Part 22 (1/2)
He thought once that he had hit on a marvellous febrifuge--the translation of religious tracts into verse!--and he records with interest how one bout ended before he had finished his task; but the effect was not lasting. Still, nothing crippled his extraordinary energy, and so late as March 1529 he writes in his diary:
”I swam across the Ganges for amus.e.m.e.nt. I counted my strokes, and found that I swam over in thirty-three; then I took my breath and swam back. I had crossed by swimming every river I met, except (till then) the Ganges.”
He was very happy, apparently, in these days. India was at peace under stern military control. At Agra, where he had settled, beautiful gardens were growing up, in which flourished many a flower he had loved in the wild adventurous days of his youth. Nor did he confine himself to old favourites. We read of a wonderful red oleander, unlike all other oleanders, which he found in an ancient garden at Gwalior.
His old love of Nature, too, finds expression in a detailed account of the fauna and flora of his new possessions.
Finally, he was happy in his domestic relations. In the Memoirs of his daughter, Gulbadan, we read of the joyful evening when news came to him that the long-expected caravan from Kabul was within six miles of the city, when, without waiting for a horse, bareheaded, in slipper-shoon, he had run out to meet his ”Dearest-dear,” had met her, and walked the weary miles along the dusty road beside her palanquin.
In Babar's Memoirs this stands in a single sentence, pregnant with meaning:--
”On Sunday at midnight I met Mahum again”--
Mahum being the pet name for the wife who had borne him the three daughters whom he loved so well, the son Humayon of whom he was so proud.
Concerning the latter he writes:--
”I was just talking to his mother about him when in he came” (from Badakhshan). ”His presence opened our hearts like rosebuds, and made our eyes s.h.i.+ne like torches. The truth is, that his conversation has an inexpressible charm, he realises absolutely the ideal of perfect manhood.”
Brave words these; but Babar was ready to stand by them to the death.
The story is a strange one, but it is well authenticated. In October A.D. 1530 Humayon was brought back to Agra, sick. The physicians despaired of his life, the learned doctors declared that nothing could save him save the Mercy of G.o.d, and suggested some supreme sacrifice.
Babar caught at the idea. ”I can give my life,” he said, ”it is the dearest thing I have, and it is the dearest thing on earth to my son.”
And in spite of remonstrance--the learned doctors having apparently intended a present to G.o.d (through them!) of money or jewels--he adhered to his decision. He entered his son's room, he stood at the head of the bed in prayer, then walked round it three times, solemnly saying the while: ”On me be thy suffering.”
Was it the extreme nervous, tension acting on a const.i.tution weakened by fever, by hards.h.i.+ps of every kind, which made his prayer effectual?
Who can say? Certain it is that he died in his forty-ninth year, and Humayon lived on to die at the same age.
Babar, by his own request, was buried beside his mother in the Garden of the New Year at Kabul. He rests there within hearing of the running streams, within sight of the tulips and roses which he so dearly loved, for which he had so often longed with a ”deep home-sickness and sense of exile.”
So the most romantic figure of Indian history vanishes from our ken.
THE GREAT MOGHULS
HUMaYON
A.D. 1530 TO A.D. 1556
Humayon was practically the only son of his father. There can be no doubt that Babar regarded Mahum, the mother of the four children of whom he was so pa.s.sionately fond, Humayon, Rose-blush, Rose-face, Rose-body, from a different standpoint from his other wives, of whom he seems to have had four. This, however, did not prevent there being three other princes, Kamran, Hindal, and askari, in the direct line of succession. Apparently they must have been somewhat troublesome before Babar's death, since one of his last words to his beloved heir was the hope that kindness and forgiveness should ever be shown to them. And right well did Humayon keep his promise. Had he been less affectionate, less tender-hearted, he had been a better and a more successful king. His patience was early tried. Almost before the deep and sincere mourning for the kindly dead, which Lady Rose-body describes in her Memoirs, was over, he had to decide between fraternal war and Kamran's claim to supremacy in the Punjab. He chose the latter, an initial mistake which cost him dear. There must, indeed, have been some impression abroad that the new king had less fibre than his father, for from the very first Humayon found himself enmeshed in a perfect network of revolt and conspiracy. He was now a young man of three-and-twenty, tall, extremely handsome, witty, and of the most charming manners. Unfortunately, he had already contracted the opium habit, which, though as yet it had not set its mark on his vitality, undoubtedly disposed him to be more easy-going than even Nature had intended him to be; and that is saying much, for his sweetness of temper is surprising. His whole life appears to have been spent in forgiving injuries which, by all the rules of justice and expediency, he should not have forgiven. Succeeding to his father in A.D. 1530, he was instantly engaged in war--fruitless war. Brave to a fault, not without intelligence, something always seemed to stand between him and success. The story of his failure to relieve Chitore is typical of him. Its widowed Rani, in sore straits to save it for her infant son from the hands of Bahadur-Shah, King of Guzerat (one of the many kings who s.n.a.t.c.hed at every opportunity of enlarging their borders), sent a Ram-Rukhi, or Bracelet-of-the-Brother, to Humayon. Now this Brother-Bracelet is in Rajasthan what a lady's glove was to chivalry.
Only in greater degree, for the recipient becomes a brother--a bracelet-bound brother. There is no value in the pledge. It is generally a thin silk cord, to which are attached seven differently-coloured ta.s.sels; but once given and accepted by the return of a tiny silken bodice, called a _kachli_, it is an inviolable tie. In her extremity Kurnatavi sent hers to Humayon, whose fame as a puissant knight had reached her ears. He was enchanted with the romance of the idea, and instantly left the campaign on which he was engaged to go to her rescue.
And then? Then he dallied. Then he became involved in a wordy, witty, pedantic war in verse with Bahadur-Shah, in which much point was laid on the resemblance of the name Chitore to some other word; in the midst of which the city fell, and suffered yet one more sack.