Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/817

793 HISTORY.] INDIA 793 of a favourite slave, Kutab-ud-din. Mohammad Ghori died in 1206, being assassinated by some Ghakkar tribesmen while sleeping in his tent by the bank of the Indus ; on his deatli both Ghor and Ghazni drop out of history, and Delhi first appears as the Mahometan capital of India. On the death of Muhammad Ghori, Kutab-ud-diu at once laid aside the title of viceroy, and proclaimed himself sultan of Delhi. He was the founder of what is known as ii-e the slave dynasty, which lasted for nearly a century &amp;lt; ast y- (1206-1288). The name of Kutab is preserved in the minar, or pillar of victory, which still stands amid the ruins of ancient Delhi, towering high above all later structures. Kutab himself is said to have been successful as a general and an administrator, but none of his successors has left a mark in history. uh- Iii 1294 Allah-ud-dfn Khilji, the third of the great liu - Mahometan conquerors of India, raised himself to the throne of Delhi by the treacherous assassination of his uncle Firoz II. , who had himself supplanted the last of the slave dynasty. Allah-ud-din had already won military renown by his expeditions into the yet unsubdued south. He had plundered the temples at Bhilsa in central India, which are admired to the present day as the most interest ing examples of Buddhist architecture in the country. At the head of a small band of horsemen, he had ridden as far south as Deogiri in the Deccan, and plundered the j Marhatta capital. When once established as sultan, he j planned more extensive schemes of conquest. One army i was sent to Guzerat under Alaf Khan, who conquered and expelled the last Rajput king of Anhalwar or Patan. Another army, led by the sultan in person, marched into the heart of ll;Vjputana, and stormed the rock-fortress of Chitor, where the Rajputs had taken refuge with their women and children. A third army, commanded by Malik Kafiir, a Hindu renegade and favourite of Allah-ud-din, penetrated to the extreme south of the peninsula, scattering the unwarlike Dravidian races, and stripping every Hindu temple of its accumulations of gold and jswels. To this day the name of Malik Kafiir is remembered in the remote district of Madura, in association with irresistible fate and every form of sacrilege. Allah-ud-din died in 1316, having subjected to Islam the Deccan and Guzerat. Three of his descendants followed him upon the throne, but their united reigns extended over only five years. In 1321 a successful revolt was headed by Ghiyas-ud-din Tughhk, governor of the Punjab, who is said to have been of Turkish origin. The Tughlak dynasty lasted for about seventy years, until it was swept away by the invasion of Timiir, the fourth Mahometan conqueror of India, in 1398. Ghiyas-ud-din, the founder of the line, is only known for having removed the capital from Delhi to a spot about 4 miles further to the east, which he called Tughlakabad. His son and suc- ilnm- cessor, Muhammad Tughlak, who reigned from 1325 to l 1351, is described by Elphinstone as &quot; one of the most s Iak accomplished princes and one of the most furious tyrants that ever adorned or disgraced human nature.&quot; He wasted the treasure accumulated by Allah-ud-din in purchasing the retirement of the Mughal hordes, who had already made their appearance in the Punjab. When the internal circulation failed, he issued a forced currency of copper, which is said to have deranged the whole commerce of the country At one time he raised an army for the in vasion of Persia. At another lie actually despatched an expedition against China, which perished miserably in the Himalayan passes. When Hindustan was thus suffering from his misgovernment, he conceived the project of trans ferring the seat of empire to the Deccan, and compelled the inhabitants of Delhi to remove a distance of 700 miles to Deogiri or Daulatabad. And yet during the reign of this sultan both the Tughlak dynasty and the city of Delhi are said to have attained their utmost growth. Muhammad was succeeded by his cousin Firoz, who likewise was not content without a new capital, which he placed a few miles north of Delhi, and called after his own name. Meanwhile the remote provinces of the empire began to throw off their allegiance to the sultans of Delhi. The independence of the Afghan kings of Bengal is generally dated from 1336, when Muhammad Tughlak was yet on the throne. The com mencement of the reign of Allah-ud-din, the founder of the Bahmani dynasty in the Deccan, is variously assigned to- 1347 and 1357. Zafar Khan, the first of the Ahmadabad kings, acted as an independent ruler from the time of his first appointment as governor of Guzerat in 1391. These and other revolts prepared the way for the fourth great in vasion of India under Timiir (Tamerlane). Accordingly, when Timiir invaded India in 1398, he Tiinur s encountered but little organized resistance. Mahmud, the i&quot; v asioc last of the Tughlak dynasty, being defeated in a battle out side the walls of Delhi, fled into Guzerat. The city was sacked and the inhabitants massacred by the victorious Mughals. But the invasion of Timiir left no permanent impress upon the history of India, except in so far as its memory fired the imagination of Babar (Baber), the founder of the Mughal dynasty. The details of the fighting and of the atrocities may be found related in cold blood by Timiir himself in the Malfuzat-i-Timuri, which has been translated in Elliot s History of India as told by its own Historians, vol. iii. Timiir marched back to Samarkand as he had come, by way of Cabul, and Mahmud Tughlak ventured to return to his desolate capital. He was succeeded by what is known as the Sayyid dynasty, which held Delhi and a few miles of surrounding country for about forty years. The Sayyids were in their turn expelled by Beloli, an Afghan of the Lodi tribe, whose successors removed the seat of government to Agra, which thus for the first time became the imperial city. In 1525 Babar (Baber), the fifth in descent from Timiir, and also the fifth Mahometan con queror, invaded India at the instigation of the governor of the Punjab, won the victory of Panipat over Ibrahim, the last of the Lodi dynasty, and founded the Mughal empire, which lasted, at least in name, until 1857. Before entering upon the story of the Mughal empire, it Dynast is desirable to give a short sketch of the condition of ofsontl southern India at this period, which marks a turning ei point in Indian history. The earliest local traditions agree in dividing the extreme south into four provinces, Kerala, Pandya, Chola, and Chera, which together made up the country of Dravida, occupied by Tamil-speaking races. Of these kingdoms the greatest was that of Pandya, with its capital of Madura, the foundation of which is assigned on high authority to the 4th century B.C. Other early southern cities whose sites can be identified are Combaconum and Tanjore, the successive capitals of the Chola kingdom, and Talkad in Mysore, now buried by the sands of the Kaveri (Cauvery), the capital of the Chera kingdom. The local Parana, or chronicle of Madura, gives a list of two Pandyan dynasties, the first of which has seventy-three kings, the second forty-three. Parakrama, the last king of the second dynasty, was overthrown by the Mahometan invader, Malik Kafur, in 1324; but the Musalmans never established their power in the extreme south, and a series of Hindu lines ruled at Madura into- the 18th century. No other Dravidian kingdom can boast s-uch a continuous succession as that of Madura. The chronicles enumerate fifty Chera kings, and no less than sixty-six Chola kings,, as well as many minor dynasties which ruled at various periods over fractions of the south. Little confidence, however, can be placed in Hindu gene- ahxnes, and the early history of the Dravidian races yet XII. 100