Page:History of India Vol 3.djvu/243

 THE RISE OF THE LODI AFGHANS 197 A throne depending on the allegiance of " an aris- tocracy of rapacious and turbulent chiefs " demands politic concessions on the part of the monarch. Afghans above most men resent an undue assumption of superi- ority, and tolerate with difficulty the tedious etiquette and obsequious ceremony of a formal court. Their king must be their chief, a bon camarade and admitted leader in arms, but he must not give himself airs, or show a want of respect for the free and outspoken clansmen upon whose swords his dominion rests. Unfortunately, the new Sultan of Delhi, Ibrahim, son of Sikandar, who succeeded his father in 1518, was a man of forms and a stickler for royal prerogative. He made the great Afghan chiefs stand motionless in his presence with folded hands and vexed them with petty rules of eti- quette. Dreading their power already displayed in the support given by an influential faction to his brother Jalal, who had been nominated to the government of Jaunpur and had made a rash and unsuccessful effort to share a divided crown he sought, instead of attempt- ing to disarm them by favour and concession, to reduce them to a sense of their inferiority by treating his lower subjects with the same degree of consideration that he showed to the Afghan nobles. When discontent arose, and revolt after revolt sprang up, he endeavoured to quench the rising conflagration by the blood of some of the leading amirs. The result was still wider disaffection. The eastern districts about Oudh, Jaunpur, and Bihar, where Af- ghan influence was especially strong, rose in arms and