Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan, Volume 1.djvu/18

10 THIS Hussain founded the dynasty of the GAURIDES, which furnished five princes who possessed in and out of India nearly the same dominions as their predecessors the Gaznavides, and like them made Gazna their capital.

SCHEABBEDIN, the 4th of the Gauride emperors, during the life of his brother and predecessor GAIATHEDDIN, conquered the kingdoms of Multan and Delhi. He drew such immense treasures out of India, that his favourite daughter inquiring of the officer who had the care of them, to what value they amounted, the treasurer answered, that there was the weight of three thousand pounds in diamonds only, by which she might judge of the rest: after deductions made for oriental exaggeration, we may still gather from this anecdote, that his conquests in India had given him great wealth. An Indian, rendered desperate by the pollutions and insults to which he saw his gods and temples exposed, made a vow to assassinate Scheab-bedin, and executed it.

THE race of Gaurides finished in the year 1212, in the person of MAHMOUD,' successor and nephew to Scheabbedin. The days of this Mahmoud, like those of his uncle, though for a different cause, were cut off by the swords of assassins. Whatever dominions Mahmond possessed out of India, he does not seem to have had any great influence in it, or even in Gazna itself; he, contrary to the practice of his predecessors, made not this city the capital of his sovereignty. His uncle Scheabbedin, who had no children, and was remarkable for a spirit of adoption, had prepared the dismemberment of the Indian provinces from the empire of Gazna, by giving the government of two of them to two of his slaves. Nassereddin received from him the countries of Multan, Cothbeddin-Ibeck those of Delhi. At the same time he made another of his slaves, Tageddin-Ildiz, governor of Gazna.

IN the year 1214 MOHAMED, the 6th Sultan of the dynasty of the KHOWARASMIANS, whose terriories were contiguous to those of the Gaurides, took Gazna from the slave who had succeeded the slave