Page:The Asiatic Quarterly Review - Series 1, Volume 2.djvu/9



the 1st of January, 1877, the plains of Delhi were witness to one of the most strange and splendid pageants that the world has ever seen. The occasion was the assumption by the Queen of England of the title of Empress of India. Eighteen years had gone by since the weighty orb and sceptre of the East passed from the great Company who had so long ruled unchallenged in the name of England into the strong hands of the sovereign alone competent for so great a trust. She had now summoned the feudatory princes and chiefs to meet her Viceroy in solemn Durbar, and hear from him the announcement which ratified her direct assumption of sovereignty. On these famous plains many royal and imperial gatherings had, in ancient days, been called together. Fifteen centuries before Christ, the Rajput chiefs had built on the banks of the Jumna their capital of Indraprastha, with its fifty-two gates; and on this very spot were held the solemn assemblages of princes and heroes, Rajasayas and Aswamedhas, of which the pictures are still bright and fresh in the Indian epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. Here, in a newer city,