Page:History of India Vol 3.djvu/117

 REBELLION IN BENGAL 87 mating the loyalty of the governors." This opinion of Barani's concerning the Bengalis has often been reit- erated in more recent times; but in the days of the early Delhi kingdom the difficulty of communication across imperfectly subdued country, and the absence of any sentiment of loyalty towards slave kings who had not yet founded a settled hereditary monarchy, may well have fostered ideas of independence in the great eastern province. Fifteen governors had successively ruled Bengal since Bakhtiyar the Khalji first carried the standard of Mohammad Ghori there in the first year of the thirteenth century; and their authority had been little curbed by the Delhi Sultans. Altamish had put an end to the Khalji chiefs' ambitions, and had placed his own son in command of Bengal, but since then the weakness of the Delhi kings had left the governors to do as they pleased. Tughril, the fifteenth governor, a favourite slave of Balban's, observing that the Sultan was now an old man intensely preoccupied with the menace of the Mon- gols, and being fortified in his designs by recent suc- cesses in the wild country about Orissa, where the Bengal army had taken vast spoil, permitted " the egg of ambi- tion to hatch " in his head, and assumed the style and insignia of sovereignty. In vivid contrast to the cold severity of Balban, the usurper of Bengal was free and open-handed, a friend with all the people. " Money closed the eyes of the clear-sighted, and greed of gold kept the cautious quiet. Soldiers and citizens forgot their fear of the sovereign power and threw themselves