Page:History of India Vol 3.djvu/136

 104 ALA -AD -DIN KHALJI One success followed another; despatches of victory came in from all sides; every year he had two or three sons born; affairs of state went on to his satisfaction, his treasury was overflowing, boxes and caskets of jew- els and pearls were daily displayed before his eyes, he had numerous elephants in his stables and seventy thou- sand horses in the city and environs. . . . All this pros- perity intoxicated him. Vast desires and great aims, far beyond him or a hundred thousand of his like, ger- minated in his brain, and he indulged fancies which had never occurred to any king before him. In his conceit, ignorance, and folly, he completely lost his balance, formed utterly impossible schemes, and cherished the wildest desires. He was a man of no learning and never associated with men of learning. He could not read or write a letter. He was bad-tempered, obstinate, and hard-hearted; but the world smiled upon him, fortune befriended him, and his plans were usually successful, so that he only became the more reckless and arrogant." He dreamed of emulating the Prophet Mohammed him- self, and of founding a new religion, and he contem- plated setting up a viceroy in Delhi, and then, he would say in his cups at one of his frequent carousals, " I will go forth, like Alexander, in search of conquest, and sub- due the world." He caused his title to be proclaimed in the Friday prayers and engraved on coins and in- scriptions as " the second Alexander." There were wiser men than Ala-ad-din, however, at the royal revels, and one of them, an uncle of the his- torian whom we have quoted, ventured to give the Sul-