Page:History of India Vol 3.djvu/84

 56 GHAZNI AND GHOB, than name to Moslem rule. They formed the military caste of the ancient Hindu system and preserved their old feudal system. " Each division," as Elphinstone remarks, " had its hereditary leader, and each formed a separate com- munity, like clans in other countries, the members of which were bound by many ties to their chief and to each other. As the chiefs of those clans stood in the same relation to the raja as their own retainers did to them, the king, nobility, and soldiery all made one body, united by the strongest feelings of kindred and military devotion. The sort of feudal system that pre- vailed among the Rajputs gave additional stability to this attachment, and all together produced the pride of birth, the high spirit, and the romantic notions so striking in the military class of that period. Their en- thusiasm was kept up by the songs of their bards, and inflamed by frequent contests for glory or for love. They treated women with a respect unusual in the East, and were guided, even toward their enemies, by rules of honour which it was disgraceful to violate." With much of the chivalry, they had not the artificial senti- ment of the knights of the " Faerie Queene," and, save for their native indolence, they resembled rather the heroes of the Homeric poems, or of their own Maha- ~b~harata, than those of the Round Table. No doubt they had degenerated in a long period of inglorious obscurity, but what the Rajputs are in the present day may teach us that in the twelfth century they were a brilliant and formidable array.