182 PROVINCIAL DYNASTIES with the rana of Chitor, however, ended in a crushing defeat in 1440, the memory of which is still revived by the lofty Pillar of Victory which Eana Kumbho set up at his capital. After this, Rajput influence gradually became supreme in Malwa; Rana Sanga defeated the second Mahmud as effectually as Rana Kumbha had humbled the first ; and Medini Rao, the lord of Chanderi, managed the kingdom as chief minister of the nominal sovereign up to the time when the invasion of India by Babar, involving the defeat of the Rajputs and the death of Medini Rao, gave to Bahadur Shah of Guja- rat the opportunity to take possession of Malwa in 1531. An extremely inaccessible position, beyond the great desert and the hills connecting the Vindh'yas with the Aravali range, long preserved Gujarat from the Mohammedan yoke. Only by sea was it easily ap- proached, and to the sea it owed its peculiar advan- tages, its favouring climate and fertile soil, as well as the wealth which poured in from the great commercial emporiums of Cambay, Diu, and Surat. The greater part of the Indian trade with Persia, Arabia, and the Red Sea passed through its harbours, besides a busy coasting trade. " The benefit of this trade," as Erskine truly says, " overflowed upon the country, which be- came a garden, and enriched the treasury of the prince. The noble mosques, colleges, palaces, and tombs, the remains of which still adorn Ahmadabad and its other cities to this day, while they excite the admiration of the traveller, prove both the wealth and the taste of the
