CHAP. III.

From the Commencement of the second Gaurian Dynasty, to the Commencement of the Mogul Dynasty.

1289.

FEROZE was seventy years of age when he became the master of the king- CHAP. III. dom. He was a man of intelligence; and though guilty of cruelty and injustice in acquiring or establishing his throne, he sought to distinguish himself by Feroze. the justice, and also the popularity, of his administration. "For that purpose," says his historian," he gave great encouragement to the learned of that age; who, in return, offered the incense of flattery at the altar of his fame.”

Chidju, however, a prince of the royal blood, nephew of the late Balin, and a nabob or governor of a province, obtained the alliance of several chiefs, and marched with an army towards Delhi. Feroze placed himself at the head of his army, and sent forward his son with the Chilligi cavalry. The prince encountered the enemy, and obtaining an advantage, took several Omrahs prisoners, whom he mounted upon camels with branches hung round their necks. When Feroze beheld them in this state of humiliation, he ordered them to be unbound, gave a change of raiment to each, and set an entertainment before them; repeating the verse, "That evil for evil it was easy to return; but he only was great who could return good for evil." In a few days Chidju was taken prisoner, and sent to the king; but instead of death, which he expected, received a pardon, and was sent to reside at Multan on a handsome appointment for life. To the Omrahs of the Chilligi, displeased at so much lenity, Feroze replied, "My friends, I am now an old man, and I wish to go down to the grave without shedding blood."

The mind of this prince, however, did not, it seems, distinguish sufficiently between lenity and relaxation. The police of the empire was neglected; and robbery, murder, insurrection, ever ready to break loose in India, diffused insecurity over the nation. The Omrahs of the Chilligi "began," says Ferishta, "to lengthen the tongue of reproach against their sovereign." The design was conceived of raising one of themselves to the throne; the project was even dis

1291.

Book III. cussed at an entertainment, at which they were assembled; but one of the company privately withdrew and informed the emperor, who immediately ordered them to be arrested and brought before him. It occurred to one of them to represent the affair as a drunken frolic, and the words as the suggestion of intoxication. The prince was pleased to accept the apology; and dismissed them with a rebuke. He was not so lenient to a Dirvesh, or professor of piety, who by the appearance of great sanctity, and by the distribution of great liberalities to the poor, the source of which no one could discover, acquired immense popularity; and on this foundation aspired, or was accused of aspiring, to the throne. Though little or no evidence appeared against him he was cruelly put to death.

First Mahome

dan invasion of Deccan.

With his expiring breath, the holy Dirvesh cursed Feroze and his posterity; nature was thrown into convulsions upon the death of the saint; and from that hour the fortunes of Feroze were observed to decline. His eldest son was afflicted with insanity which no power of medicine could remove. Factions and rebellions disturbed his administration. In the year 1291, Hindustan was in vaded by a prince of the house of Gingis, at the head of 100,000 Moguls; and though Feroze engaged them, and obtained the advantage, he was glad to stipulate for the departure of the invaders by consenting to let them retreat unmolested.

In this reign occurred an event of great importance in the history of Hindustan; the first invasion of the Deccan by Mahomedan arms. Deccan means the south; and is applied in a general manner to the kingdoms and districts included in the southern portion of India. It does not appear that the application of the name was ever precisely fixed. It has been commonly spoken of as indicating the country south of the Nerbudda river, which falls into the Gulf of Cambay at Baroach; but as the Patan or Mogul sovereignties hardly extended beyond the river Kistna, it is only the country between those two rivers which in the language of India commonly passes under the name of Deccan.

Alla, the nephew of Feroze, was Nabob or Governor of Corah, one of the districts in the Doab, or country lying between the Ganges and Jumna. Having distinguished himself in a warfare with some rajahs who bordered on his province, he was gratified by the addition to his government of the province of Oude. His first success appears to have suggested further enterprise. He solicited and obtained the consent of Feroze to extend his empire over the Hindus. Having collected such an army as his resources allowed, he marched directly, by the shortest route, against Ramdeo, one of the rajahs of Deccan, whose capital

1298.

was Deogur, now Dowlatabad.* Alla met with no inconsiderable resistance; CHAP. III. but finally prevailed; and exacted heavy contributions (exalted by the pen of Oriental history into incredible sums) as the price of his return. He retreated many days through several hostile and populous kingdoms; the governments of which were too weak or too stupid to offer any obstruction to his march.

Feroze was not without uneasiness upon intelligence of the ambitious adventure of Alla; and of the great addition to his power which the vastness of his plunder implied. He rejected, however, the advice of his wisest counsellors to take previous measures for the securing of his authority and power; and resolved to repose on the fidelity of his nephew. He was even so weak as to permit Alla, on feigned pretences, to entice him to Corah, where he was barbarously assassinated, having reigned only seven years and some months.

Alla made haste to get into his power the family of Feroze; of whom all Alla. who were the objects of any apprehension were unrelentingly murdered; and the rest confined. He had scarcely time, however, to settle the affairs of his government, when he learned that the Mogul sovereign of Transoxiana had invaded the Punjab with an army of 100,000 men. An army, commanded by his brother, was sent to expel them. A battle was fought in the neighbourhood of Lahore, in which the Indians were victorious, and the Moguls retreated. The successful general was sent into Guzerat, which he quickly reduced to the obedience of the Shah.

The Moguls returned the following year in much greater force; and marched even to the walls of Delhi, to which they laid siege. Alla at last collected his army, and gave them battle. Though his success was not decisive, the Moguls thought proper to retreat.

The king's arbitrary maxims of government, and the odious manner in which he arrived at the supreme command, engendered disaffection; and during the first years of his reign he was harassed by perpetual insurrections and rebellions. He applied himself, however, with industry and intelligence, to the business of government; and though his administration was severe and oppressive, it was regular and vigorous, securing justice and protection to the body of the people. His education had been so neglected that he could neither read nor write; but

* Written Deogire, by Col. Wilks, and declared to be the Tagara of Ptolemy. The author of the Tibcat Nasiri says, that Alla left Corah on pretence of a hunting party, and passing through the territories of many petty rajahs, too feeble to think of opposing him, he came upon Ramdeo by surprise. Ferishta, i. 231. The proofs of the division and subdivision of India into a great number of petty states, meet us at every step in its authentic history.

1306.

Book III. feeling the disadvantages under which his ignorance laid him, he had firmness of mind to set about the work of his own instruction even upon the throne; acquired the inestimable faculties of reading and writing; made himself acquainted with the best authors in the Persian language; invited learned men to his court; and delighted in their conversation.

In 1303, he projected another expedition into Deccan by the way of Bengal, but was recalled by a fresh invasion of the Moguls of Transoxiana; who advanced as far as Delhi, but retreated without sustaining a battle. After their departure, he resolved, by an augmentation of his army, to leave himself nothing to fear from that audacious enemy. But reflecting that his revenues were unequal to so great a burden, he resolved to reduce the soldiers' pay. Reflecting again, that this would be dangerous, while the price of articles continued the same, he ordered all prices to be reduced a half; by that means, says Ferishta, with an ignorance too often matched in more instructed countries, "just doubling his treasures and revenue." The Moguls were not discouraged by frequency of repulse. The armies of the king of Transoxiana twice invaded. Hindustan in 1805, and were twice defeated by Tughlic, the general of Alla.

In the following year the design against Deccan was renewed, and prosecuted with greater resources. Cafoor, a slave and eunuch, his favourite, and, it was said, the instrument of his pleasures, was placed at the head of a grand army, and marched towards the south. He first "subdued the country of the Mahrattors,* which he divided among his Omrahs" and then proceeded to the seige of Deogur. Ramdeo endeavoured to make his peace by submission; and having agreed to pay a visit to the emperor at Delhi, and to hold his territories as a dependency, he was dismissed with magnificent presents, and his dominions were enlarged.

The division of Deccan, known by the name of Telingana, is supposed to have extended, along the eastern coast, from the neighbourhood of Cicacole on the north, to that of Pulicat on the south; and to have been separated on the west from the country known by the name of Maharashtra, or by contraction Mahratta, by a line passing near Beder, and at some distance east of Dowlutabad, to the river Tapti. †

This is the first mention which we find of any of the tribes to whom the term Mahrattor, or Mahratta, is applied, by the Moslem historians. From this statement, we can only conjec-. ture, that some district in Deccan, inhabited by the description of Hindus to whom this name was applied, was overran, and nominally parcelled out by Cafoor.

+ Wilks, Hist. of Mysore, p. 6.

1316.

Alla was on his march against the Rajah of Warunkul, one of the princes CHAP. III. of this district, in 1303, when he was recalled by another invasion of the Moguls. He made, indeed, a part of his army proceed in the expedition, for the purpose of reducing the fort of Warunkul, a place of great strength, and, by repute, of immense riches; but the project failed. In 1307, Cafoor was ordered to march into Telingana by the way of Deoghur, and lay seize to Warunkul. Warunkul was taken by assault, after a siege of some months.* The Rajah made his peace, by sacrificing largely to the avarice of his conquerors, and accepting the condition of a tribute.

The more Alla tasted of the plunder of Deccan, the more he thirsted for additional draughts. In 1310, Cafoor was sent on a more distant expedition. He marched by Deoghur; and penetrating as far as Carnatic, took the Rajah prisoner and ravaged his kingdom. According to the historians, he returned with such wealth as no country ever yielded to a predatory invader.† Nor did he remain long at Delhi before he persuaded the Shah to send him once more into Deccan; where he ravaged several countries, and sent the plunder to Alla. This prince had ruined his constitution by intemperance in the seraglio; and felt his health in rapid decline. He sent for Cafoor from Deccan, and complained to him of the undutiful behaviour of his wife and his son. Cafoor, whose eyes had already turned themselves with longing to the throne, contemplated the displeasure of the emperor against his family as a means for realizing his most extravagant hopes. He prevailed upon Alla to throw his two eldest sons, and their mother, into prison; and to put to death several of the chiefs by whom his pretensions were most likely to be opposed. When things were in this train, Alla expired in the year 1316, in the twenty-first year of his reign.

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The time was not yet come when Cafoor deemed it expedient to declare him- Mubarick. self king. He produced a testament, genuine or spurious, of the late prince, in which he appointed Omar, his youngest son, then seven years of age, his successor, and Cafoor regent. The first act of Cafoor's administration was to put out the eyes of the two eldest of the sons of Alla: But there was a third, Mubarick, who escaped, till a conspiracy of the foot guards put the regent to death, only thirty-five days after the decease of his master. The reins of

*The neighbouring Rajahs, says Ferishta, hastened to the assistance of the Rajah of Warunkul; another proof of the division into petty sovereignties.

+ Besides several chests, of jewels, pearls, and other precious things, the gold alone amounted to about one hundred millions sterling. Colonel Dow thinks this not at all incredible: Hist. of Hindost. i. 276: and Col. Wilks (Hist. of Mysore, p. 11) seems to have little objection.