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
"one desperate charge carried death and destruction throughout the
Hindu ranks. The disorder increased everywhere, till at length the
panic became general. The Moslems, as if they now only began to be in
earnest, committed such havoc, that this prodigious army once shaken,
like a great building tottered to its fall, and was lost in its own
ruins."
How many thousand pagans "went below?" Who knows? But one is sure that
Mahomed Shahâb-ud-din duly praised God from whom all blessings flow.
His subsequent atrocities prove that he must have relied on something
which he deemed Divine Guidance; mere humanity could never have been
so cruel.
Half Râjput chivalry lay dead under the stars, but the flower of it
was hiding in the sugar-cane brakes, stealing his way back to Delhi,
to the Princess Sunjogâta his wife, who, as she had watched him go
forth, lance in rest, his sword buckled on by her own steady hands,
had said with foreboding courage to her maidens: "In Yoginâpur (Delhi)
I shall see him no more: we will meet in Swarga." The tale of what
happened is almost beyond telling.
Prithvi Râjah was murdered in cold blood, murdered ignominiously. The
Princess Fortunata escaped a like, or a worse, fate by a funeral pyre,
and Delhi was given over to such hideous devils work as even that
long-suffering city has never seen before or since. The followers of
the Prophet wiped out their own and their God's disgrace in torrents
of blood, filled their pockets by the way, went on to Ajmîr, enacted a
like tragedy, and so returned northwards when the pink clouds of the
low-lying groves of _dâkh_ trees began to blossom about the
battle-field where the sun of the Hindus had set for ever.
But Mahomed Shahâb-ud-din left his pet Turki slave Kutb-din-Eîbuk
behind him at Delhi, and he, assuming almost regal honours, "compelled
all the districts around to acknowledge the faith of Islâm."
How many murders go to the making of a Moslem is a question which
might fairly be asked. Converts, however, hardly came in fast enough
for Shahâb-ud-din's zeal, so the next year saw him back again to help
his slave in crushing the Râjah of Kanauj, who, doubtless, had not
been of Prithvi-Râj's host. Thence he marched to Benares, in which
hot-bed of idolatry he thoroughly enjoyed himself by smashing the
idols in a thousand temples, which he subsequently purified by prayer
and purgation, and thereinafter consecrated to the worship of the true
God.
This was his last real outing, for Fate--can it have been that she
dissociated herself from his doubtful use of the white flag--began to
play him false. His slave-viceroy showed inclination to plunder on his
own behalf, and though the master once more returned to India, it was
but a flying visit, apparently to check independence. To no avail, for
Kutb-din-Eîbuk, "ambitious of extending his conquests, led an army
into Râjputana, where, having experienced severe defeat, he was
compelled to seek protection in the fort at Ajmîr."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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