66 THE TURKS IN DELHI to do with kings and their works. They are surrounded by a court of officers and functionaries, who are exalted or abased at the royal pleasure. Beneath them toil incessantly the millions of patient peasants and indus- trious townsfolk. These people have not changed in any essential characteristic since the dawn of history. They have witnessed the successive inroads of horde after horde of invading foreigners, and have incorpo- rated some part of each new element into their ancient system. They have obeyed the king, whether Aryan, Hun, Greek, Persian, Rajput, Turk, Afghan, Mongol, or English, with the same inveterate resignation, con- tented, or at least not very discontented, with their immemorial village system and district government, which corrected to some extent the contrasts of suc- cessive foreign innovators. Whatever king may rule so the Hindu would resignedly argue there will still be plague and famine and constant but not ener- getic labour, and so long as rice and millet grow and salt is not too dear, life is much the same and the gods may be propitiated. The difference caused in the peas- ant's life by a good or a bad king is too slight to be worth discussing. The good and the bad are alike things of a day; they pass away as life passes when the king decrees a death or massacres a village; but others follow and the world goes on, and the will of God is eternal. The kings whose deeds are to be described were foreigners in origin, but this made little if any differ- ence in the respect which their authority implied. There
