Part 13 (2/2)
The first was in A.D. 1176, when Mahomed Shahab-ud-din--for ere commencing his task he added the name of the Prophet to his own, which signifies the ”Meteor of Faith”--swept through the low-lying lands about the junction of the Punjab rivers with the Indus. He must have had in his mind's eye the exploits of Mahmud nigh on two hundred years before. Perhaps it was this memory which made him choose what is practically the same name; on the other hand, he may only have been seeking an excuse for plunder, like the dead conqueror had done in the religious enthusiasm roused by the name of the prophet.
Be that as it may, in reading the account of his exploits, one is tempted to rub one's eyes and ask, ”Is this Mahmud of Ghuzni, or Mahomed of Ghori?” So curiously alike are they in every way.
He did not, however, lead quite so many raids: on the other hand, he was more permanently successful in them, despite far more organised resistance than that which had opposed his great predecessor.
In fact, it is in this resistance that the real interest of the period lies, so it may be as well to make a complete _volte face_, and having viewed the introduction of Islam to India through Mahomedan eyes, look at these final Campaigns of the Crescent from the Rajput side.
Before pa.s.sing on to this, let us picture the man who, for close on half a century, found his sole occupation in a soldier's life. Here we have no added reputation of the arts or sciences. We are told he was a great king and a just man, but he appears to have been quite unscrupulous towards every one excepting his brother. Many of his successes were due to treachery, and when he died--an old man, a.s.sa.s.sinated in his sleep by those same wild tribes of the Punjab Salt Range who inflicted so much damage on Mahmud of Ghuzni--he was the richest king in the world. ”The treasure,” says the chronicler, ”which this prince left behind him is almost incredible. In diamonds alone of various sizes he had five hundreds _muns_ (at the lowest computation about 1,000 lbs.), the result of his nine expeditions into Hindustan, from each of which, excepting two occasions, he returned laden with wealth.”
Yet India was still rich!
THE RAJPUT RESISTANCE
A.D. 1176 TO A.D. 1206
More than a hundred years had pa.s.sed since Mahmud of Ghuzni's strong grip had relaxed on India. During that time she had reverted, as she always will revert, to those ideals of life which suit her dreamy yet fireful temperament.
The fierce on-sweep of the Moslem scimitar had mowed down the tangle of petty chiefs.h.i.+ps which had grown up in the Dark Ages, and so left room for the spreading of four great kingdoms, Delhi, Ajmir, Kanauj, Guzerat, which were all held by the representatives of certain Rajput clans.
Now the Rajputs are born soldiers. They represent the second, or military (called the Kshatriya) caste of ancient Vedic time; they have provided India for long centuries with her warriors, her n.o.bles, her monarchs. Raj-putra means, in fact, a king's son. Their history is a magnificent one. They have faced and fought every enemy which Fate has brought to their native land in the past; they are ready still to face and fight whatever may come to it in the future. They are the Samurai of India, each clan led by a hereditary leader, and forming a separate community, bound by the strongest ties of military devotion and pride of race.
They claim to have sprung from the sun, or from the moon, or from the fire; and between them lies ever the faint jealousy of a different origin. Thus the Tomaras or Tuars of Delhi claimed the kins.h.i.+p of flame with the Chauhans of Ajmir, while the Rathors of Kanauj stood by their distant sun-cousins of Guzerat. For to this day the pride of ancestry is the Rajput's most cherished inheritance. Often he has little else; but he stills scorns to turn his lance into a plough-share.
For the rest there is no people in the world whose history yields more pure romance. The chivalry of Europe seems strained and artificial beside the stern, straight-forward code of honour by which the early Rajputs regulated their dealings alike with women and with other men; and no roundel of troubadour or challenge of knight-errant could have roused more enthusiasm than did the wild love and war songs of the Rajput bards.
These, then, were the people whose resistance Mahomed Shahab-ud-din of Ghor had to overcome, when, after an ineffectual attempt to reach the heart of India through the sandy deserts of Multan and Guzerat, and a further swoop on the country about Lah.o.r.e (in which, by treacherous stratagem, he seized on the persons who still prolonged the dying Ghuznevide dynasty and sent them northwards to imprisonment and death), he finally marched on Hindustan proper in the year A.D. 1191.
And here once more the pink-and-white ma.s.s of the huge fort of Bhatinda heaves into view as our _mise en scene_. The flowers of the _dakh_ trees had long since been picked as dye-stuff by the village women, when once more the hosts of hardy hors.e.m.e.n swept over the horizon. For, as ever, the _Toovkhs_--as the peasantry learned to call these wild raiders--came with the flights of winter birds. The fort gave in at once to the fierce attack of the Mahomedans. The filagree sugar-work on its battlements seems, indeed, to have infected the ma.s.s of stone beneath it with frailty, for despite its apparent strength, Bhatinda has been taken and retaken ofttimes. So, leaving a garrison there, Shahab-ud-din commenced his return; for the hardy hors.e.m.e.n always seem to have been more afraid of melting in the heat of India than meeting the onslaught of her armies.
Ere he had gone far, however, news of recall came to him. The great Prithvi-Raj, conjoint King of Delhi and Ajmir, with many other Indian princes, two hundred thousand horse, and three thousand elephants was behind him.
Here was challenge indeed! The heat was forgotten; he faced round to the relief of the garrison he had left, and boldly pa.s.sing Bhatinda, paused to give battle on that wild plain between Karnal and Delhi, where half the struggles for the possession of India have been fought to the bitter end.
He must have awaited his enemy with anxiety, for the fame of Prithvi-Raj had spread even amongst Mahomedans. To the Hindus he was a demi-G.o.d: the personification of every Rajput virtue, the pattern of all Rajput manhood. A bold lover, a recklessly brave knight-errant, the story of his exploits, as told by his bard, Chand, fills many books, and is still listened to of winter nights beside the smoke-palled fires by half the men and women in India. It will be sufficient to recount one here to show what manner of man he was, and how he comes still to hold the admiration, not only of the romantic Rajputs, but of all India.
Prithvi-Raj, then, was of the Chauhan, Fire-born race. Rajah of Ajmir only, by father-to-son descent, the kings.h.i.+p of Delhi had come to him by the death of his maternal grandfather without male issue.
But the Rajah of Kanauj was also grandson, and elder grandson, of the dead king by another daughter. Hence arose envy and strife between the cousins; the more so, because the sixteen-year-old Prithvi carried all things before him with an _elan_ not to be imitated. It was all very well to match the young hero's Great Horse sacrifice (the last one, it is believed, in India), with which he claimed empire, by inst.i.tuting a Sai-nair, accompanied by a Self-choice (also the last), for one's only daughter, the Princess Sunjogata of Kanauj. Now the ceremony of Sai-nair is a most august one. It is virtually a claim for universal supremacy, for divine honour. Every one concerned in it, even the scullion in the kitchen who helps to cook the feast, must be of royal blood. So all India's princes were bidden to take their part in it, excepting Prithvi-Raj, and in his place an image of clay was made and set to the lowest job--that of door-keeper.
Thus the Rajah of Kanauj strove to save his dignity, for the rites were equally old, equally honourable; but what man, even though he were king, could calculate on what a young girl, just blossoming into womanhood, would say or do?
As a matter of fact, the young Princess Fortunata (a literal translation of the name) did a very distressing thing. No doubt as she entered the splendid arena (decorated, possibly, in imitation of the celebrated one, described in the Mahabharata as the scene of Draupadi's Swayambara), where all the a.s.sembled princes of India--excepting, of course, her wicked cousin, Prince Prithvi--were eagerly awaiting her choice, she looked very sweet and innocent--quite entrancing, briefly, in her fresh young beauty, about which every one was raving; but who would have dreamed of the mischief which was lurking behind the eyes down-dropped as she stood hesitating, the marriage garland--which every prince longed to feel, even as a yoke, round his neck--in her dainty little hands.
And then? Hey presto! Her dainty little feet sped determinedly over the Court to the door, and there was the garland, not round any living man, but be-decorating the misshapen image of clay which Jai-Chand, her father, had caused to be put in absent Prithvi's place!
There must have been wigs on the green in the women's apartments that fateful day, with papa cursing and mamma upbraiding, while all the little culprit's female relations held up pious hands of horror. But the deed was done, and there in broad daylight, on the wings of fierce love and pride, awakened by the tale of that maiden garland on cold clay, was the twenty-one-year-old Prince Prithvi himself, the flower of Rajput chivalry, followed by youthful heroes, ready, like their chief, for soft kisses or hard blows. The last came first in that desperate five-days-running fight all the way back to Delhi, with willing Princess Fortunata in their midst, her cheek paling but her eyes dry, as one by one the dear, brave lads fell out from her cortege dead or dying.
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