India Through the Ages: A Popular and Picturesque History of HindustanSteel, Flora Annie Webster
History
India Through the Ages: A Popular and Picturesque History of Hindustan
Steel, Flora Annie Webster
India -- History
He spent the next few months in attempting to restore order to the
Government, and when winter brought the fighting season once more, he
marched on the town of Chandêri, which had become a stronghold of the
remaining Râjputs. Here he saw, almost contemptuously, the final
sacrifice of the _Johâr_. It did not impress him, possibly because he
held the previous defence of the fortress to have been poor,
half-hearted.
About this time prolonged attacks of fever warned him that he could
not in India trifle with his health as he had trifled with it in the
north.
He thought once that he had hit on a marvellous febrifuge--the
translation of religious tracts into verse!--and he records with
interest how one bout ended before he had finished his task; but the
effect was not lasting. Still, nothing crippled his extraordinary
energy, and so late as March 1529 he writes in his diary:
"I swam across the Ganges for amusement. I counted my strokes, and
found that I swam over in thirty-three; then I took my breath and swam
back. I had crossed by swimming every river I met, except (till then)
the Ganges."
He was very happy, apparently, in these days. India was at peace under
stern military control. At Agra, where he had settled, beautiful
gardens were growing up, in which flourished many a flower he had
loved in the wild adventurous days of his youth. Nor did he confine
himself to old favourites. We read of a wonderful red oleander, unlike
all other oleanders, which he found in an ancient garden at Gwalîor.
His old love of Nature, too, finds expression in a detailed account of
the fauna and flora of his new possessions.
Finally, he was happy in his domestic relations. In the Memoirs
of his daughter, Gulbadan, we read of the joyful evening when news
came to him that the long-expected caravan from Kâbul was within six
miles of the city, when, without waiting for a horse, bareheaded, in
slipper-shoon, he had run out to meet his "Dearest-dear," had met her,
and walked the weary miles along the dusty road beside her palanquin.
In Babar's Memoirs this stands in a single sentence, pregnant with
meaning:--
"On Sunday at midnight I met Mahum again"--
Mahum being the pet name for the wife who had borne him the three
daughters whom he loved so well, the son Humâyon of whom he was so
proud.
Concerning the latter he writes:--
"I was just talking to his mother about him when in he came" (from
Badakhshân). "His presence opened our hearts like rosebuds, and made
our eyes shine like torches. The truth is, that his conversation has
an inexpressible charm, he realises absolutely the ideal of perfect
manhood."
Brave words these; but Babar was ready to stand by them to the death.
The story is a strange one, but it is well authenticated. In October
A.D. 1530 Humâyon was brought back to Agra, sick. The physicians
despaired of his life, the learned doctors declared that nothing could
save him save the Mercy of God, and suggested some supreme sacrifice.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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