A History of the Military Transactions of the British Nation in Indostan/Volume 1/A dissertation on the establishments made by Mahomedan conquerors in Indostan
A
DISSERTATION
ON THE
ESTABLISHMENTS
MADE BY
MAHOMEDAN CONQUERORS IN INDOSTAN.
SECTION I.
EUROPEANS understand by the East-Indies all the countries and empires, which lying south of Tartary, extend from the eastern frontiers of Persia, to the eastern coasts of China. The islands of Japan are likewise included in this denomination; as are all the Malay islands, in which the Dutch have such valuable possessions, and which extend to the southward, as far as the coasts of New Holland, and eastward to lands unknown.
BUT the name of India can only with propriety be applied to the country which is distinguished in Asia as well as in Europe by the name of Indostan.
THAT part of the western side of Indostan, which is not bounded by the sea, is separated from Persia and the Usbeg Tartary by desarts, and by those mountains which were known to the ancients under the name of Paropamisus: Mount Caucasus forms its barrier to the north, separating it from various nations of Tartars, from the great and little Thibet. From mount Caucasus to Chitigan, marshes and rivers divide it from the kingdoms of Tepra, Assam, and Aracan: the sea, from Chitigan to cape Comorin and from hence to Persia, embraces the rest of Indostan.
THIS great extent of country has been inhabited, from the earliest antiquity, by a people who have no resemblance either in their figures or manners with any of the nations which are contiguous to them. Although these nations have at different times sent conquerors amongst them, who have established themselves in different parts of the country: although the Mogul Tartars under Tamerlane and his successors have at last rendered themselves lords of almost the whole of it; yet the original inhabitants have lost very little of their original character by the establishment of these strangers amongst them.
BESIDES the particular denominations which they receive from the casts and countries in which they are born, there is one more general, which is applied indiscriminately to distinguish the original natives from all who have intruded themselves amongst them, Hendoo, from whence Indian.
THE Indians have lost all memory of the ages in which they began to believe in VISTNOU, ESWARA, BRAMA, and a hundred thousand divinities subordinate to these. These divinities are worshipped in temples called Pagodas in every part of Indostan, the whole extent of which is holy land to its inhabitants; for there is no part in which some divinity has not appeared and done something to merit a temple and priests to take care of it. Some of these fabrics are of immemorial antiquity: they are at the same time monuments of such stupendous labour, that they are supposed to have been built by the gods to whom they arc consecrated. THE history of these gods is a heap of the greatest absurdities. It is Eswara twisting off the neck of Brama; it is the Sun, who gets his teeth 'knocked out, and the Moon, who has her face beat black and blue at a feast, at which the gods quarrel and fight with the spirit of a mob. They say that the Sun and Moon carry in their faces to this day the marks of this broil. Here and there a moral or metaphysical allegory, and sometimes a trace of the history of a first legislator, is discernible in these stories; but in general they are so very extravagant and incoherent, that we should be left to wonder tow a people so reasonable in other respects should have adopted such a code of nonsense as a creed of religion, did we not find the same credulity in the histories of nations much more enlightened.
THE Bramins, who are the tribe of the priesthood, descend from those Brachmans who are mentioned to us with so much reverence by antiquity; and although much inferior either as philosophers or men of learmng to the reputation of their ancestors, as priests their religious doctrines are still implicitly followed by the whole nation; and as preceptors they are the source of all the knowledge which exists in Indostan.
EVEN at this day some of them are capable of calculating an eclipse, which seems to be the utmost stretch of their mathematical knowledge. They have a good idea of logic; but it does not appear that they have any treatises on rhetoric; their ideas of music if we may judge from the practice, are barbarous; and in medicine they derive no assistance from the knowledge of anatomy, since dissections are repugnant to their religion.
THEY shed no blood and eat no flesh, because they believe in the transmigration of souls; they encourage wives to burn themselves with their deceased husbands, and seem to make the perfection of religion consist in a punctual observance of numerous ceremonies performed in the worship of their gods, and in a strict attention to keep their bodies free from pollution. Hence purifications and ablutions, as dictated by their scriptures, are scrupulously observed by them, and take up no small portion of their time.
A BRAMIN cannot eat any tiling which has been prepared or even touched by any other hand than that of a Bramin, and from the same principle, cannot be married to a person of any other cast in the kingdom, because his own cast is the highest, even above that of the kings. They say that they were formerly the kings of the whole country, and preserve to this day the privilege of commuting capital punishment, when merited, by the loss of their eyes. To kill a Bramin is one of the five sins for which there is scarce any expiation.
THE pre-eminence of the Bramins admitted, it seems as if the Indians had determined to compensate the odium of such a superiority, by forming themselves into a number of distinct tribes or gradations of people, who respectively submit to the different degrees of estimation in which they have at last agreed to abide, as implicitly as the whole agree to acknowledge the superiority of the Bramins.
THE many temporal advantages which the Bramins derive from their spiritual authority, and the impossibility of being admitted into their tribe, have perhaps given rise to that number of Joguees and Facquires, who torture themselves with such various and astonishing penances, only to gain the same veneration which a Bramin derives from his birth.
THE casts or tribes into which the Indians are divided, are reckoned by travellers to be eighty-four: perhaps when India shall be better known, we shall find them to be many more; for there is a singular disposition in the Indian, from very trifling circumstances to form a sect apart from the rest of his neighbours. But the order of pre-eminence of all the casts in a particular city or province, is generally indisputably decided. The Indian of an inferior would think himself honoured by adopting the customs of a'superior cast; but this would give battle sooner than not vindicate its prerogatives: the inferior receives the victuals prepared by a superior cast with respect, but the superior will not partake of a meal which has been prepared by the hands of an inferior cast. Their marriages are circumscribed by the same barriers as the rest of their intercourses; and hence, besides the national physiognomy, the members of each cast preserve an air of still greater resemblance to one another. There are some remarkable for their beauty, others as remarkable for their ugliness.
ALL these casts acknowledge the Bramins for their priests, and with them admit the transmigration. In devotion to this opinion some afflict themselves at the death of a fly, although occasioned by inadvertence. But the far greater number of casts are not so scrupulous, and eat, although very sparingly, both of fish and flesh; but, like the Jews, not of all kinds indifferently.
THEIR diet is chiefly rice and vegetables dressed with ginger, turmeric, and other hotter spices, which grow almost spontaneously in their gardens. They esteem milk the purest of foods, because, they think it partakes of some of the properties of the nectar of their gods, and because they esteem the cow itself almost a divinity.
AN abhorrence to the shedding of blood, derived from his religion, and seconded by the great temperance of a life which is passed by most of them in a very sparing use of animal food, and a total abstinence from intoxicating liquors; the influence of the most regular of climates, in which the great heat of the sim and the great fertility of the soil lessen most of the wants to which the human species is subject in austerer regions, and supply the rest without the exertion of much labour; these causes, with various consequences from them, have all together contributed to render the Indian the most enervated inhabitant of the globe.
HE shudders at the sight of blood, and is of a pusillanimity only to be excused and accounted for by the great delicacy of his configuration This is so slight as to give him no chance of opposing with success the onset of an inhabitant of more northern regions.
HIS manners are gentle; his happiness consists in the solaces of a domestic life; to which sufficiently inclined by the climate, he is obliged by his religion, which esteems matrimony a duty indispensible in every man who does not quit the world to unite himself to God: such is their phrase. Although permitted by his religion, according to the example of his gods, to have several, he is seldom the husband of more than one wife: and this wife is of a decency of demeanour, of a sollicitude in her family, and of a fidelity to her vows, which might do honour to human nature in the most civilized countries.
HIS amusements consist in going to his Pagoda, in assisting at religious shews, in fulfilling a variety of ceremonies prescribed to him on all occasions, by the Bramin; for, subject to a thousand lapses from the ideas he has adopted of impurity, the Indian is always offending his gods, who are not to be appeased untill their priest is satisfied.
IN a country of such great extent, divided into so many distinct sovereignties, it cannot be expected that there should be no exceptions to one general assertion of the character of the inhabitants. There is every where in the mountains a wild inhabitant, whose bow an European can scarcely draw. There are in the woods people who subsist by their incursions into the neighbouring plains, and who, without the ferocity of the American, possess all his treachery; and according to Mr. Thevenot, India has had its cannibals in the centre of one of the most cultivated provinces of the empire. The Rajpouts by their courage have preserved themselves almost independant of the Great Mogul. The inhabitants of the countries still nearer to the mountains of the frontier, distinguished by the activity of then character from the indolence of the rest of the nation, have easily turned Mahomedans; these northern converts we suppose to be the origin of the present Affghans and Pitans, who are the best troops in the emperor's service, and the most dangerous enemies of the throne when in arms against it.
THE arts which furnish the conveniences of life have been carried by the Indians to a pitch far beyond what is necessary to supply the wants of a climate which knows so few. At the same time no ideas of taste or fine design have existed among them and we seek in vain for elegance in the magnificence of the richest empire of the globe.
THEIR knowledge of mechanical powers is so very confined, that we are left to admire, without being able to account for, the manner in which they have erected their capital Pagodas. It does not appear that they had ever made a bridge of arches over any of their rivers, before the Mahomedans came amongst them.
IT is to the suppleness with which the whole frame of an Indian is endowed, and which is still more remarkable in the configuration of his hand, that we are indebted for the exquisite perfection of their manufactures of linnen. The same instruments which an Indian employs to make a piece of cambric, would, under the rigid fingers of an European, scarcely produce a piece of canvass.
HIS religion forbids the Indian to quit his own shores: he wants nothing from abroad: he is so far from being sollicitous to convert the stranger to his own opinions, or from wishing him to assimilate with the nation, that if a foreigner were to sollicit the privilege of worshipping Vistnou, his proposal would be received with the utmost contempt.
NOTHING seems to have been wanting to the happiness of this nation, but that others should have looked on them with the same indifference with which they regard the rest of the world. But not content with the presents which nature has showered on their climate, they have made improvements when they felt no necessities. Thy have cultivated the various and valuable productions of their
. soil, not to the measure of their own, but to that of the wants of all other nations; they have carried their manufactures of linnen to a perfection which surpasses the most exquisite productions of Europe, and have encouraged with avidity the annual tributes of gold and silver which the rest of the world contest for the privilege of sending to them. They have from time immemorial been as addicted to commerce, as they are averse to war. They have therefore always been immensely rich, and have always remained incapable of defending their wealth.
SECTION-II
LONG before Tamerlane, mahomedan princes had entered, made conquests, and established themselves in India.
VALID, the 6th of the Kalifs named Ommiades, who ascended the throne in the year 708 of our Æra, and in the 90th of the Hegira, made conquests in India: so that the Alcoran was introduced very early into this country.
MAHMOUD, son of Sebegtechin, prince of GAZNA, the capital of a province separated by mountains from the north-west parts of India, and situated near Kandahar, carried the Alcoran with the sword into Indostan in the year 1000 or 1002 of our Æra. He maintained himself in a vast extent of territory out of, and seems to have subdued as large a one in India, if it is true that he carried his conquests as far to the south as the present capital of the kingdom of Visiapore near Goa. He treated the Indians with all the rigor of a conqueror and all the fury of a converter, plundering treasures, demolishing temples, and murdering idolaters throughout his rout. His historians are quite extravagant in their descriptions of the wealth he found in Indostan. One of them says, no doubt allegorically, that he found a 'tree growing out of the earth to an enormous size, of which the substance was pure gold, and this the effect of nature.
THE successors of this Mahmoud are called, from the capital of their dominions, the dynasty of the Gaznavides, and maintained themselves in a great part of the countries which he had conquered in India until the year 1155, or 1157, when KOSROU SCHAH, the 13th and last prince of Gazna, and of the Gaznavide race, was deposed by HUSSAIN GAURi, so called from the country in which he was born, Gaur, a province tying to the north of Gazna. THIS Hussain founded the dynasty of the GAURIDES, which furnished five princes who possessed in and out of India nearly the same dominions as their predecessors the Gaznavides, and like them made Gazna their capital.
SCHEABBEDIN, the 4th of the Gauride emperors, during the life of his brother and predecessor GAIATHEDDIN, conquered the kingdoms of Multan and Delhi. He drew such immense treasures out of India, that his favourite daughter inquiring of the officer who had the care of them, to what value they amounted, the treasurer answered, that there was the weight of three thousand pounds in diamonds only, by which she might judge of the rest: after deductions made for oriental exaggeration, we may still gather from this anecdote, that his conquests in India had given him great wealth. An Indian, rendered desperate by the pollutions and insults to which he saw his gods and temples exposed, made a vow to assassinate Scheab-bedin, and executed it.
THE race of Gaurides finished in the year 1212, in the person of MAHMOUD,' successor and nephew to Scheabbedin. The days of this Mahmoud, like those of his uncle, though for a different cause, were cut off by the swords of assassins. Whatever dominions Mahmond possessed out of India, he does not seem to have had any great influence in it, or even in Gazna itself; he, contrary to the practice of his predecessors, made not this city the capital of his sovereignty. His uncle Scheabbedin, who had no children, and was remarkable for a spirit of adoption, had prepared the dismemberment of the Indian provinces from the empire of Gazna, by giving the government of two of them to two of his slaves. Nassereddin received from him the countries of Multan, Cothbeddin-Ibeck those of Delhi. At the same time he made another of his slaves, Tageddin-Ildiz, governor of Gazna.
IN the year 1214 MOHAMED, the 6th Sultan of the dynasty of the KHOWARASMIANS, whose terriories were contiguous to those of the Gaurides, took Gazna from the slave who had succeeded the slave Tageddin-Ildiz in the government of that city. But although he conquered the capital of their empire, it does not appear that he fixed himself in the Indian dominions of the Gaurides. He imprudently quarrelled with GINGISCHAN, and in the year 1218 was compelled to fly before the arms of that mighty conqueror. In the year 1220 he died a fugitive, at a great distance from India,
THE brave GELALADDIN, son of Mohamed, made head in the province of Gazna against the forces of Gingischan: in the year 1221 he was so hard pressed by them as to be forced to fly into India, where, on the western banks of the Indus, he was totally defeated by Gingischan in person, but saved his life by swimming the river with an intrepidity which raised admiration in Gingischan himself. He remained in Multan until the year 1224, when he left India never more to return to it. He was killed in 1231 in Mesopotamia.
WITH Gelaladdin finished the dynasty of the Khowarasmians; and what share Gingischan or his successors took in the affairs of Indostan, we have not had the good fortune to discover. We find that one Turmechirin Chan, stiled in Tamerlane's history a descendant of Gengis, and one of the great emperors of Asia, penetrated in the year 1240 to the city of Mirte hying to the north-east of Delhi, and made conquests which preserved great reputation to his name in India, until the appearance of Tamerlane; but these conquests did not expel from the sovereignty the family which at that time reigned in Delhi.
COTHBEDDIN-IBECK, the slave of Scheabbedin, rendered himself independant in the sovereignty of Delhi, which had been given to him by his master only in vicegerence. He extended the Mahomedan dominions, and died peaceably on his throne in the year 1219. He was succeeded by his son ARAMSCHAH, who was deposed by his father's slave ILETMISCHE SCHAMSEDDIN. THIS ILETMISCHE conquered from the slave NassereddiN the provinces which composed the new kingdom of Multan. By uniting these to the provinces of Delhi, and by governing all these' dominions in person without interesting himself in what passed out of India, he became the first regular and the most powerful Mahomedan monarch who had hitherto reigned in Indostan. He died in the year 1235.
HIS descendants formed the dynasty of the first Mahomedan Kings of Delhi.
FIROUZCHAH ROCNEDDIN succeeded his father Iletmische, and before he had reigned a year was deposed by his discontented grandees who placed his sister RADHIATEDDIN upon the throne; an extraordinary phenomenon in a Mahomedan government. This female sovereign was, after various adventures, deposed by her brother Beharam Schah, and killed in attempting to make her escape from him.
BEHARAM SCHAH, after reigning two years, was killed in a revolt. MASSOUDSCHAH ALAEDDIN, son of Firouz Schah RoEneddin, then mounted the throne, and in the year 1246 was deposed by his brother MAHMOUD SCHAH NASSEREDDIN, who made great conquests in India.
AFTER the death of Mahmoud Nassereddin, Firouz his uncle and Alaeddin his nephew disputed the throne. ALAEDDIN caused Firouz to be assassinated, and remained in possession of the throne of Delhi until the year 1317.
HERE we arrive at a chasm of near 80 years in the history of these kings, which our guide Mons. D'Herbelot could not find materials to fill up. Sultan MAHMOUD, who reigned at Delhi in the year 1398, is stiled by Tamerlane's historian the grandson of the emperor Firouz Schah, concerning which Firouz Sahah we can determine nothing more than that he was of the family of Iletmische. MAHMOUD SCHAH, a weak prince, was governed absolutely by his vizir Mellou Cawn, who placed his brother Sarenk in the government of the provinces which depended on the city of Multan, and the two brothers between them ruled the whole kingdom, without any other than a nominal interposition of their sovereign.
THE Mirza Pir Mohammed Gehanguir had in the year 1392 received from his grandfather Tamerlane the sovereignty of all the countries which had formed the empire of Mahmoud the Khowarasmian, whom Gengischan conquered, and who was father of the brave Gelaleddin. Pir Mohammed, at the end of the year 1397, or the beginning of the year 1398, set out from his capital of Gazna, advanced with a numerous army to Multan, and laid siege to the city. which was well defended by Sarenk.
DURING the siege TAMERLANE was advancing from Samarcande. He entered India at the end of the year 1398, descending more terrible than all its inundations from the centre of the northern part of the Indian Caucasus. This invincible barbarian met with, no resistance from the Indians sufficient to justify, even by the military maxims of Tartars, the cruelties with which he marked his way. He was joined near Multan by his grandson, who had now taken that city, and took in person the strong fortress of Batnir; after which he marched towards Delhi. Here sultan Mahmoud, with his vizir. had the courage to stand their ground, determined to risk a battle with forces every way inferior to their enemies.
TAMERLANE, when in sight of their army, ordered a hundred thousand prisoners, which his own army had gathered in their rout, to be put to death, because they were idolaters, and because some of these wretches had betrayed symptoms of satisfaction at the sight of a skirmish which had been fought with a party of Sultan Mahmoud's cavalry. As these marks of disaffection had raised the apprehension of a general insurrection of the slaves, during the battle which was impending, Tamerlane enforced his order with the greatest rigour, and it was executed with the utmost diligence.
TWO or three days after this massacre, Tamerlane gave battle, and was, as ever, victorious. Sultan Mahmoud and his vizir fled into Delhi, and in the night fled out of it.
DELHI was taken without resistance, and its inhabitants were subjected to the same pillage and cruelties, which we have seen renewed in this century by Thamas Kouli Khan in the present capital of Indostan, which, although bearing the same name, is not situated exactly on the same spot as the antient Delhi.
AFTER having made the regulations necessary to calm the convulsions which his cruelties had raised in the inhabitants of the metropolis of Indostan, Tamerlane marched to the north-east towards the Ganges, not without resistance maintained in some places with resolution, but in all without success. He crossed the Ganges at Toglipoor, and exposing his person in every skirmish that offered with the spirit of a volunteer, advanced to the straights of Kupele.
AT the foot of the mountains called Kentassi, in the country of Thibet, and in that part of them which lies between the thirty-first and thirty-second degree of latitude and between the ninety-eighth and the hundredth degree of longitude, the Ganges, formed from several sources, passes successively two great lakes, and flows to the west until the opposition of a part of the Indian Caucasus turns it to the south, and soon after to the south-east, when at length flowing due south, and having completed in these various directions a course of two hundred leagues, it enters India by forcing its passage through the mountains of the frontier.
THE pass through which the Ganges disembogues itself into Indostan is called the straights of Kupele, which are distant from Delhi about 30 leagues, in the longitude of 96, and in the latitude of 30. 2. These straights are believed by the Indians, who look very little abroad, to be the sources of the Ganges; and a rock 15 miles distant from them, bearing some resemblance to the head of a cow has joined in the same part of the kingdom two very important objects of their religion; the grand image of the animal which they almost venerate as a divinity, and the first appearance of that immense body of holy water which washes away all their sins.
A GREAT multitude of Indians were assembled, probably for the celebration of a feast, at the straights of Kupele. They made some shew of resistance against Tamerlane's army, but were no sooner attacked than dispersed. The field of victory is the most distant term of Tamerlane's conquests in India and on the globe.
HE now prepared to return to his capital of Samarcande, and repassed the Ganges; after which he directed his march along the foot of mount Caucasus, until he arrived at the southern frontiers of Kashmire, the mahomedan king of which country sent ambassadors to make submission. As this rout was through countries which the army had not hitherto passed, the sword was not yet sheathed, but large detachments were making excursions to the south, whilst Tamerlane reserved to himself the task of subduing the mountaineers who made any resistance, or refused to acknowledge his sovereignty.
FROM the frontiers of Kashmire to the frontiers of Indostan, the army passed through countries which had submitted to Tamerlane at his entrance into India; and the march out of India was through the mountains of Sheberto, a part of the Caucasus. From hence Tamerlane hastened to Samarcande. Having reposed a few months in this capital of his vast dominions, he set out on the great expedition in which he subdued Syria and the Kalif of Egypt, vanquished Bajazet, and by the addition of these conquests to those he had made before, rendered himself lord of an empire which extended from Smyrna to the banks of the Ganges. TAMERLANE never returned into India, but added the conquests he had made in it to the government of his grandson Pir Mohammed Gehanguir, who ruled from Gazna the mahomedan dominions of Indostan until the death of his grandfather, which happened in the year 1404. An event in which so many princes were interested did not fail to raise great commotions amongst the princes of his family. On his death-bed Tamerlane named Pir Mohammed Gehan Ghir the universal heir of all his dominions. The contempt with which his will was treated after his death, was equal to the veneration which had been paid to his authority during his life. The sultan Khalil another of his grandsons, immediately took possession of the capital of Samarcande, and proclaimed himself emperor. Pir Mohammed did not live long enough to assert his rights, but was assassinated six months after the death of his grandfather.
The sultan Sharock, the youngest of the two surviving sons of Tamerlane, succeeded to the inheritance designed for Gehan Ghir: he reigned near 42 years, during which the conquests of his father in India seem to have remained in subjection to his authority.
THERE is in Europe an excellent history of the life of this prince, and of his descendants, continued to the year 1497. There are likewise in England materials sufficient to form a history of the dependance in which India remained to the posterity of Tamerlane, until one of them erected the new dynasty of mahomedan emperors in Indostan, which is that of the present great Moguls; but these tracts, hitherto tittle regarded by those, whose fortunes alone could furnish the expence of presenting them to the public in languages of common use, remain out of the reach of public curiosity by the difficulties attending the study of those in which they are written.
A FEW scraps detached from one another by considerable intervals of time, and by subjects of little connection with each other, would be of little use to guide us through such a length of obscurity as that in which we view at present the history of Tamerlane's successors in India, until the time of Sultan Babr: and this obscurity must remain, until the original histories brought into England by Mr. Frazer, or others equivalent to them, shall be published.
THE SULTAN BABR was the 6th in descent, not from Sharoch, but from the Mirza Miran Schah, another of the sons of Tamerlane; this Babr, yielding to the conquests of the Usbeg Tartars, retired from the country of Mawhranhar towards India: after making several expeditions into Indostan, he at last in the year 1526 defeated Sultan Ibrahim Loudi, and became emperor of Delhi. Who Sultan Ibrahim Loudi was, will in all probability be known, when the commentaries of Sultan Babr, written by himself, and which are at Oxford, shall be translated. After making still farther conquests in Indostan, Sultan Babr died near Agra in December of the year 1530.
THE pride of the Great Moguls descended from Sultan Babr, in vaunting in their titles and on all other occasions, their descent from Tamerlane, has given rise to the common belief, that the throne of Delhi, and the whole extent of the conquests made by Tamerlane in India, were maintained by his posterity in a regular filiation, and without interruption. But such a succession would have given no room for Sultan Babr's conquests over a stranger, as Sultan Loudi appears to be, and would have excluded him from the honour of being the founder of the present dynasty of Great Moguls.
HOMAION succeeded to his father Babr, and in 1540 fled into Persia before the Pitans, whom we imagine to have been the Mahomedan subjects of Sultan Ibrahim Loudi conquered by Babr. By the assistance of the king of Persia Homaion recovered his empire in 1555, and died in 1556. Before his flight he had conquered and added to the Mogul dominions the kingdoms of Guzerat and Malva; he had likewise taken possession of the kingdom of Bengal. ACBAR succeeded his father Homaion, and died, after a reign of near 50 years, in 1605. He extended the empire, but not so far to the southward as to prevent him from vouchsafing to stile the king of Portugal his neighbour, in virtue of the territories possessed by this nation near Goa on the coast of Malabar.
TO Acbar succeeded his son JEHANGUIR, who died, in 1627. A weak prince, enslaved by the influence of his mistress Nourjehan, confined in his person, and constrained in his government, by the ambition of his son Gehan Schah. Sir Thomas Roe was sent embassador to Jehanguir by king James the first.
SCHAH GEHAN succeeded to his father Jehanguir; and after a reign successful until the change of his fortunes, to which a sickness of languor occasioned by intemperance in his seraglio gave rise, was deposed and confined by his son Aurengzebe, and died in 1666.
THERE is not a more curious piece of history than that of the rebellion of Aurengzebe against his father, written by Mr. Bernier. After having murdered his three brothers and some of their children, to acquire the throne, Aurengzebe maintained himself in it near 50 years, with so strict an attention to the government of his empire, as entitles him to be ranked with the ablest princes, who have reigned in any age or country. He conquered more than half the provinces of the Peninsula of India in person, and his viceroys conquered or subjected almost all the rest, the sea coasts of Malabar excepted. The revenues of the empire amounted in his time to near thirty-eight millions of pounds sterling. He died in 1707.
BUT all the abilities of Aurengzebe did not give him the power of securing his crown to one of his sons in preference to the rest, and it appears by his will that he foresaw the contests which ensued amongst them after his death. His sons Azem Schah, 'and Mahomed Mauzm, fought at the head of armies not equalled since the time of Tamerlane. That of Mahomed Mauzm consisted of more than three hundred thousand fighting men, of which one hundred and fifty thousand were cavalry. Azem, who seems by his father's will to have been the favourite, was defeated and killed, and Mauzm was proclaimed emperor, under the title of BAHADUR SCHAH, after which he attacked his brother Kaunbuksh, who was taken prisoner and died of his wounds. Bahadr Schah died after reigning about six years according to Mr. Frazer.
OF four sons which survived their father Bahadr Schah, three joined against the other, defeated and killed him, and then JEHANDER SCHAH separated from the other two, defeated and put them to death; after which he was proclaimed emperor; but as he was a very weak prince, and infatuated by his mistress Lal Koar, who had been a public singer; two brothers the principal men of his court dethroned him, and placed on the throne MAHOMED FURRUKSIR son to AZEM SCHAH, the prince who fell the first of the three brothers, by whose deaths Jehander Schah acquired the crown.
WE know not what term to give to the reign of Jehander Schah, the predecessor of Furruksir, as Mr. Frazer, who is now the guide to whom we are most indebted for the history of this dynasty seems to have made a mistake in the chronology of this period. Aurengzebe is said to have died in February 1707, and Mahomed Furruksir in February 1719, which dates give an interval of twelve years. At the same time Bahadr Schah the successor of Aurengzebe is said to have reigned about six years, Mahomed Furruksir the successor of Jehander Schah, to have reigned seven: so that we have in the reigns of these two princes, without the interposition of Jehander Schah, more than the term which elapsed between the deaths of Aurengzebe and Mahomed Furruksir, whose deaths are ascertained by dates. Mr. Frazer has not ascertained the term of Jehander Schah's reign; but if those of Bahadr Schah and Furruksir could be authentically reduced into the space to which they must be confined, it would be sufficient, according to the ideas of Mogul history, that Jehander Schah only once performed the ceremony of sitting in public on the throne of Delhi, to intitle him to be ranked in the list of the emperors of Indostan.
BY that dependance to the great men of the kingdom to which their contests for the crown had reduced the descendants of Aurengzebe, the emperors elected, although reverenced as despotic by the multitude, ascended the throne in bonds, and were in reality nothing more than the slaves of their ministers.
STILL the blood of Tamerlane continued to be held in too great veneration throughout the empire, to permit any others than his descendants to entertain hopes of ascending the throne with impunity. Those who stood nearest to the throne, in virtue of their offices and power, were therefore contented to rule the empire as they pleased, by shewing to the people a pompous sovereign, who in reality commanded nothing but the women of his seraglio.
FURRUKSIR was the first of the Great Moguls, whose father had not been emperor, and we shall soon see more examples of this oblique succession. The same lords who had raised, deposed him as a measure necessary to their own security. Not content with confining him, they put out his eyes; but even this degree of imbecillity and wretchedness did not appease their fears or satisfy their resentments. They murdered him on the 16th of February 1719, aggravating the deed with every indignity and insult.
THESE deposers of Furruksir placed on the throne his cousin german Raffeih al Dirjat son of Raffeih al Shan, one of the brothers from whom the emperor Jehander Schah won the crown. Raffeih al Dirjat was taken out of the castle in which those of the royal family who are not murdered are suffered to live. This change of his fortunes was not more extraordinary than it was of short duration; for the same disposers of the throne who had made him emperor, murdered him when he had scarcely reigned three months.
THEY then took Raffeih al Dowlet, brother of Raffeih al Dirjat, probably out of the same place of confinement, and placed him on the throne. The reign of this emperor was of shorter duration than that of his brother, for he died within a few days after his accession, and his death was not suspected to be the effect of poison.
MAHOMED Schah was now proclaimed by the two brothers Abdallah Khan, and Hossan Ally Khan, whom we have seen powerful enough to make four and depose five emperors of Indostan. If there were no interreigns, four of these successions happened in the space of four months.
MAHOMED Schah was son of Jehan Schah, one of the three brothers who perished in disputing the crown with their brother Jehander Schah. So that a son of each of these three unfortunate princes became emperor only to be as unfortunate as his father.
BUT the greatest humiliation, if not the most tragical exit, was reserved for Mahomed Schah. But the beginning of his reign was not without a stroke of vigour in the mode of eastern politics; for his courtiers, to please him, assassinated Hossan Ally Khan, one of the two brothers whose hands had been imbrued in so much of the blood of his family.
The other brother Abdullah Caun immediately appeared in arms, and opposed another emperor of his own nomination to Mahomed Schah. A battle ensued, in which Abdullah was taken prisoner. He died three months afterwards of his wounds; having, it is said, received the assurance of his pardon from Mahomed Schah; which, if true, is an example of clemency very rarely found in the politics of Asiatic monarchs. THE removal of two such dangerous enemies to the throne, placed Mahomed Schah in possession of it with a security unknown to his predecessors, since the reign of Aurengzebe; but this security served only to render him unworthy of it. Indolent, sensual, and irresolute, he voluntarily gave to favourites as great a degree of power, as that which the ministers of the throne had lately possessed in defiance of the will of their sovereigns. The fatal moment approached, in which a foreigner was to determine whether he should exterminate the race of Tamerlane, and annex the richest empire of the universe to his own. Caundorah the vizir and favourite of Mahomed Schah quarrelled with Nizam al Muluck the viceroy of the southern provinces, who had under his jurisdiction very near a fourth part of the empire, and who without rebellion had rendered himself almost independant of the emperor. Bred under the eye of Aurengzebe, Nizam al Muluck censured openly and in the strongest terms, the lethargick and pusillanimous administration, as well as the profligate and dissolute manners of the court; hoping, no doubt, to impair the influence of his rival Caundorah. At last pretending that there could be no remedy to such desperate evils, but in a total revolution of the empire, he advised Thamas Kouli Khan, who had usurped the throne of Persia, to come and take possession of that of Indostan; and Thamas Kouli Khan followed his advice.
MR. FRAZER has left us an authentic account of this extraordinary revolution. An army famished by its own numbers, commanded by chiefs unanimous in nothing but their unwillingness to fight, and these by an emperor who could not command his fears, submitted to enemies whom they outnumbered five to one: but these enemies had been inured to conflicts under the most desperate soldier of the age, and were rendered invincible by the expectation of plundering the capital of the richest empire in the world. A skirmish decided the fate of this empire. Mahomed Schah laid his regalia at the feet of Thamas Kouli Khan, who took possession of Delhi, plundered it, and massacred a hundred thousand of its inhabitants. The conqueror reserving to himself all the countries lying to the westward of the river Indus and Attock, restored all the rest to Mahomed Schah, and reinstated him in the throne with formalities; after which he returned to Persia, carrying with him out of Indostan a treasure, which in effects, silver, gold and jewels, was valued at more than seventy millions of pounds sterling. He entered India from Kandahar in the beginning of the year 1738, and returned to Kandahar at the end of the year 1739. This dreadful incursion is reckoned to have cost Indostan, besides its treasures, the loss of two hundred thousand lives.
THE cruelties exercised in India by Thamas Kouli Khan, were such, that a dervise had the courage to present a writing to him, conceived in these terms: "If thou art a god, act as a god; if thou art a prophet, conduct us in the way of salvation; if thou art a king, render the people happy, and do not destroy them." To which the barbarian replied, "I am no god, to act as a god; nor a prophet, to shew the way of salvation; nor a king, to render the people happy; but I am he whom God sends to the nations which he has determined to visit with his wrath." SECTION III.
THE northern nations of India, although idolaters, having scarce a religion, when compared to the multitude of superstitions and ceremonies which characterise the inhabitants of the southern countries, were easily induced to embrace Mahomedanism, and are at this day the Affghans or Pitans, who figure so much in all the late revolutions of Delhi. Excepting these, few of the other Indians have been converted.
THE armies which made the first conquests for the heads of the respective dynasties, or for other incursors, left behind them numbers of Mahomedans, who, seduced by a finer climate and a richer country, forgot their own.
THE Mahomedan princes of India naturally gave a preference to the service of men of their own religion, who, from whatever country they came, were of a more vigorous constitution than the stoutest of the subjected nation; this preference has continually encouraged adventurers from Tartary, Persia, and Arabia, to seek their fortunes under a government, from which they were sure of receiving greater encouragement than they could expect at home.
FROM these origins, time has formed in India a mighty nation of near ten millions of Mahomedans, whom Europeans call Moors: to them, under the authority of the Great Mogul, the greatest part of Indostan is now subject: but, although the reigning nation, they are out-numbered by the Indians ten to one.
THIS inferiority of numbers, has obliged the Mahomedans to leave in all parts of Indostan, many Indian princes in possession of their respective sovereignties, which they are permitted to govern without mlestation, on condition that they pay the stipulated tribute, and do not infringe any other part of the treaties by which they or their ancestors have acknowledged the sovereignty of the Great Mogul. These Indian princes are called Rajahs, i. e. kings: more than one half of the empire is at this day subject to these Rajahs, of whom some are princes of very small territories, and others, such as Jasseing and Jessemseing mentioned by Mr. Bernier in the history of Aurengzebe, as also the kings of Mysore and Tanjore mentioned in the history of the present wars of Coromandel, possess dominions almost as large as the kings of Prussia or Portugal. Many of them pretend to great antiquity of family, and one, whom the emperor Acbar conquered, boasted his descent from Porus.
BRSIDES the Indians who reside in the territories of the Rajahs, there are every where seen great numbers of them in those parts of the country which are immediately subject to the Great Mogul without the interposition of an Indian prince to govern them. They are the only cultivators of the land, and the only manufacturers of the immense quantities of linnen which are made in the empire; insomuch that at a distance from the capital cities, the great trading towns, the encampments of armies, and the high roads, it is rare to see in the villages or fields a Mahomedan employed in any thing except levying contributions or acting in some other respect as an officer of the Great Mogul.
INTELLIGENT enquirers assert that there are no written laws amongst the Indians, but that a few maxims transmitted by tradition supply the place of such a code in the discussion of civil causes; and that the ancient practice, corrected on particular occasions by the good sense of the judge, decides absolutely in criminal cases. In all cases derived from the relations of blood, the Indian is worthy to be trusted with the greatest confidence; but in cases of property, in which this relation does not exist, as a cunning subtil people they are perpetually in disputes; and for the want of a written code the justice or injustice of the decision depends on the integrity or venality of the judge. Hence the parties prefer to submit their cause to the decision of arbitrators chosen by themselves, rather than to that of the officers appointed by the government. THE Alcoran is to the Mahomedans at once the source of their religious institutions, of their civil law, and of the administration of justice in criminal cases. The two first of these heads have been as copiously commented as in any religion or government whatsoever.
THE Mulla in Indostan superintends the practice and punishes the breach of religious duties, the Cadi holds courts in which are tried all disputes of property, and the Catwal is the judge and executor of justice in criminal cases.
AN accurate description of the functions allotted to the Cadi and the Mulla, would require a volume, which we have not materials to furnish; and if furnished, this volume woidd leave us but imperfectly informed of the general administration of justice in the cases supposed to fall under the jurisdiction of these officers; since the sovereign or his delegate perpetually wrests all kinds of causes from the common forms of trial, and decides them himself without appeal. Some notion of the Catwal is given by Mr. Thevenot: the punishments inflicted by this tribunal, are different from those prescribed by the Alcoran; from the precepts of which the Catwal likewise deviates in exercising the torture, and it contradicts them, in being always open to bribery.
WE see in those parts of Indostan which are frequented by the European nations, the customs or laws which regard lands subject to contradictions, not easily reconcileable. The husbandman who possesses a few fields has the power of selling and bequeathing them, at, the same time that the district in which these fields are included is annually let out by the government to a renter, who pays a certain sum of money to the lord of the country, and receives from the cultivator a certain part of his harvests. The renter sometimes quarrels with the husbandman, and displaces him from his possessions: clamours as against the highest degree of injustice ensue; the prince interferes, and generally redresses the poor man, who has so much need if support in such a cause of misery; and if he fails to give this proof of his inclination to justice, he is held in execration, and deemed capable of any iniquity. IN all the countries absolutely subjected, the Great Mogul stiles himself proprietor of all the lands, and gives portions of them at will as revenues for life to his feudatories; but still these grants take not away from the cultivator the right of sale and bequest. The policy of all the Indian governments of Indostan, as well as that of the Great Mogul, seems to consist more in a perpetual attention to prevent any one family from obtaining great possessions, than in the intention of multiplying oppressions upon the body of the people; for such a slavery would soon leave the monarch little grandeur to boast of, and few subjects to command. As all acquisitions of land are subject to the inspection of the government, the man who should attempt to make himself proprietor of a large estate in land, would be refused the certificates necessary to put him in possession, and would be marked as a victim necessary to be sacrificed to the policy of the state. From what we see in the histories of this and other eastern countries, the violences committed among the great, lead us to think that the man of more humble condition is subject to still greater violences; when, on the contrary, this humility is the best of protections.
THE Feudatory, by the acceptance of a certain title and the pension which accompanies it, acknowledges the Great Mogul his heir. No man, from the Vizir downwards, has any trust of importance reposed in him but on these terms, and on his decease the whole of his property that can be found is seized for the use of the emperor, who gives back to the family what portion he pleases. The estates of all who are not feudatories descend to the natural heirs.
THESE barriers raised against the aggrandizement of particular families became absolutely necessary in a state, necessitated to repose very great trusts in certain individuals.
THE whole extent of Indostan is not divided into more than twentyfour provinces: each of these include several Indian principalities. A very large army ready to move at the first warning was found necessary to coerce the Rajahs; the same force divided under several distinct commanders would have been ineffectual. Hence it was necessary to give a large tract of country to the government of a single officer, or to relinquish the design of extending the dominion.
THIS officer, now well known in Europe by the title of Nabob, was made subject to the controul of others who resided in the province with him, and over whom he had no authority. The sovereign reserved to himself the power of life and death. Civil causes were reserved to the Cadi, and the revenues and expences of the province were subject to the examination of the Duan, who managed the customs and took possession for the emperor of the estates of the feudatories who died. The Great Mogul gave the government of the strongest holds in the province to governors who were in nothing subject to the Nabob. He was called to court, kept there, or translated into another government, whenever the ministry thought these changes necessary; and there was a time when they were so frequent, that a new Nabob left Delhi riding contrary to the usual manner with his back turned to the head of his elephant, and gave for a reason, "That he was looking out for his successor."
THE divisions of the royal family gave the Nabobs of provinces distant from the capital, opportunities of acquiring a stability in their governments, and the court was now content to receive a stipulated sum, in lieu of the real revenues of the province, in which the Nabob, became little less than absolute, and had nothing to fear but an army from Delhi, which was always coming, and never came. But even before they arrived at this state of independence, we find them exercising the cruel caprices of despotism on wretches too weak to raise their complaints to the throne. Mandleslow tells a story of a Nabob who cut off the heads of a set of dancing girls, that is, of a company of very handsome women, because they did not come to his palace on the first summons. In Tavernier we see a man, who miuders his wife, four children, and thirteen slaves, and is left unpunished, because he is the person on whom the Nabob relied for the cure of a distemper THE relations of all the travellers into Indostan abound with examples of the vices of these princes. It has been observed, that all the Mahomedans established in India acquire, in the third generation, the indolence and pusillanimity of the original inhabitants, and at the same time a cruelty of character to which the Indians are at present happily strangers. Hence we are almost induced to give assent to the opinion, that the prohibition of shedding blood of any kind, inculcated by the Indian religion, was a political institution, wisely calculated to change into gentler manners the sanguinary disposition, which is said to have characterised all the inhabitants of Indostan before the religion of Brama was introduced amongst them.