Page:History of India Vol 3.djvu/168

 136 MOHAMMAD TAGHLAK AND FIROZ SHAH to the jungles. Irritated at the failure of the rev- enue, the Sultan hunted the wretched Hindus like wild beasts, ringed them in the jungles as if they were tigers, and massacred them wholesale. The Doab, Kanauj, and all the country as far as Dalamau, were laid waste, and every man captured was killed and his head hung on the rampart of a town. Landowners and village chiefs were sacrificed as well as humble peasants. A deficiency of seasonable rains aggravated the distress, and famine stalked about the land and mowed down the unhappy people for years. It was partly the melancholy condition of Hindustan, but still more the inconvenience of a distant northern capital to an empire which was spreading more and more in the Deccan, that induced the Sultan to take the step of transferring the seat of government to Deva- giri, which he now renamed Daulatabad, " the empire- city," in the Maratha country not far from Poona. The insecurity of the roads, as well as the long distances, made Delhi an unsuitable centre, and we find that some- times the revenue of the Deccan was allowed to accu- mulate for years at Daulatabad from sheer inability to transport it safely to the capital. Whether the Ma- ratha city would have been more convenient may be questioned, at least for the eastern part of the empire, but for the west and south it might have answered well enough. There was nothing preposterous in the Sul- tan's plan. The provinces of the Deccan for it was now divided into four extended as far south as Kul- barga near the Bhima tributary of the Krishna River,