Chapter XXV: Part III: The Modern Age (1)

INDIA IN THE BEGINNING OF THE
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

A.D. 1707

Before making our _volte face_, and in future chronicling the history of India from the Western standpoint, it will be well to see what this India was which England set herself deliberately to annex.

So far as the East India Company was concerned, the vast peninsula was at this time what a huge slice of iced plum-cake upon a plate must be to a hungry mouse. That is to say, nice enough for outside nibblings, but with unexplored possibilities of plums within. Every now and again a bolder merchant would dive into the comparatively unknown centre, and come back laden possibly with idol-eyes, rich brocades, jewels in the rough.

It must--to repeat ourselves--have been a tremendous temptation having to live, as these early writers or clerks to John Company had, on the very verge of Tom Tiddler's ground--to have only to reach out their hands and touch a totally different world. A world which by virtue of immutable changelessness had not commuted the gold which the years had brought it into luxuries, but had stored it up uselessly in lavish ornamentation and idle, almost unappropriated treasure. Except as a gaud for a woman, a toy for a babe, or a flourish of trumpets for some man who called himself noble, gold in India had practically no value, for the rich man lived in all ways much as the poor man lived. The standard of personal comfort had not risen at all either for the wealthy or the poverty-stricken during the four thousand years and odd since the splendours of Princess Drâupadi's Swayâmvara had been chronicled in the Mâhâbhârata. An instant's thought will show us the effect which this hoarding of every diamond found in Golconda, of every bale of rich stuff made by some leisurely artificer, must have had upon the country. It became full to overflowing with scarcely recognised riches. To English traders, keen on commerce, India must indeed have been the land of Upside-down; a land into which their gold was sucked down at the same time that astounding, almost undreamt-of treasures were literally vomited forth from every petty bazaar. Francois Bernier's views on this matter, and the conclusions which he draws from the indubitable facts which he observed, are so distinctly what may be called conventionally insular, that they serve well to show the attitude of mind in which the West, strong in conviction of its own worth, faced the East, all unfamiliar and startling.

"Before I conclude," he says, in a letter addressed to M. Colbert, the French Minister of State, "I wish to explain how it happens that though the gold and silver introduced into the Empire centre finally in Hindustan, they still are not in greater plenty than elsewhere, and the inhabitants have less the appearance of a monied people than those of many other parts of the globe.

"In the first place, a larger quantity is melted, re-melted, and wasted in fabricating women's bracelets, both for the hands and feet, chains, ear-rings, nose and finger rings, and a still larger quantity is consumed in manufacturing embroideries; _alachas_ or striped silken stuffs, _touras_ or tufts of golden nets worn on turbans; gold and silver cloths and scarves, turbans, and brocades. The quantity of these articles made in India is incredible."

He then goes on to paint, in vivid, horror-stricken phrases, the evils of a paternal despotism, pointing out that it is "slavery," that it "obstructs the progress of trade," since there is no encouragement to commercial pursuits when the "success with which they may be attended, instead of adding to the enjoyments of life, only provokes the cupidity of a neighbouring tyrant." This we are assured is the sole cause why the "possessor, so far from living with increased comfort, studies the means by which he may appear indigent: his dress, lodging, and furniture continue to be mean, and he is careful, above all things, never to indulge in the pleasures of the table."

Poor Bernier! And after more than a hundred years of comparative freedom under British rule there was still not a face-towel or a bit of soap in an Indian household; not a chair, not a table, and the simple food, cooked over a hole dug in the ground, was served on leaf-plates set upon the floor. For luxury has hitherto passed India by. Will it do so in the future? Who can say?

The state of the arts in India evidently puzzled Bernier's Western brain, and he sets to work to find out some occult cause for the undoubted skill of the artisan. He asserts that

"no artist can be expected to give his mind to his calling" without the stimulus of personal advantage, "and that the arts would long ago have lost their beauty and delicacy if the monarch and the principal nobles did not keep the artists in their pay to work in their houses."

Then:--

"The protection afforded by powerful patrons, rich merchants and traders, who give the workmen rather more than the usual wages, tends to preserve the arts; rather more wages, for it should not be inferred from the goodness of the manufactures that the workman is held in esteem, or arrives at a state of independence. Nothing but sheer necessity or blows from a cudgel keeps him employed."

And this in a country where, to this day, the pride of hereditary dexterity in hand and eye is handed down from father to son, and to say of a coppersmith or a carpenter or a weaver in brocades: "His grandfather, see you, was a real _ustad_ (teacher)," is to raise that man above his fellows. Once more, poor Bernier! He might have learnt something from the eager-faced, lissome-fingured Indian smith, who, handling a gun made by Manton, laid it down reverently and salaamed to it as if it had been a god, with these simple words: "He who made that was a Great Artificer."

Here we have epitomised the true artistic temperament.

But it needs art to apply the solvent of sympathy; and the dealings of the West with the East were at this time purely commercial; so we meet with absolute, almost pathetic lack of comprehension. Indeed, as we read with painstaking care every record that exists of these Western dealings with the East at this period, we know not whether to laugh or to cry at the spectacle presented to us of mutual misunderstanding. India is a problem even now. What must it have been then, to these worthy Lombard Street merchants who knew nothing of ancient faiths and past civilisations, who looked on the native of India as a barbarian utterly. What a shock it must have been to them, when a native accountant, given some abstruse problem in arithmetic, solved it lightly, easily, by algebra! Small wonder that, finding the Hindu circle divided into 360 equal parts and the ratio of diameter to circumference expressed correctly at 1 to 3.14160 they credited Alexander's Greek phalanxes with being mathematical teachers as well as conquerors. Small wonder that every discovery of scientific knowledge amongst these "barbarians" should have been referred to some contact with the West.

It required long years before due credit could be given to the East; it is doubtful indeed whether sufficient credit is given to it even now. Who, for instance, knows of the accurate trigonometrical tables of India, in which _sines_ are used instead of the Greek _chords?_--or of their framer, of whom Professor Wallace writes:--

"He who first formed the idea of exhibiting in arithmetical tables the ratios of the sides and angles of all possible triangles must have been a man of profound thought and extensive knowledge. However ancient, therefore, any book may be in which we meet with a system of trigonometry, we may be assured that it was not written in the infancy of the science. Hence, we may conclude that geometry must have been known in India long before the writing of the 'Surya Siddhanta.'"

Now this book on Astronomy was written at the latest computation about the year A.D. 400. Centuries before this, therefore, India was aware of certain of those inviolable laws of our Universe, in the apprehension of which lies humanity's best hope of immortality. And there is one curious fact about these vestiges of ancient knowledge which Professor Playfair has noted in a pregnant remark concerning these same trigonometrical tables. "They have the appearance, like many other things in the science of these Eastern nations, of being drawn by one _who was more deeply versed in the subject than may at first be imagined, and who knew much more than he thought it necessary to communicate_."

It is a remark which stimulates the imagination.

But as a matter of fact the Western imagination of those days appears not to have been stimulated at all by anything save the prospect of plunder. And in truth the hoarded wisdom of the East was not nearly so much in evidence as its hoarded wealth. In Akbar's time some effort had been made to give such wisdom fair hearing. There is small doubt, for instance, but that his study of the kingcraft chapters of the Mâhâbhârata had done much towards making Akbar what he was--the best ruler India has ever seen, or is likely to see; but, taking it as a whole, the tide of Mahomedan conquest had simply submerged Hindu learning, and the rising flood of Mahratta power was not one whit less prejudicial to philosophy. But below the troubled surface of wars and rumours of wars the heart of India dreamt on undisturbed. All things, as ever, were illusion. The Wheel-of-Life revolved between the pivots of Birth and Death, so what mattered it whether the painted zoetrope showed the yellow face of a Toorkh from the North, or the white one of a trader from the West? Both sought gold; and even gold was illusion.

It is quaint to think, say, of those pirates of Arracan bursting in upon a crowd of pilgrims round some ancient shrine, and carrying off the whole concern, as it were--priests, worshippers, offerings, even the idol-eyes, leaving the empty sockets staring out helplessly at the deserted village.

But there are many such quaint items to be added to our picture gallery of India in the beginning of the eighteenth century, not the least of these being the spectacle of Job Charnock, the founder of Calcutta, carrying off from amongst the very flames of her husband's funeral pyre the Hindu widow who afterwards became his wife.

For on the confines of the various factories in the contiguous lands which had been won from Moghul rule by purchase, or bribe, or treaty, English laws had already begun to oust native customs. Indeed, quite an elaborate legal procedure, duly decked with Courts of Appeal, had been set up in the three presidencies. So far, it is to be feared, without much benefit to the people, for those who held the power seem ever to have been more occupied by the rules of commerce than those of justice.

Already, also, each presidency had its own regular army. This was composed first of recruits from England, sent out by the Company in their ships; secondly, of adventurers who had deserted from other European armies and had come out to the East to seek their fortunes; thirdly, of half-caste Indo-Europeans, the offspring of mixed marriages. In the beginning of the eighteenth century a few pure natives were enlisted, and from this time the Sepoy army of John Company grew by leaps and bounds.

As yet, however, there was no attempt at the policy of pike and carronade. That had been disastrous in the days of Sir John Child; so the small armies--the garrison of Calcutta in 1707 was _raised_ to three hundred men--were kept simply for defence.

The insecure state of the country, also, which followed on Aurungzebe's death led to greater caution on the part of the Company. Hitherto, its clerks and merchants and agents had themselves carried their English goods to the various markets in the interior of the country; but now orders were issued directing everything to be sold by auction at the port of import, thus minimising the risk of loss.

A simple order which, nevertheless, must have had far-reaching results, since it introduced the middleman between the English merchants and the people of India; an unscrupulous middleman also.

Then the method employed, and necessarily employed, in the collection of the calicoes and other woven cotton-stuffs which at this time formed the staple of Indian trade was one which made fair dealing almost impossible. For there were no large merchants with whom the Company could deal. It had therefore to elaborate an agency of its own, by which it could come in contact with the weaver, who--ever one of the most poverty-stricken of Indian artisans--required raw material and sustenance given him before he could keep his rude loom going.

A fateful affair this! One European functionary issuing orders to a native secretary, he employing a native agent, who in his turn calls together the local brokers, who send out to village and towns by their paid messengers and advance cotton and money to the actual workmen. Here indeed were sufficient loopholes for fraud. Each one of these men had, in addition to his poor pay, to find secret gratification for himself and for those who were supposed to keep an eye upon him. The wretched weaver, of course, coming off worst in the scramble, being made, first, to work as he had never worked before, and secondly, as a set-off to the sustenance given, to take a price often 40 per cent. less than the work would have fetched in open market.

But the rate of pay which at this time the Company offered to its servants tells in unmistakable brevity the whole tale of its administration.

The salary of a president was but £300 a year, that of a factor but £20. Even when Bengal was practically ceded to it, and all power, judicial and executive, vested in its servants, the pay of a man who had almost unlimited power, and who had doomed himself to a life of exile, was but £130. Yet the actual profit of the East India Company at this time was nothing prodigious; it barely touched 8 per cent. on the capital employed. Still, the monopoly must have been valuable, for the efforts made to retain it would fill volumes; and one Act of Parliament followed another, prohibiting foreign adventure to India under penalty of forfeiture of triple the sum embarked, and declaring all British subjects found in India who were not in the Company's service liable to seizure and punishment, and generally crying "hands off" to all and sundry.

The Portuguese power in India had by this time dwined away; none too soon for its reputation. It had suffered reverses at many hands, not least of these being one dealt by itself; for the story of Bahâdur-Shâh, the king of Guzerât, is not one to bring credit with it.

He had entered into negotiations with the Portuguese, had granted them many favours, amongst others the right to build a factory. This, however, they surrounded with a wall which converted the whole into a fortification. Bahâdur-Shâh remonstrated, and was met with fair words from Nuno de Cunha, the Portuguese viceroy, who, however, came to the conference with a suspiciously martial fleet containing over four thousand fighting-men. Now, whether the Portuguese historians are right in attributing meditated treachery to the Mahomedans, or the historians of the latter are right in attributing it to the Portuguese, matters little in face of what actually happened. The viceroy, feigning sickness as an excuse for not paying his respects on land, the king, with but a few unarmed attendants, went to meet him on the admiral's ship. Once there, he became alarmed at whisperings and signs that were passing between the viceroy and his officers, and took a hasty leave. Hardly had he reached his boat, however, when he was attacked. Being a good swimmer he flung himself into the sea, was pursued, struck over the head with an oar, and when he clung to it, was finally despatched with a halbert.

The facts are brutal. Nothing can extenuate them, and though the affray may have originated in mutual distrust and alarm, there can be no doubt that such evidence of premeditated treachery as there is points to the Portuguese as the real criminals.

By the beginning of the eighteenth century, however, they had retired to Further India, there to repeat their brilliant but evanescent career of conquest, and in 1739 they finally ceded their few remaining possessions in the Konkan to the Mahratta power.

But their influence lives still all along the western coast, where to this day a large proportion of the people are professedly Roman Catholic, the descendants of the converts who, it is said, flocked in thousands to be baptized by St Francis Xavier. This, however, is extremely doubtful. Yet even the Portuguese power was but a sea-board influence, the nibblings, as it were, of the Western mouse upon the rich cake of India.

Inside this frayed and fraying fringe of contact with the outside world India was very much what it had been always, what in a way it will be always. So far as princes and principalities went it was a very distracted country; so far as the peasantry went it was a very peaceful one. But neither prince nor peasant seemed to realise that a great change was imminent.

One of the most curious points about this coming change was that though the greed of gold was undoubtedly the chief factor in bringing it about, the first two solid holds which the English got on India were due to the skill, not of British diplomacy or British commerce, but of British medicine. It was in consequence of the services rendered by Ship's surgeon Gabriel Boughton to the Emperor Shâhjahân's beloved daughter Jahanâra, when she was as a child badly burnt, that the Old East India Company gained the right to trade in Bengal free of all duty; this being the only fee asked--surely a public-spirited and disinterested one. And equally so was the only fee demanded by Staff Surgeon William Hamilton in 1715 for curing the decadent Emperor Farokhshir of a tumour in the back which had resisted the efforts of all the court physicians. He asked for the first sizable grant of land on the Indian peninsula which had ever been given to any foreign power: that is to say, for thirty-seven villages contiguous to the factory at Calcutta, which gave the English command of the river for 10 miles south of the port, for some villages near Madras, which consolidated that _pied à terre_; and for the island of Din on the western coast.

These two fees, given by gratitude for services rendered, were practically the fee simple of all India.

Some vague recognition of this fact doubtless prompted the epitaph on William Hamilton's neglected tombstone in Calcutta, which runs thus:--

His memory ought to be dear to his Nation
For the credit he gained the English
in curing Ferrukseer
the present King of Hindustan
of a malignant distemper
By which he made his own name famous
At the Court of that Great Monarch
And without doubt will perpetuate his memory
as well in Great Britain as all other
Nations in Europe.

He died, 4th December 1717. Gabriel Boughton, his predecessor in patriotism, dying God knows when, being buried God knows where.

So the epitaph is a trifle over-confident; for Great Britain has a trick of forgetting her most faithful servants.

THE RISE OF THE MAHRATTA POWER

A.D. 1707 TO A.D. 1738

The story of Siva-ji has already been told. His early decease, while it did not materially check the rising flood of Mahratta power, certainly left the invading West a freer hand along the shores of India from Bombay to Calicut.

For Siva-ji seems to have had a genius for sea, as well as for land warfare. It was his unerring eye which, seizing on an island along the coast overlooked hitherto by both Portuguese and English, had it fortified for use as a _point d'appui_, whence he could control the shipping north and south. Indeed, having in view the fact that he was the only person who managed in any way to harass English fleets, it seems not unlikely that, had he lived longer, British commerce would have been longer, also, in finding firm foothold in India.

But he died, and his son Samba-ji died also, meanly, miserably. That, however, only delayed the inevitable for a short time. The Mahratta star was in the ascendant, that of the Moghuls was sinking fast, and the death of Aurungzebe accelerated both ascent and descent.

To begin with, it ended what may be called the Râjput acquiescence in empire; that is to say, their acceptance of "Akbar's Dream" as an ideal, which by good fortune might become real. It was an ideal absolutely foreign to the whole Râjput spirit, the whole Râjput theory of life. In their State-Politic, one chieftain had as independent a position as any other chieftain, and even amongst the followers of those chieftains none was really before or after the other. Every Râjput owed equal fealty to his race, was equally free to defend his own rights as he chose. Yet side by side with this curious individual independence ran what, for want of a better word, we may call a feudal bond betwixt follower and chieftain, between chieftain and suzerain. Akbar's Dream of Empire had been antagonistic to this, yet they had accepted that Dream at his hands, and at his death the mere fact of his heir Jahângir being half a Râjput by birth, had helped them to forget what they had given up to the dead man's genius. Shâhjahân was still more Râjput. In his veins there flowed but one-fourth of the hated Mahomedan blood, so they bore with him. But with Aurungzebe it was different. Born of a Mahomedan mother, the old race intolerance showed in him early, and from the moment he set his foot on the throne, alienation of loyalty began actively, passively, so that by the time the bigot's reign of fifty years was over, every Râjput in India was ripe for revolt; a fact which naturally was in favour of the Mahrattas, since it weakened the power of the Moghuls. It was still more favourable to the advancement of the West, since with India engaged in internecine strife, attention was withdrawn from many a seemingly slight advance which yet was the first step to final conquest. Naturally, after Aurungzebe's anxious efforts to settle the succession by means of a last will and testament, his sons immediately came to blows over the business; in which quarrel the best claimant appears to have gone to the wall, for Azim, the second son, was defeated and killed near Agra by his elder brother, Shâh-Alam, and Kambaksh, the youngest, shortly afterwards drew death down on himself by a desperate defiance near Hyderabâd. Thus Shâh-Alam was left to face the situation for five years under the title of Bahâdur-Shâh. It is worthy of note that he, the first puppet-emperor of Delhi, had thus the same name as the last, the old man Bahâdur-Shâh, who, after dallying with disgrace and deceit in 1857 went to end his miserable life in the Andaman Islands.

Bahâdur-Shâh the First found his hands full. Having pursued Kambaksh to the very confines of the Dekkan, it was necessary ere returning northward to settle the Râjput rebellion (which was becoming daily less restrained), and to temporise in some way with the Mahrattas. And here a piece of diplomacy on the part of the dead brother, Azim, served Bahâdur's turn well. The former, when advancing to dispute the crown, had sought to strengthen his position and protect his rear by giving back to the Mahrattas the rightful heir to Siva-ji's throne in the person of his grandson Sâho, who had been kept in captivity by the Moghuls ever since his father Samba-ji had paid the penalty for blasphemy amongst the Mahomedans, and so been made a martyr by the Mahrattas. It was a wily move, for during the young claimant's long incarceration, another pretender to Siva-ji's crown had arisen. Azim-Shâh, therefore, had deliberately started a successional dispute in the hopes of being thereby freed for a time of troublesome neighbours.

The ruse succeeded, and Bahâdur-Shâh, by ratifying his brother's promise of favourable peace should the young pretender succeed in establishing his claim, managed to keep the Mahrattas quiet for some years.

He was less fortunate with the Râjput confederacy, though he was prepared to give up all things but the mere name of Empire. In the case of Oudipur (Chitore) he went so far as to restore all annexations, to release it from the obligation of furnishing a contingent, to abolish the infidel capitation tax, or _jizyia_, and to re-establish religious toleration as it had existed in the time of Akbar. He could not well have done more; but for once--almost for the only time in Indian history--a faint political feeling is here to be traced. For even the removal of the hated _jizyia_ was not enough for the Râjput; he wanted, and he meant to have, independence. This is--or seems to be--the only occasion in all the long centuries of Indian history which gives us a hint of any recognition on the part of the people of political rights, and as such it is peculiarly interesting. Unfortunately, it is so mixed up with the religious motive that it is impossible to say if it really gives ground for supposing that we have here a faint realisation of the rights of the individual.

While Bahâdur-Shâh was engaged in pacifying the Râjputs by the relinquishment of everything, he was suddenly called to the Punjâb by an insurrection amongst the Sikhs.

Nânuk, their original founder, had lived in Akbar's time; a time peculiarly productive of religious enthusiasms all over the world. And Nânuk was a religious enthusiast pure and simple. Of the soldier caste, the son of a grain merchant, he was _devote_ from childhood. Much travel and mature manhood turned him into an almost inspired preacher of the Theistic doctrines of Kâbir, who in his turn was a disciple of the great Ramanuja. Concerning this same Kâbir there is a curious legend, the recital of which may serve to impress the memory with the most salient feature of his teaching--his tolerance.

The tale runs that at his death the Mahomedans claimed the right to bury the saint, the Hindus to burn him; in consequence of which there was a free fight over the corpse, in the midst of which the still, white-shrouded form lay, mutely appealing for peace. And lo! when blood had been uselessly spilt, and a compromise effected, it was found that beneath the white sheet was no dead man, only where his holy head had lain grew a sweet basil plant, sacred to the God Vishnu, only where his holy feet had touched, a perfumed _rehan_ bush, green as the green of the Prophet's turban!

Nânuk, then, was a preacher, a quietest, and being possessed of this spirit of universal charity, was allowed, naturally, to live in peace during the reign of that past--master in tolerance, Akbar. At his death, however, the rapid increase of the sect attracted the unfavourable notice of Jahângir, and Nânuk was cruelly put to death. The usual result followed. Armed with a sainted martyr, religion became fanaticism. Har-Govind, the murdered man's son, brought revenge and hatred to his holding of the supreme pontiff-ship, and from this time the Sikhs, expelled forcibly from their lands, presented from the mountains north of Lahôre an unbroken front of rebellion to the Government.

It was not, however, till 1675 that, under Govind, the tenth Guru (or spiritual head of the sect) from Nânuk its founder, the Sikhs formed themselves into an aggressive military commonwealth.

Guru Govind was a wise man. Numbers were his first need, so he set to work to establish a creed wide enough to contain all converts, attractive enough to compel them to come in.

Caste was abolished; Mahomedan or Hindu, Brahman or Pariah, were alike when once the oath of fealty was taken, when once the new-made Sikh had vowed to be a religious soldier, to carry cold steel about with him from birth to death, to wear blue clothes always, and never to clip a hair which God had sent to grow upon him. In order still further to emphasise the separation of the Sikh from his fellows, new methods of salutation, new ceremonials for all the principal events of life, were instituted.

Nothing more interesting in the annals of heredity exists than the startling rapidity of the change thus brought about in the Sikhs. They are now--that is, after two hundred years--(as they were, indeed, after a scant one hundred) as distinct a race as any in India, with as well marked a national character as any of the original peoples of India.

So far, therefore, Guru Govind was successful; but his personal mission proved disastrous. Despite his diplomacy, he failed in numbers; his foes were too strong for him, and in the end the pontiff saw all his fortresses taken, his mother and his children murdered, his followers tortured, dispersed, or killed.

This was in Aurungzebe's time, that most bigoted and bloodthirsty of pious kings. The closing years of his reign, however, found him with all his energies centred on the Dekkan, and almost immediately after his death, the Sikhs recovered from their stupor, and having found a new, and this time an unscrupulously cruel leader, broke out into almost incredible excesses of revenge. They ravaged Sirhind, they brutally butchered whole towns, and after penetrating southward as far as Saharunpur, retreated to the Cis and Trans-Sutlej states, which are to this day the stronghold of the Sikh faith.

It was against these stalwart rebels--for one of the quickly acquired national characteristics of the Sikhs is unusual physical height and breadth--that Bahâdur-Shâh had to march in person. He managed with infinite trouble to besiege the chief offenders in a hill-fort, whence, after enduring the utmost extremities of famine, they made a wild sally, headed, apparently, by their leader Banda, who, after making himself conspicuous by desperate resistance, was captured and brought to the Mahomedan camp in triumph. Once there, however, the prisoner threw aside his borrowed _rôle_, openly declared himself nothing but a poor Hindu convert who had dared all to save his Guru, and taunted his captors with having fallen into the trap and allowed the real Banda to escape them!

It is pleasantly noteworthy to find that Bahâdur-Shâh, struck by the man's self-devotion, spared his life.

Before, however, the further endeavours to secure the real leader and crush the Sikhs were successful, the emperor himself fell sick and died, and the usual turmoil of murder and intrigue followed, which ended in the temporary enthronement, at the instigation of Zulfikar Khan (who had been chief instrument in the late king's succession), of the eldest son, Jahândar-Shâh. An inveterate intriguer was this same Zulfikar. He it was who had suggested hampering the hands of the Mahrattas by presenting them with a new claimant for their crown; and now he chose his nominee--despatching the remainder of the royal family _instanter_--because Jahândar, weak, vicious, enslaved by a public dancer, offered himself an easy prey to Zulfikar's desire to be the real ruler.

But Farokhshir, son of one of the murdered princes, who had escaped massacre by being in Bengal, had just sufficient spunk in him to oppose the maker of puppet-kings. Fortune favoured him miraculously, quite irrationally, and--surely to his own surprise--he found himself marching on Delhi, victorious, triumphant. But the whole affair had degenerated--as purely Indian history after the death of Aurungzebe so often does degenerate--into transpontine melodrama and comic opera, and he was met at the gates by an obsequious Zulfikar and his still more obsequious papa, both ready, willing, and eager to deliver up their prisoner, the late Emperor Jahândar, and take the oath of allegiance to the new one, Farokhshir.

But this passed. It was, to use a vulgarism, "too thick" even for a debased Moghul. So the double-dyed traitor was calmly strangled in the imperial tent, Jahândar was quietly put out of the way, and Farokhshir reigned in his stead.

One is irresistibly reminded, as one reads the records of the few following reigns, of the terrible annals of the Slave and Khilji Kings. There is only this to choose between them, that the latter concerned themselves with kings who, however degenerate, were at least real, whereas these occupants of Akbar's throne, Farokhshir, the two infant princes who were in turn raised to power by political factions, and Mahomed-Shâh, were all purely puppets.

The first-named, who owed his kingdom entirely to the ability for intrigue of two Syyeds of Ba'rr'ha, spent his time largely in trying to emancipate himself from their claims on his gratitude. His was a feeble, futile nature, a feeble, futile reign. During it the Mahrattas, becoming tired of their civil war of succession, began to renew their depredations along the Moghul frontiers. But in all ways Farokhshir was a timid creature; so nothing, great was done to hold the marauders in check. He, however, through the aid of a general with an unpronounceable name, was equal to a final tussle and final crushing of the Sikh zealots, seven hundred and forty-nine of whom, defeated and taken prisoners to Delhi, were duly paraded through the streets, exposed to various indignities, and finally beheaded in batches of one hundred and eleven on seven successive days of the week.

Their leader, Banda, was, however, reserved for more refined barbarity. Nothing in the whole annals of history can exceed in devilish malignant cruelty the revolting details of the treatment meted out to this man, who had himself, it is true, led the way in lack of humanity! They are sickening to read, and shall not be repeated here.

Farokhshir only reigned six years. By that time even his masters, the Syyeds, had tired of him, and despite his abject submission, he was finally dragged from the women's apartments, a faint, frightened shadow of a king, and privately made away with.

But these same Syyeds--king-makers as they justly called themselves--were unfortunate in their choice of a successor. They set up one young prince of the blood, who promptly died of consumption in less than three months. They followed him with another, who as promptly followed his example in less time.

The question naturally presents itself--was it tuberculosis or some other toxin? Who can say?

They then, in despair, chose a healthy young man. But the public confidence in them as king-makers was waning, and almost before the new emperor--who was enthroned in the title of Mahomed-Shâh--was firmly settled in his seat, Hussan-Ali--the most powerful of the two Syyeds--was assassinated in his palanquin, and his brother, after vainly trying to hold his own single-handed, was defeated and made prisoner near Delhi, his life being spared out of respect for his sacred lineage--Syyeds being descended directly from the great Prophet.

And all this time, while emperors intrigued against ministers, and ministers intrigued against emperors, while here and there some austere old Mahomedan like Asaf-Jâh (whilom Grand Vizier, and afterwards Governor in the Dekkan), who remembered the bigoted decorum of Aurungzebe's court, lifted up voice of warning and held up holy hands of horror--all this time the Western nibblings continued on the sea-coast, and in the interior the Mahratta power was growing day by day.

For some time the Moghuls kept themselves fairly secure of it by pitting Samba, the one claimant to the crown, against Sâho, the other claimant. But Sâho found a friend in the person of one Bâla-ji, a Brahmin, who began life as a mere village accountant. Ere long, however, he was his master's right hand, and it was by his wits that Sâho found himself no longer a mere vassal of the empire, but an independent ruler, entitled to claim endless minor dues over a large extent of land. A quick wit was this of Bâla-ji's, which recognised the infinite opportunities for encroachments and interference given by widespread, ill-defined rights.

In the confusion worse confounded which ensued, the Mahratta scored invariably against the Moghul, and when Bâla-ji died, his son, still more capable, still more astute, took up the prime minister or Peishwa-ship, and with it his father's life-work.

Now, there is no doubt that this son, by name Bâji-Rao, is, after Siva-ji, by far the ablest Mahratta of history.

He was a warrior, born and bred in camps, a statesman educated ably by his father, a man frank and free, hardy beyond most, content to live on a handful of unhusked grain, vital to the fingertips.

He found himself confronted by a Peace-party, who would fain have paused to consolidate what had already been won, to suppress civil discord, and generally to give a firm administrative grip on the south of India before attempting further conquests on the north.

But Bâji-Rao was clear-sighted; he saw the difficulties of this policy. To attempt the consolidation of what was still absolutely fluid, to bid the bands of predatory horsemen which constituted the Mahratta army suddenly lay down their lances or turn them into ox goads, would be fatal.

The only chance of peace was to form a regular army out of these robber hordes, give that army work to do, and so establish a stern military control as the first and most necessary step towards a fixed Government.

The Moghul empire lay ready to hand, rotten at the core, simply waiting to be overthrown.

He therefore urged his master to "strike the withered trunk, when the branches will fall of themselves," and roused the lazy, somewhat luxurious Sâho to such enthusiasm that he swore he would plant his victorious standard on Holy Himalaya itself.

The career of Sâho-plus-Bâji-Rao was singularly successful. Ere long, after harassing the Dekkan, he forced his rival, Samba, to yield him almost the whole Mahratta country except a portion about Kolapur. Having done this, he turned himself to engage the Moghul force of thirty-five thousand men which had marched on him with the avowed object of delivering Sâho from the terrible tyranny of Bâji. This was defeated, and Sâho-cum-Bâji proceeded to apportion various parts of Southern India amongst the great Mahratta families. The Gaekwars of Baroda date from this time. The Holkar of those days was but a shepherd-soldier, and the Scindias, though of good birth, a mere body-servant of the Peishwas.

Mâlwa was the next emprise, and though its Afghân governor effected his own personal escape by means of a rescue party from Rohilkand summoned by his wife, who sent her veil as a challenge to her brethren's honour, the whole rich province fell into Mahratta hands. The Râjah of Bundulkhund, alarmed, acceded to Bâji-Rao's demands, and Jâi-Singh of Ambêr, hastily summoned by the Moghuls to defend their cause, after a futile and half-hearted resistance, also yielded.

He was more of a scientist than a soldier was Jâi-Singh, and would have been remarkable in any age for his astronomical work. His 'List of the Stars' is still of importance.

Hitherto, all these aggressions had been made by the Mahrattas under cover of claims; those ill-defined, widespread rights of share and taxation which Bâla-ji had started. Now, seeing his opponent's weakness, Sâho-cum-Bâji's demands rose, until even Moghul supineness could not submit to his terms.

Nothing daunted, the former advanced on Delhi itself, but while his light cavalry under Holkar were ravaging the country about Agra, they were attacked and driven back by the Governor of Oudh, a man evidently of some spirit, for he had actually left his own province to defend the adjoining one.

The skirmish was magnified into overwhelming victory by the Moghuls, and this so irritated Bâji-cum-Sâho, that he conceived and put into practice what was more an impish piece of mischief than a serious assault.

Leaving the imperial army which had come out solemnly, solidly, to repel him on the right, he led his swarms of active freebooters by a _detour_ to its rear, and then contemptuously disdaining an attack on the pompous martial array, made one almost unbroken march to the very gates of Delhi.

Here was consternation indeed! The Mahrattas at the very steps of the throne, while the court army was seeking them in the wilderness!

His object, however, was mere intimidation; as he phrased it himself: "Just to show the emperor that he could come if he liked."

So, after repelling with heavy loss one sally caused by the Moghul misapprehension of a retrograde movement he made beyond the suburbs (which was due to his desire to prevent damage by his freebooting followers), he retreated as he came, just as the befogged, bewildered Moghul army, duly bedrummed, beflagged, and bedisciplined, was on the eve of arriving at Delhi.

A sheer piece of devilry, no doubt. He had meant to have crossed the Jumna and looted the rich Gangetic plains, but the rainy season was due, and there was more comfortable work to be done in the Dekkan.

Asaf-Jâh, still active though old, followed him so soon as the weather permitted, and he could manage to scrape together sufficient soldiery; but so low had the power of the Moghul fallen by this time, that he had to start with a bare thirty-five thousand men. Then ensued a campaign of some months on the old well-known lines.

The regulars marching with difficulty, the irregulars harassing the line of march. The Moghuls entrenching themselves scientifically, the Mahrattas cutting off supplies, laying waste the country for miles, looting every baggage-train that tried to get in, and finally cutting off all communication with the base. There was nothing for it finally but retreat; a slow retreat of 4 or 5 miles a day, the enemy's light cavalry hanging on the rear, harassing the disheartened army in every possible way. There could be but one end to it--almost unconditioned surrender.

Bâji-cum-Sâho demanded the cession of all Mâlwa, the country between the rivers Nerbudda and the Chumbal, and an indemnity of fifty lacs of rupees, or five millions.

Weighted down with these fateful terms, for which he promised to gain the emperor's sanction, poor Asaf-Jâh continued his way Delhi-wards, Bâji-cum-Sâho marching a few days behind him to take present possession of his conquests. Whether Asaf-Jâh's efforts would have resulted in confirmation of these terms or not cannot be said; for this was in the year of grace 1738, and in the November of that year Nâdir the Persian invaded India.

THE INVASION OF NÂDIR

A.D. 1738 TO A.D. 1742

The old cry once more!

Over the wheat-fields of the Punjâb, just as the seed was bursting into green, that cry--

"The Toorkh! The Toorkh!"

Surely no land on the globe has suffered so much from invasion as Hindustan? The mythical Snake-people first, coming from God knows where.... Then the Aryans, with their flocks and herds, from the Roof of the World.... Next the well-greaved Greeks, leaving their indelible mark on Upper India.... So through Parthian, and Scythian, and Bactrian, to the wild, resistless influx of Mongolian immigrations. Then finally Mahmûd and Mahomed, Tamerlane and Babar ... last of all, Nâdir the Persian.

His was an unprovoked, almost an unpremeditated invasion. It burst upon India like a monsoon storm, swift, lurid, almost terrible in the rapidity with which action follows menace. And like that same storm it came, it passed, and the blue, unclouded sky seemed far away from the desolation and havoc that had been wrought.

In many ways this, the last, was the worst of all the sacks which India had suffered. To begin with, it came so late in time. Towards the middle of the eighteenth century one does not expect a robbing raid on so vast a scale. It seems almost incredible that an army of eighty thousand men should march through a country bent on plunder, and plunder only.

Then its sole object--gold--was such a mean one. No political reason lay at the back of the raid. Nâdir had no ambitions. He did not wish to add to his kingship; it was all wilful, wicked, merciless greed.

Yet Nâdir-Shâh himself was not absolutely a mean man. He was a native of Khorasân, that is to say, an Afghân, born of no particular family, but born a warrior. At the age of seventeen he was taken prisoner by the Usbeks, but after four years of captivity made his escape.

Then he took service with the King of Khorasân, but, believing himself ill-rewarded for a success against the Tartars, gave up his command, and became, frankly, a freebooter.

A few years later, on the shores of the Caspian Sea, he threw in his fortunes with those of a Persian princeling _en retraite_, and in his name fought a variety of battles, in which he was invariably victorious. They ended in the nominal restoration of Tâhmâsp to the throne of his fathers. But behind Tâhmâsp sate Nâdir, who had become the idol of the Persian people; and small wonder, since he had raised the nation from abject slavery to such military glory as Persia has seldom possessed.

It was necessary, however, to continue soldierly exploits; so Nâdir set to work to settle a dispute with the Turks who had taken Tabrîz. He had recovered it, when trouble in Khorasân called him back, and kept him employed for so long, that when he returned to the capital, Isphahân, it was to find that his puppet Tâhmâsp had, during his absence, become a person of much importance, and was exercising all the royal prerogatives.

This did not suit Nâdir, so, on the excuse of lack of statesmanship in concluding a treaty with the Turks, he deliberately deposed Tâhmâsp, and set his infant son in his stead.

This was practically the beginning of Nâdir's reign, but he refrained from assuming the title of King until many victories over the Turks and Russians had strengthened his hold on the Persians.

Then, covered with glory, he assembled all the dignitaries, civil and military, to the number of about one hundred thousand in a sort of mutual admiration conference, when, no doubt by previous arrangement, they offered him the crown, which, after some display of surprise and reluctance, he was pleased to accept.

Now this was all very deep-laid, very diplomatic; but Nâdir's cleverness was at times too clever. In some of his campaigns he had deliberately changed his religion--or rather his denomination--becoming Sunni instead of Shiah, in order to gain over a warlike tribe which was obdurately troublesome; now, hoping to stamp out any sentimental attachment to the dynasty which he had just deposed, and whose claim to kingship rested entirely on its championship of the Shiah tenets, he changed the national denomination, and declared Persia henceforward a Sunni country. It was a mistake; for though the Sunni section was pleased, the Shiahs felt themselves alienated from their new king.

In another way Nâdir showed more sense. It was his greatness as a general which had won him sovereignty, and he recognised that it must be kept by the same means; so he gathered together an army of eighty thousand men and set off to conquer Kandahâr.

_L'appetit vient en mangeant_. India lay just over the barrier of the Koh-i-Suleiman hills, and the tribes who had hitherto been subsidised by the Moghul Government to keep the peaks and passes, were now sulky over their failure for some years past to squeeze anything out of the bankrupt Government of Delhi.

But even Nâdir required some excuse for bald, brutal invasion. He therefore peremptorily demanded the expulsion of some Afghâns who had fled from punishment to shelter in Indian territory. At all times it would have been difficult to lay hands on a band of wandering Pâthâns amongst the frontier hills, but Delhi was at this time distracted by fear of the Mahrattas, and still all uncertain whether to acknowledge Nâdir-Shâh's claim to kingship.

The hesitation suited the latter; he was over the border, had defeated a feeble resistance at Lahôre, and was within 100 miles of Delhi before he found himself faced by a real army.

There must surely be some malignant attraction about the wide plain of Pâniput! Surely the Angel-of-Death must spread his wings over it at all times, since bitter battle has been fought on it again and again, and its sun-saturated sands have been sodden again and again with the blood of many men.

How many times has the fate of India been decided amongst its semi-barren stretches, where the low _dhâk_ bushes glow like sunset clouds on the horizon? First by the mythical, legendary Pândus and Kurus, backed by the gods, protected by showers of celestial arrows. Next, when Shahâb-ud-din-Mahomed Ghori broke down the Râjput resistance, and Prithvi-râj, the flower of Râjput chivalry, was killed flying for his life amongst the sugarcane brakes. Timur passed it by, but his great descendant Babar strewed the plain with dead in his victorious march to Delhi. Here Hemu met with crushing defeat at Akbar's hands, and now Nâdir was to carry on the tradition of death, until that last great fight in 1761, which ended the Mahratta power, and so paved the way for British supremacy.

How many men's dust is mingled with the soil of Pâniput? All we know is that the life-blood of over a million is said to have been spilt upon it.

Nâdir's battle, however, appears to have been a comparatively bloodless rout of an absolutely incapable enemy. Mahomed-Shâh, the so-called emperor of all the Indies, at any rate gave up the struggle incontinently, sent in his submission, and the two kings journeyed peacefully together to Delhi, which they reached in March 1739. Did the populace come out to greet the sovereigns riding in, brother-like, hand in hand, to take up their residence in the palace built by Shâhjahân? It is a quaint picture this, of cringing submission and reckless ascendency.

To Nâdir's credit be it said that, whatever ultimate object of plunder he may have had, he wished to avoid bloodshed. For this purpose he stationed isolated pickets of chosen troops about the city and suburbs to keep order and protect the people. Unavailingly, for a strange thing happened. Whether owing to some deep-laid, well-known plan for poisoning the intruder which failed unexpectedly, or from some other cause, the report was spread abroad within forty-eight hours that Nâdir-the-Conqueror, Nâdir-the-mainspring-of-Conquest, was dead. The rumours blazed like wildfire through the bazaars. In quick impulse the mob fell on the pickets, and seven hundred Persians were weltering in their blood when Nâdir himself rode through the midnight streets, intent, they say, on peace. But the provocation proved too much for his cold, cruel Persian temper.

Struck by stones and mud hurled at him from the houses, the officer next him killed by a bullet aimed at himself, he gave way to Berserk rage. It was just dawn when the massacre he ordered began; it was nigh sunset when it ended, and night fell over one hundred and fifty thousand corpses. Nor did his revenge stop here. The treasure, which he would no doubt have extorted in any case, was now seized on by force, torture and murder being used to make the miserable inhabitants yield up every penny. Every kind of cruelty was employed in this extortion; numbers died from ill-usage, and many others destroyed themselves from fear of a disgraceful death. As an eye-witness writes: "Sleep and rest forsook the city. In every chamber and house was heard the cry of affliction."

The Afghân has always possessed a perfect genius for pillage, and after a short two months Nâdir-Shâh left Delhi, carrying away with him an almost incredible quantity of plunder, which it is very generally estimated at being worth £30,000,000; an enormous sum, but it must be remembered that the famous peacock throne in itself was counted by Tavernier as equal to £6,000,000 sterling.

But Nâdir left Delhi something which, possibly, it might have done better without; for ere leaving, he solemnly reinstated the puppet-king, and swore fearful oaths as to the revenge he would take on the nobles when he returned in a year or two should they fail in allegiance. But he never did return; he really never meant to return. He was a robber _pur et simple_, and he had got all that he had any hopes of getting.

So he disappeared northwards again, to die a violent death ere long. For despite his success, something of remorse had come to him, uninvited, with the spoils of ravaged Delhi. He became cruel, capricious, tyrannical; finally, he grew half-mad, until one night the nobles, whose arrest he had decreed, the captain of his own body-guard, the very chief of his own clan, entered his tent at midnight. Then from the darkness came the challenge in the deep voice which had so often led them to victory.

"Who goes there?"

For an instant they drew back, uncertain; but only for an instant. They went for him with their sabres as they might have gone at a mad dog, and Nâdir, their hero, their pride, their tyrant, their horror, ended his life.

How had he affected India?