India Through the Ages Part 15

"The Empire of Delhi was founded by a slave."

So runs the well-known jibe. And it is true; for although India, despite the combined resistance of the Rajputs, was overcome during the reign of Mahomed Shahab-ud-din Ghori, the real glory of conquest belongs by rights to Eibuk, the slave; Eibuk of the "broken little finger," who took the name of Kutb-ud-din, or Pole-star of the Faith.

To those who know India the name conjures up one of the most marvellous sights in the world. A dark December morning in the Punjab, when the Christmas rain-clouds gather black on the horizon, and on them, above the rolling, brick-strewn ridges of Old Delhi, rises a thin shaft of light--the Kutb Minar, the finest pillar in the world.

It was built by the Turki slave Eibuk, and one can forgive him much in that he left the world such a thing of beauty to be a joy for ever.

And yet as one stands beneath it, marking here and there the half-obliterated traces of previous cutting on the stones of the wonderful tapering pillar, all corbeilled with encircling balconies, and banded in dexterous art with interlaced lettering; as one looks round on the dismantled ruins of still more ancient temples, the mind suddenly ceases to give the glory to Kutb-ud-din, and turns almost with amaze to the thought of the Hindu architects who built it to order out of their dishonoured shrines.

Think of it! Art, true Art rising superior to Self! Surely as they chiselled at those interlaced attributes of the One Unknowable, Unthinkable, they must have been conscious that though all things in this life were--as their religion told them--but Illusion, behind that Illusion lay Reality.

And so their work comforted them.

How much of India is built into this watch tower of her G.o.ds? The best of her, anyhow, and English civilisation can scarcely add an additional story to this record of her past.

To Kutb-ud-din Eibuk, however, belongs the glory of inception; therefore also some forgiveness, which, in truth, he sorely needs. For from the beginning his att.i.tude towards strict morality is, to say the least of it, doubtful. He was a beautiful Turki slave, the avowed pet and plaything of his master Shahab-ud-din, who gave him "his particular notice, and daily advanced him in confidence and favours."

He appears to have been diplomatic, for on one occasion, being questioned by the king as to why he had divided his share of a general distribution of presents amongst the other retainers, he kissed the ground of Majesty's feet, and replied, that being amply supplied already by that Majesty's favours, he desired no superfluities.

This brought him the Master of the Horse-s.h.i.+p, from which he went on to honour after honour, until in the year A.D. 1193 he was left as viceroy in India. Thenceforward he was practically king. It was he who took Delhi after a conflict in which the river Jumna ran red with blood. It was he who commanded the forces at Etawah, and it was his hand which shot the arrow that, piercing the eye of the Benares Rajah, cost him his life and the loss of everything he possessed.

A quaint picture that, by the way, of the search for Jai-Chund's body amidst the huge heaps of the slain, and its final recognition after weary days by "the artificial teeth fixed by golden wires." Had dentistry got as far in the West, I wonder?

Then it was Kutb-ud-din who presented to his master the three hundred elephants taken at Benares; amongst them the famous white one which refused to kneel like the others before the _M'lechcha_, king though he might be. The beast's independence serving him better than a man's would have done, since it brought no punishment, but the honour of being pad elephant to the viceroy thenceforth.

And it was he who marched his forces. .h.i.ther and thither, "engaged the enemy, put them to flight, and having ravaged the country at leisure, obtained much booty."

The eye wearies over the repet.i.tions of this formula, as the hand turns the pages of Ferishta's history, while the heart grows sick at the thought of what such a war of conversion or extermination meant in those days.

The victorious procession of the Mahomedan troopers was only broken once in Guzerat. Here Kutb-ud-din, despite six wounds, fought stubbornly and with his wonted courage, until forced by his attendants from the field, and carried in a litter to the fort at Ajmir, where he managed to hold out until reinforcements came to his aid from the King of Ghuzni.

Defeat seems ever to have been the mother of victory with these pa.s.sionate, revengeful Afghans, for on the very next occasion on which Kutb-ud-din "engaged the enemy," he is said to have killed fifty thousand of them, and to have gathered into his treasury vast spoils.

Nothing seemed to stop him. Even the swift a.s.sa.s.sination by his own prime minister of a cowardly rajah who was coming to terms with the _M'lechcha_ instead of resisting the Unclean to the death, did not avail to preserve almost impregnable Kalunjur; for a spring incontinently dried up in the fort, and there once more was one last sally, and then death for the garrison.

It was in A.D. 1205, after Kutb-din had had twelve years of battles, murders, and sudden deaths, twelve years of absolute if not nominal kings.h.i.+p, that Mahomed Shahab-ud-din's successor, feeling himself not strong enough to a.s.sume the reins of government in India, made a bid for peace for himself in Ghuzni by sending Eibuk the slave, the drums, the standards, the insignia of royalty, and the t.i.tle of King of India.

Eibuk received them all with "becoming respect," and was duly crowned.

This fact did not prevent his being crowned again in Ghuzni the following year!

He then, having attained to the height of his ambition, seeing no more worlds to conquer, having for the time being crushed even Rajput resistance, gave himself up "unaccountably to wine and pleasure."

This seems to have irritated the good citizens of Ghuzni. They invited another claimant to the throne to try his luck. He came, found Eibuk unprepared, possibly drunk. Anyhow, there was no time to attempt a defence. He fled to Lah.o.r.e, thus finally severing the Kings.h.i.+p of Ghuzni from that of India.

There, we are told, he became "sensible of his folly," repented, and thereinafter "continued to exercise justice, temperance, morality."

He was killed while playing _chaugan_ (the modern polo) in A.D. 1210.

At that time he was supposed to be the richest man in the world; but, unlike Mahmud, he was generous. "As liberal as Eibuk" is still a phrase in the mouth of India.

His son Aram (Leisure) appears to have deserved his name. He never gripped the kingdom, and lost it fatuously after less than a year.

Apparently he was not deemed worth the killing, and Altamish, a favourite slave of the slave Eibuk, took his place by virtue of being son-in-law to the dead king.

Altamish was also of Turki extraction. As a youth, the fame of his beauty and talents was noised abroad, and Shahab-ud-din was in the bidding for him, but hung back at the price; whereupon Eibuk the Lavish put down the fifty thousand pieces of silver, and carried off the prize.

Years after, he was married to the Princess-Royal, and so, adding Shums-ud-din (Sword of the Faith) to his name, ascended the throne, and reigned for no less than twenty-six years.

So Delhi, indeed, was founded by slaves!

Atlamish appears to have been of the regulation type. He was, so to speak, Kutb-ud-din and water. The largest number of Hindus he is recorded to have killed at one time is three hundred; a sad falling-off in _Ghazi_-dom.[3] On the other hand, he was the barbarian who, taking Ujjain, destroyed the magnificent temple of Maha-Kali which it had taken three hundred years to build. The idols thereof, and also a "statue of Vikramaditya, who had been formerly prince of this country, and so renowned that the Hindus have taken an era from his death," were conveyed solemnly to Delhi, and there broken at the door of the great mosque of which the magnificent ruins--spoils of many a Jain and Hindu temple--still lie about the foot of the Kutb Minar, a monument to the slave Eibuk who commenced it, the slave Altamish who finished it.

[Footnote 3: A Ghazi is the t.i.tle of honour given to one who has killed the infidel.]

This solemn smas.h.i.+ng was doubtless a fine ceremony, yet as we of the present day contemplate it, regret goes forth, especially for the statue of Vikramadjit. How many a riddle might it not have solved concerning the Unknown King!

We are told that Altamish was an "enterprising, able, and good prince"; he has, however, another, and in the history of the world, quite unique claim to regard. The father of seven children, six of them in turn mounted the throne with more or less success.

Considerably less as regards the first occupant, Ruku-ud-din (Prop of the Faith), who spent his six months and twenty-eight days tenancy in lavis.h.i.+ng his inherited treasures on dancing girls, pimps and prost.i.tutes.

This might have been borne for longer, but the hideous cruelties of his mother, a Turki slave to whom he entrusted the reins of government, were such as to rouse even the dull humanity of a thirteenth-century Mahomedan. She had murdered horribly every one of the dead king's women, and had begun on his son's, when the patience of the various viceroys gave way. They entered into a conspiracy, deposed the king, and threw his mother into prison--a lenient punishment for such a monster of cruelty.

And then? Then they did a thing unheard of in Indian history--they raised a woman to the throne.

But Sultana Razia Begum was no ordinary mortal! Indeed, there is something so quaint about the recapitulation of her virtues, as given in the pages of Ferishta, that, perforce, one cannot but quote it.

"Razia Begum (my Lady Content) was possessed of every good quality which usually adorns the ablest princes; and those who scrutinise her actions most severely, will find in her no fault but that she was a woman."

Alas! Poor Lady Content! Of what avail that you changed (as it is solemnly set down) your apparel; that you abandoned the petticoat in favour of the trews; that your father, when he appointed you regent during one of his long absences, defended his action by saying that though a woman, you had a man's head and heart, and were worth more than twenty such sons as he had? All this was of no avail against womanhood. Let this be thy comfort, poor shade of a dead queen, that the argument still holds good against thy sisters in this year of grace 1907!

Setting this aside, the career of Queen-Content matches in tragedy that of Mary Queen of Scots. A clever girl, evidently, her father made her his companion, and while her brothers were dicing and wenching, drinking and tw.a.n.ging the _sutara_, she was frowning with him over endless pacifications, endless violences, becoming, apparently, an adept at both. For it would have needed great qualifications to ensure the almost unanimous vote of the n.o.bles which placed a woman on the throne.

At first even these contemptuous Mahomedans were satisfied. Then came discontent. Did Razia Begum really favour the Abyssinian slave whom she allowed--_horribile dictum!_--to "lift her on her horse by raising her up under the arms"? Or had she really forgotten the petticoat in the trews? Who can say? All we know is that Malik-Altunia, the Turki governor of Bhattinda--curious how that name crops up in all the really exciting tales of Indian history!--revolted on the plea of the queen's partiality to the Abyssinian; that she marched against the rebel, leading her troops; that a tumultuous conflict occurred in the old place of battles, in which the Abyssinian favourite was killed, the queen taken prisoner, and sent to Altunia's care in the fort.

So far good. But here affairs take a turn which is fairly breathless, and which gives pause for doubting Altunia's disinterested care for morality and _les convenances_.

He promptly married the empress, and with scarce a comma, we find him raising an army to espouse her cause, and fighting her battles, the Bothwell of his time. He failed, and he and his wife were put to death together on the 14th of November A.D. 1239.

A tragic tale indeed! Best finished by another excerpt from the historian.

"The reign of Sultana Razia Begum lasted three years, six months, and six days. Those who reflect on the fate of this unfortunate princess will readily discover from whence arose the foul blast that blighted all her prospects.--What connection exists between the high office of Amir-ul Omra and an Abyssinian slave? Or how are we to reconcile the inconsistency of the queen of so vast a territory fixing her affections on so unworthy an object?"