thousand prisoners, according to the smallest computation, were put to death and their bodies thrown into the river Jumna. Among the rest, Mulana Nasir-ud-din Amr, one of the most venerable doctors of the court, who would never consent so much as to kill a single sheep, was constrained to order fifteen slaves, whom he had in his tents, to be slain. Timur then gave orders that one-tenth of his soldiers should keep watch over the Indian women, children, and camels taken in the pillage.'[46]

The city was soon after taken, and the people commanded, as usual, to purchase their lives by the surrender of their property--troops were sent in to take it--numbers were tortured to death--and then the usual pillage and ma.s.sacre of the whole people followed without regard to religion, age, or s.e.x; and about a hundred thousand more of innocent and unoffending people were murdered. The troops next ma.s.sacred the inhabitants of the old city, which had become crowded with fugitives from the new;[47] the last remnant took refuge in a mosque, where two of Timur's most distinguished generals rushed in upon them at the head of five hundred soldiers; and, as the amiable historian tells us, 'sent to the abyss of h.e.l.l the souls of these infidels, of whose heads they erected towers, and gave their bodies for food to birds and beasts of prey'. Being at last tired of slaughter, the soldiers made slaves of the survivors, and drove them out in chains; and, as they pa.s.sed, the officers were allowed to select any they liked except the masons, whom Timur required to build for him at Samarkand a church similar to that of iltutmish in old Delhi.

He now set out to take Meerut, which was at that time a fortified town of much note. The people determined to defend themselves, and happened to say that Tarmah Shirin, who invaded India at the head of a similar body of Tartars a century before,[48] had been unable to take the place. This so incensed Timur that he brought all his forces to bear on Meerut, took the place, and having had all the Hindoo men found in it _skinned alive_, he distributed their wives and children among his soldiers as slaves. He now sent out a division of his army to murder unbelievers, and collect plunder, over the cultivated plains between the Ganges and Jumna, while he led the main body on the same _pious duty_ along the hills from Hardwar[49] on the Ganges to the west. Having ma.s.sacred a few thousands of the hill people, Timur read the noon prayer, and returned thanks to G.o.d for the victories he had gained, and the numbers he had murdered through his goodness; and told his admiring army that a religions war like this produced two great advantages: it secured eternal happiness in heaven, and a good store of valuable spoils on earth--that his design in all the fatigues and labours which he had undertaken was solely to render himself _pleasing to G.o.d_, treasure up _good works_ for his eternal happiness, and get riches to bestow upon his soldiers and the poor. The historian makes a grave remark upon this invasion: The Koran declares that the highest glory man can attain in this world is unquestionably waging a successful war in person against the enemies of his religion (no matter whether those against whom it is waged happen ever to have heard of this religion or not). Muhammad inculcated the same doctrine in his discourses with his friends; and, in consequence, the great Timur always strove to exterminate all the unbelievers, with a view to acquire that glory, and to spread the renown of his conquests. 'My name', said he, 'has spread terror through the universe, and the least motion I make is capable of shaking the whole earth.'

Timur returned to his capital of Samarkand in Transoxiana in May, 1399. His army, besides other things which they brought from India, had an immense number of men, women, and children, whom they had reduced to slavery, and driven along like flocks of sheep to forage for their subsistence in the countries through which they pa.s.sed, or perish. After the murder on the banks of the Jumna of part of the mult.i.tude they had collected before taking the capital, amounting to one hundred thousand men, Timur was obliged to a.s.sign one-tenth of his army to guard what were left, the women and children. 'After the murder in the capital of Delhi,' says the historian, an eye-witness, 'there were some soldiers who had a hundred and fifty slaves, men, women, and children, whom they drove out of the city before them; and some soldiers' boys had twenty slaves to their own share.' On reaching Samarkand, they employed these slaves as best they could; and Timur employed his, the masons, in raising his great church from the quarries of the neighbouring hills.[50]

In October following, Timur led this army of demons over the rich and polished countries of Syria, Anatolia, and Georgia, levelling all the cities, towns, and villages, and ma.s.sacring the inhabitants without any regard to age or s.e.x, with the same _amiable view_ of correcting the notions of people regarding his creed, propitiating the Deity, and rewarding his soldiers. He sent to the Christian inhabitants of Smyrna, then one of the first commercial cities in the world, to request that they would at once embrace Muhammadanism, in the _beauties_ of which the general and his soldiers had orders generously and diligently to instruct them. They refused, and Timur repaired immediately to the spot, that he might 'share in the merit of sending their souls to the abyss of h.e.l.l'. Bajazet, the Turkish emperor of Anatolia, had recently terminated an unavailing siege of seven years. Timur took the city in fourteen days, December, 1402;[51] had every man, woman, and child that he found in it murdered; and caused some of the heads of the Christians to be thrown by his balistas or catapultas into the ships that had come from different European nations to their succour. All other Christian communities found within the wide range of this dreadful tempest were swept off in the same manner, nor did Muhammadan communities fare better. After the taking of Baghdad, every Tartar soldier was ordered to cut off and bring away the head of one or more prisoners, because some of the Tartar soldiers had been killed in the attack; 'and they spared', says the historian, 'neither old men of fourscore, nor young children of eight years of age; no quarter was given either to rich or poor, and the number of dead was so great that they could not be counted; towers were made of their heads to serve as an example to posterity.' Ninety thousand were murdered in cold blood, and one hundred and twenty pyramids were made of the heads for trophies.

Damascus, Nice, Aleppo, Sebaste,[52] and all the other rich and populous cities of Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, and Georgia, then the most civilized region of the world, shared in the same fate; all were reduced to ruins, and their people, without regard to religion, age, or s.e.x, barbarously and brutally murdered.

In the beginning of 1405, this man recollected that, among the many millions of unbelieving Christians and Hindoos 'whose souls he had sent to the abyss of h.e.l.l', there were many Muhammadans, who had no doubt whatever in the divine origin or co-eternal existence of the Koran; and, as their death might, perhaps, not have been altogether pleasing to his G.o.d and his prophet, he determined to appease them both by undertaking the murder of some two hundred millions of industrious and unoffending Chinese; among whom there was little chance of finding one man who had ever even _heard of the Koran_-- much less believed in its divinity and co-eternity--or of its interpreter, Muhammad. At the head of between two and three hundred thousand well-mounted Tartars and their followers, he departed from his capital of Samarkand on the 8th of January, 1405, and crossed the Jaxartes[53] on the ice. In the words of his _judicious_ historian, 'he thus _generously_ undertook the conquest of China, which was inhabited only by unbelievers that by so good a work he might atone for what had been done amiss in other wars, in which the blood of so many of the faithful had been shed'.

'As all my vast conquests', said Timur himself,[54] 'have caused the destruction of a good many of the faithful, I am resolved to perform some good action, to atone for the crimes of my past life; and to make war upon the infidels, and exterminate the idolaters of China, which cannot be done without very great strength and power. It is therefore fitting, my dear companions in arms, that those very soldiers, who were the instruments whereby those my faults were committed, should be the means by which I work out my repentance, and that they should march into China, to acquire for themselves and their Emperor the merit of that holy war, in demolishing the temples of those unbelievers and erecting good Muhammadan mosques in their places. By this means we shall obtain pardon for all our sins, for the holy Koran a.s.sures us that good works efface the sins of this world.' At the close of the Emperor's speech, the princes of the blood and other officers of rank besought G.o.d to bless his generous undertaking, unanimously applauding his sentiments, and loading him with praises. 'Let the Emperor but display his standard, and we will follow him to the end of the world.' Timur died soon after crossing the Jaxartes, on the 1st of April, 1406, and China was saved from this dreadful scourge. But, as the _philosophical_ historian, Sharaf- ud-din,[55] _profoundly_ observes, 'The Koran remarks that if any one in his pilgrimage to Mecca should be surprised by death, the merit of the good work is still written in heaven in his name, as surely as if he had had the good fortune to accomplish it. It is the same with regard to the "ghaza" (holy war), where an eternal merit is acquired by troubles, fatigues, and dangers; and he who dies during the enterprise, at whatever stage, is deemed to have completed his design.' Thus Timur the Lame had the merit, beyond all question of doubt, of sending to the abyss of h.e.l.l two hundred millions of men, women, and children, for not believing in a certain book of which they had never heard or read; for the Tartars had not become Muhammadans when they conquered China in the beginning of the thirteenth century. Indeed, the _amiable_ and _profound_ historian is of opinion, after the most mature deliberation, that 'G.o.d himself must have arranged all this in favour of so great and good a prince; and knowing that his end was nigh, inspired him with the idea of undertaking this enterprise, that he might have the merit of having completed it; otherwise, how should he have thought of leading out his army in the dead of winter to cross countries covered with ice and snow?'

The heir to the throne, the Prince Pir Muhammad, was absent when Timur died; but his wives, who had accompanied him, were all anxious to share in the merit of the holy undertaking; and in a council of the chiefs held after his death, the opinions of these amiable princesses prevailed that the two hundred millions of Chinese ought still to be sent to 'the abyss of h.e.l.l', since it had been the earnest wish of their deceased husband, and must undoubtedly have been the will of G.o.d, to send them thither without delay. Fortunately quarrels soon arose among his sons and grandsons about the succession, and the army recrossed the Jaxartes, still over the ice, in the beginning of April, and China was saved from this scourge.

Such was Timur the Lame, the man whose greatness and goodness are to live in the hearts of the people of India, nine-tenths of whom are Hindoos, and to fill them with overflowing love and grat.i.tude towards his descendants.

In this brief sketch will perhaps be found the true history of the origin of the gipsies, the tide of whose immigration began to flow over all parts of Europe immediately after the return of Timur from India. The hundreds of thousands of slaves which his army brought from India in men, women, and children, were cast away when they got as many as they liked from the more beautiful and polished inhabitants of the cities of Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, and Georgia, which were all, one after the other, treated in the same manner as Delhi had been. The Tartar soldiers had no time to settle down and employ them as they intended for their convenience; they were marched off to ravage Western Asia in October, 1399, about three months after their return from India. Timur reached Samarkand in the middle of May, but he had gone on in advance of his army, which did not arrive for some time after. Being cast off, the slaves from India spread over those countries which were most likely to afford them the means of subsistence as beggars; for they knew nothing of the manners, the arts, or the language of those among whom they were thrown; and as Arabia, Palestine, Syria, Anatolia, Georgia, Circa.s.sia, and Russia, had been, or were being, desolated by the army of this Tartar chief, they pa.s.sed into Egypt and Bulgaria, whence they spread over all other countries. Scattered over the face of these countries, they found small parties of vagrants who were from the same regions as themselves, who spoke the same language, and who had in all probability been drawn away by the same means of armies returning from the invasion of India. Chingiz Khan invaded India two centuries before; his descendant, Tarmah Shirin, invaded India in 1303, and must have taken back with him mult.i.tudes of captives. The unhappy prisoners of Timur the Lame gathered round these nuclei as the only people who could understand or sympathize with them. From his sixth expedition into India Mahmud is said to have carried back with him to Ghazni two hundred thousand Hindoo captives in a state of slavery, A.D. 1011. From his seventh expedition in 1017, his army of one hundred and forty thousand fighting men returned 'laden with Hindoo captives, who became so cheap, that a Hindoo slave was valued at less than two rupees'. Mahmud made several expeditions to the west immediately after his return from India, in the same manner as Timur did after him, and he may in the same manner have scattered his Indian captives. They adopted the habits of their new friends, which are indeed those of all the vagrant tribes of India, and they have continued to preserve them to the present day. I have compared their vocabularies with those of India, and find so many of the words the same that I think a native of India would, even in the present day, be able without much difficulty to make himself understood by a gang of gipsies in any part of Europe.[56]

A good Christian may not be able exactly to understand the nature of the merit which Tamerlane expected to acquire from sending so many unoffending Chinese to the abyss of h.e.l.l. According to the Muhammadan creed, G.o.d has vowed 'to fill h.e.l.l chock full of men and genii'.

Hence his reasons for hardening their hearts against that faith in the Koran which might send them to heaven, and which would, they think, necessarily follow an impartial examination of the evidence of its divinity and certainty. Timur thought, no doubt, that it would be very meritorious on his part to a.s.sist G.o.d in this his labour of filling the great abyss by throwing into it all the existing population of China: while he spread over their land in pastoral tribes the goodly seed of Muhammadanism, which would give him a rich supply of recruits for paradise.

The following dialogue took place one day between me and the 'mufti', or head Muhammadan law officer, of one of our regulation courts.[57]

'Does it not seem to you strange, Mufti Sahib, that your prophet, who, according to your notions, must have been so well acquainted with the universe and the laws that govern it, should not have revealed to his followers some great truths. .h.i.therto unknown regarding these laws, which might have commanded their belief, and that of all future generations, in his divine mission?'

'Not at all,' said the Mufti; 'they would probably not have understood him; and if they had, those who did not believe in what he did actually reveal to them, would not have believed in him had he revealed all the laws that govern the universe.'

'And why should they not have believed in him?'

'Because what he revealed was sufficient to convince all men whose hearts had not been hardened in unbelief. G.o.d said, "As for the unbelievers, it is the same with them whether you admonish them or do not admonish them; they will not believe. G.o.d hath sealed up their hearts, their ears, and their eyes; and a grievous punishment awaits them."'[58]

'And why were the hearts of any men thus hardened to unbelief, when by unbelief they were to incur such dreadful penalties?'

'Because they were otherwise wicked men.'

'But you think, of course, that there was really much of good in the revelations of your prophet?'

'Of course we do.'

'And that those who believed in it were likely to become better men for their faith?'

'a.s.suredly.'

'Then why harden the hearts of even bad men against a faith that might make them good?'

'Has not G.o.d said, "If we had pleased, we had certainly given unto every soul its direction; but the word which hath proceeded from me must necessarily be fulfilled when I said, _Verily, I will fill h.e.l.l with men and genii altogether_ ".[59] And again, "Had it pleased the Lord, he would have made all men of one religion; but they shall not cease to differ among them, unless those on whom the Lord shall have mercy; and unto this hath he created them; for the word of thy Lord shall be fulfilled when he said, _Verily, I will fill h.e.l.l altogether with genii and men_".'[60]

'You all believe that the devil, like all the angels, was made of fire?'

'Yes.'

'And that he was doomed to h.e.l.l because he would not fall down and worship Adam, who was made of clay?'

'Yes, G.o.d commanded him to bow down to Adam; and when he did not do as he was bid, G.o.d said, "Why, Iblis, what hindered thee from bowing down to Adam as the other angels did?" He replied, "It is not fit that I should worship man, whom thou hast formed of dried clay, or black mud". G.o.d said, "Get thee, therefore, hence, for thou shalt be pelted with stones; and a curse shall be upon thee till the day of judgement". The devil said, "O Lord, give me respite unto the day of resurrection". G.o.d said, "Verily, thou shalt be respited until the appointed time ".'[61]

'And does it not appear to you, Mufti Sahib, that in respiting the devil Iblis till the day of resurrection, some injustice was done to the children of Adam?'

'How?'

'Because he replies, "O Lord, because thou hast seduced me, I will surely tempt men to disobedience in the earth".'

'No, sir, because he could only tempt those who were _predestined_ to go astray, for he adds, "I will seduce all, except such of them as shall be _thy chosen servants_". G.o.d said, "This is the right way with me. Verily, as to my servants, thou shalt have no power over them; but over those only who shall be seduced, and who shall follow thee; and h.e.l.l is surely denounced to them all ".'[62]

'Then you think, Mufti Sahib, that the devil could seduce only such as were predestined to go astray, and who would have gone astray whether he, the devil, had been respited or not?'

'Certainly I do.'

'Does it not then appear to you that it is as unjust to predestine men to do that for which they are to be sent to h.e.l.l, as it would be to leave them all unguided to the temptations of the devil?'

'These are difficult questions,' replied the Mufti, 'which we cannot venture to ask even ourselves. All that we can do is to endeavour to understand what is written in the holy book, and act according to it.

G.o.d made us all, and he has the right to do what he pleases with what he has made; the potter makes two vessels, he dashes the one on the ground, but the other he sells to stand in the palaces of princes.'

'But a pot has no soul, Mufti Sahib, to be roasted to all eternity in h.e.l.l!'