OF MOULTAN, PESHAWUR, AND THE GREATER PART OF SCINDE. ENGLAND and India cast aside the thick veil of fable and tradition, and take their places in the authentic page of history in the same century. It is at the Norman conquest, A.D. 1066, that the former emerges from the dim legends of Picts and Scots, and that the rude Saxon, the dialect of peasants, yields to the polished Norman, the language of courts; and it is at the Moslem invasion of Mahmoud, A.D. 1000, that India breaks from the shadowy realms of bardic chroniclers, and that Sanscrit, the language of philosophy and science, gradually succombs to the rougher Urdu', "the language of camps." After a successful reign of twenty years, Subuctugi died, and left the splendid empire of Ghizni to his son. He was a gallant and enlightened sovereign, who ruled with equity and justice, and his humanity and tenderness to animals has been perpetuated in one of the most charming tales of eastern romance.2 He made several fierce inroads into the Punjaub3; and it was during these warlike parades that Mahmoud, his eldest son, acquired the knowledge of the wealth and idolatry of India, that kindled at once his avarice and his CHAP. III. 1000. BOOK zeal, and gave the earliest token of his capacity for war and conquest. I. 1000. Mahmoud was absent in Khorassan, at the death of his father in Ghizni, and Ismael, his brother, had sufficient influence with the dying monarch to induce him to nominate him his successor. No sooner was Subuctugi dead, than Ismael seized the empire, and opening the royal treasuries, sought, by lavish gratuities, to secure the fidelity of the nobles and the troops; but Mahmoud was not a prince to be easily defrauded of his birthright. After trying in vain to induce his brother to resign his unjust usurpation, he marched against him, and regained at the sword point his capital and his crown. Comparative clemency marked the first victory of Mahmoud. Sending for his brother, he asked him what treatment he should have received if fortune had been reversed, and he had fallen into his power? Ismael replied, "that he should have imprisoned him for life in some castle, and indulged him with every pleasure but his liberty." 5 Mahmoud made no reply at the time, but shortly after acted on the suggestion, and confined him in the fortress of Georghan, where after many years of idleness and luxury, he subsequently died. The character of Mahmoud had been early moulded by that of his father, Subuctugi; and from him he appears to have acquired that admiration of the arts and sciences, and that keen delight in battles, that made him at once the most magnificent monarch and the greatest warrior of the age. Even when young he displayed equally the spirit of the soldier and the liberal tastes of the scholar. During the lifetime of his father he enriched the capital with elegant buildings and costly gardens; and the earnestness with which he opposed the acceptance of a magnificent ransom, that was to purchase Subuctugi's retreat from the territory of Jeipal King of Lahore, shows that even at that early age opportunity was alone wanting to initiate that career of conquest which has made his name famous through the world. III. 1000. At the age of twenty-eight Mahmoud was the sole CHAP. master of the dominion of his father." Ghizni, his capital, was one of the finest cities in the East, and his supremacy was acknowledged from the frontiers of Persia to the banks of the Indus, and from Balkh to the Arabian Sea, He was, even at his accession, the most powerful sovereign of Asia; and when, shortly after, the last of the dynasty of the Samanians who reigned in Bokhara, and to whom he still paid a nominal allegiance, was ferociously put to death by Elek the Uzbek King of Cashgar, he remained without a rival throughout the East. The expeditions of his father had opened to Mahmoud the knowledge of the wealth of India and the idolatry of its inhabitants; and no sooner had he quieted his domestic foes and established his throne, than he swore on the Holy Koran to seize the one and efface the other. The Koran teaches that the highest dignity the faithful can attain is that of making war in person against the enemies of his religion; and in every page the gazi, or holy war against infidels, is elevated as the first and most imperative duty of the true believer.9 "The sword," says Mahomed, "is the key of paradise and hell. A drop of blood shed in the cause of God, a night spent in arms, is of more avail than two months of fasting and prayer. Whoever falls in battle, his sins are forgiven; at the day of judgment his wounds shall be resplendent as vermilion, and odoriferous as musk; and the loss of his limbs shall be replaced with the wings of angels and cherubims." During a period of three hundred years his warlike apostles, with fire, sword, and desolation, did not fail to execute these fierce mandates through the eastern world. Those who perished in the holy crusade were supposed to go straight to Heaven; and all the eloquence and imagination of the prurient Prophet were employed to paint, in glowing terms, the liberal and intoxicating joys there awaiting them. Seventy-two wives of the girls of Para BOOK I. 1000. dise, formed entirely of musk, with eyes large as eggs and charms in proportion, waited impatient to greet the first approach of him whose thread of life was severed in battle with a Giaour 10; whilst 80,000 servants, bearing 300 new dishes and 300 fresh kinds of wine, daily ministered to the immortal appetites of those gallant martyrs, to whom indigestion was unknown, and who were liable to no inconvenience from excess! When to such liberal promises of future bliss we add the immediate prospect of present wealth, we need not be surprised that the ruthless injunctions of the Prophet, to convert or slay, never lagged for want of willing hands to execute them. From the earliest days of history the sword of proselytism has always been the keenest and most pitiless wielded by the hand of man; and ruthless as were the Mussulmans, they are not the only apostles who have sought to gratify their God with the lives, and themselves with the wealth, of rival worshippers. But it is a remarkable fact, that all who have made religion of any kind a cloak for conquest, have always been careful to turn their efforts to wealthy regions; and the identity of purpose that directed the Mussulman fanatics to India, and urged equally merciless Christians to Mexico and Peru, is so evident, that we are induced to suppose that " "Where there is no store of wealth Souls are not worth the charge of health;" and that both must have been impelled by some imaginary command to save the wealthy communities first; no religion forbids the accumulation of this world's riches, or associates with their possession any diminution of future bliss. India was, at this period, the richest country in the world; and it is possible the golden charms of Luckmee, the Hindoo goddess of wealth, influenced Mahmoud's choice in the selection of Hindostan as the field of his labours, quite as much as the vision of "a dark heaven of houris' eyes" in the Alderman's Paradise of the Prophet himself. An additional inducement for invasion was presented by the nature of the inhabitants themselves. Both by creed and habit the Hindoos were pacific; and although the nations west of the Indus, constantly exposed to the inroads of the Persians, would necessarily learn the art of war, it is probable that, to the timid races of Hindostan and the southern Peninsula, the march of armies and the heralding of troops were almost as strange as to the natives of Peru in the days of Pizarro. The timid votaries of a God of Peace promised an easy victory to an army of fanatics, who served a God of Battles swift to shed blood! During a period of twenty-four years Mahmoud made twelve distinct expeditions against the temples and cities of India, and on each occasion thousands of harmless Hindoos were consigned to Jehanum for every true believer who, in triumph, winged his upward flight to the eternal bowers of Paradise. Every object of the worship or veneration of the Hindoos was brutally destroyed; and the description of the amount of jewels and gold, and of the wealth of all kinds, that he brought back with him to Ghizni, resembles more a tale of the Arabian Nights than an authentic narration of history.12 It is not my intention to give a distinct account of these numerous invasions: the authorities are limited and very imperfect, and may excuse us an elaboration of succeeding tales of blood and slaughter, that, after all, may be incorrect. We will confine ourselves to the narration of those expeditions that are esteemed authentic, and that more immediately tended, to the establishment of Mussulman rule in Hindostan. In A.D. 1001, after a few insignificant expeditions to the countries west of the Indus, Mahmoud, with 10,000 men, advanced to Peshawur, where he was met by Jeipal the Brahmin Raja of Lahore, with an army of 12,000 horse, 30,000 foot, and 300 chain elephants; the fortune of Mahmoud was in the ascendant. The Hindoo army CHAP. III. 1001. |
