Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/196

160 treat the outcome and climax as something passing man's understanding. The magnificent possessions of Great Britain are commonly regarded as a man might look at a great prize he had drawn by luck in a lottery; they are supposed to have been won by incalculable chance. It is surmised that we stumbled forward blindfold on our way to dominion without any expectation that it would lead us to that end; we are assumed to have discovered an empire accidentally and to have obeyed the determination of events with no more foreknowledge than a rolling stone.

But it may fairly be argued that this view, which embodies the general impression on this subject, can be controverted by known facts. The idea that India might easily be conquered and governed, with a very small force, by a race superior in warlike capacity or in civilization, was no novelty at all. In the first place the thing had actually once been done. The Emperor Babar, who invaded India from Central Asia in the sixteenth century, has left us his authentic memoirs; it is a book of great historical interest, and nothing more amusing has ever been written by an Asiatic. He says: "When I invaded the country for the fifth time, overthrew Sultan Ibrahim, and subdued the empire of Hindustan, my servants, the merchants and their servants, and the followers of all friends that were in camp along with me were numbered, and they amounted to twelve thousand men. I placed my foot," he writes, "in the stirrup of resolution and my hands on the reins of confidence in God, and I marched against