Another interesting piece of information we get from Marco is that large numbers of horses were imported into southern India by sea from Arabia and Persia. The climate of the south was not suitable for horse-breeding. It is said that one of the reasons why the Muslim invaders of India were better fighters was their possession of the better horses. The best horse-breeding grounds in Asia were under their control.
The Pandya Kingdom was thus the leading Tamil Power in the thirteenth century, when the Cholas declined. Early in the fourteenth century (in 1310) the Muslim wedge of invasion reached south. It drove into the Pandya kingdom, which rapidly collapsed.
I have surveyed south Indian history in this letter, and perhaps repeated what I had previously said. But the subject is a little confusing, and people get mixed up between the Pallavas and the Chalukyas and Cholas and the rest of them. And yet if you look at it as a whole you may be able to fit the broad framework into your mind. Ashoka, you will remember, ruled over the whole of India (except for a tiny tip at the bottom) and Afghanistan and part of Central Asia. After him rose, in the south, the Andhra power, which extended right across the Deccan, and lasted for 400 years, about the time that the Kushans had their borderland empire in the north. As the Telugu Andhras decline, the Tamil Pallavas rise on the east coast and the south and for a very long period they hold sway. They colonize in Malaysia. After 600 years of rule, they give place to the Cholas, who conquer distant lands and sweep the seas with their navies. Three hundred years later they retire from the scene, and the Pandyan kingdom emerges into prominence, and the city of Madura becomes a centre of culture and Kayal a great and busy port in touch with distant countries.
So much for the south and east. On the west, in the Maharashtra country, there were the Chalukyas and then the Rashtrakutas, and then again, for a second time, the Chalukyas.
All these are just names. But consider the long periods for which these kingdoms lasted and the high degree of civilization attained. There was an inner strength which seems to have given more stability and peace to them than the kingdoms of Europe had. But the social structure had outlived its day and the stability had gone. It was soon to topple over when the Muslim armies moved southward early in the fourteenth century.
66
The Slave Kings of Delhi
June 24, 1932
I have told you of Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni, and I have also said something of the poet Firdausi, who wrote the Shahnama in Persian at Mahmud’s request. But I have not told you yet of another distinguished man of Mahmud’s time, who came with him to the Punjab. This was Alberuni, a learned man and a scholar, very different from the fierce and bigoted warriors of the day. He travelled all over India, trying to understand the new country and its people. So keen was he to appreciate the Indian viewpoint that he learnt Sanskrit and read for himself, the principal books of the Hindus. He studied the philosophy of India and the sciences and arts as taught here. The Bhagawad Gita became quite a favourite of his. He went south to the Chola kingdom and was amazed at the great irrigation works he saw there. The record of his wanderings in India is one of the great travel books of old days that we still have. In a welter of destruction and massacre and intolerance, he stands out, the patient scholar, observing and learning, and trying to find out where truth lay.
After Shahab-ud-din, the Afghan, who defeated Prithvi Raj, there came a succession of Sultans of Delhi called the Slave Kings. The first of them was Qutub-ud-din. He had been a slave of Shahab-ud-din, but even slaves could rise to high positions, and he managed to become the first Sultan of Delhi. Some others after him were also originally slaves, and hence this is called the slave dynasty. They were all pretty fierce, and conquest and destruction of buildings and libraries and terrorization went together. They were fond of building also, and they liked size in building. Qutub-ud-din started building the Qutub Minar, the great tower near Delhi which you know so well. His successor, Iltutmish, finished the tower and also built near it some beautiful arches, which still exist. The materials for these buildings were almost all taken from old Indian buildings, chiefly temples. The master-builders were all of course Indian, but, as I have told you, they were greatly influenced by the new ideas brought by the Muslims.
Every invader of India from Mahmud of Ghazni onwards took back with him crowds of Indian artisans and master-builders. The influence of Indian architecture thus spread in Central Asia.
Bihar and Bengal were conquered by the Afghans with the greatest ease. They were audacious, and took the defenders completely by surprise, and audacity often pays. This conquest of Bengal is almost as surprising as the conquests of Cortés and Pizarro in America.
It was during the reign of Iltutmish (from 1211 to 1236) that a great and terrifying cloud hovered over the frontiers of India. This was composed of the Mongols under Chengiz Khan. Right up to the Indus he came, pursuing an enemy, but there he stopped. India escaped him. It was nearly 200 years later that another of his breed, Timur, came down to India to massacre and destroy. But although Chengiz did not come, many Mongols made a practice of raiding India, and even coming right up to Lahore. They spread terror and frightened even the Sultans, who sometimes bribed them off. Many thousands of them settled down in the Punjab.
Among the Sultans there is a woman named Razia. She was the daughter of Iltutmish. She seems to have been an able person and a brave fighter, but she had a hard time with her fierce Afghan nobles and the fiercer Mongols raiding the Punjab.
The Slave kings ended in 1290. Soon after came Ala-ud-din Khilji, who came to the throne by the gentle method of murdering his uncle, who was also his father-in-law. He followed this up by having all the Muslim nobles whom he suspected of disloyalty killed. Fearing a Mongol plot, he ordered that every Mongol in his territories should be killed, so that “not one of the stock should be left alive upon the face of the earth”. And so 20,000 or 30,000 of them, most of them of course quite innocent, were massacred.
I am afraid these references to massacres repeatedly are not very pleasing. Nor are they very important from the larger viewpoint of history. Still, they help one to realize that conditions in northern India at this time were far from secure or civilized. There was a reversion to some extent to barbarism. While Islam brought an element of progress to India, the Muslim Afghans brought an element of barbarism. Many people mix up the two, but they should be distinguished.
Ala-ud-din was intolerant, like the others. But it seems as if the outlook of these Central Asian rulers of India was now changing. They were beginning to think of India as their home. They were no longer strangers here. Ala-ud-din married a Hindu lady, and so did his son.
Under Ala-ud-din there seems to have been an attempt made to have a more or less efficient system of government. The lines of communication were especially kept in order for the movements of the army, and the army was the special care of Ala-ud-din. He made it very powerful, and with it he conquered Gujrat and a great part of the south. His general returned from the south with enormous wealth. It is said that he brought 50,000 maunds of gold, a vast quantity of jewels and pearls, and 20,000 horses and 312 elephants.
Chittor, the home of romance and chivalry, full of courage, but even then old-fashioned and sticking to outworn methods of warfare, was overwhelmed by Ala-ud-din’s efficient army. There was a sack of Chittor in 1303. But before this could take place, the men and women of the fortress, obedient to old custom, performed the terrible rite of jauhar. According to this, when defeat threatens and there is no other way, in the last extremity, it was better for the men to go out and die in the field of battle and for the women to burn themselves on a pyre. A terrible thing this was, especially for the women. It would have been better if the women, too, had gone out sword in hand and died on the battlefield. But, in any event, death was preferable to slavery and degradation, as conquest in war meant in those days.
Meanwhile the people of the country, the Hindus, were being slowly converted to Islam. The process was not rapid. Some changed
their religion because Islam appealed to them, some did so because of fear, some because it is natural to want to be on the winning side. But the principal reason for the change was economic. People who were not Muslims had to pay a special tax, a poll tax—jezia, as it was called. This was a great burden on the poor. Many would change their religion just to escape it. Among the higher classes desire to gain Court favour and high office was a powerful motive. Ala-ud-din’s great general, Malik Kafur, who conquered the south, was a convert from Hinduism.
I must tell you about another Sultan of Delhi, a most extraordinary individual. He was Mohammad bin Tughlaq. He was a most learned and accomplished man, both in Persian and Arabic. He had studied philosophy and logic, even Greek philosophy. He knew something of mathematics and science and medicine. He was a brave man, and was for his times quite a paragon of learning and a wonder. And yet, and yet, this paragon was a monster of cruelty and seems to have been quite mad! He came to the throne by killing his own father. He had fantastic notions of conquering Persia and China. Naturally they came to grief. But his most famous exploit was his decision to ruin Delhi, his own capital, because some of the people of the city had dared to criticize his policy in anonymous notices. He ordered that the capital should be transferred from Delhi to Deoghiri in the south (in Hyderabad State now). This place he called Daulatabad. Some compensation was paid to the owners of houses, and then everyone, without exception, was ordered to leave the city within three days.
Most people left. Some hid themselves. When they were found they were punished cruelly, even though one was a blind man and another a paralytic. It was forty days’ march to Daulatabad from Delhi. One can imagine what the terrible condition of the people must have been during this march and how many must have dropped on the way.
And the city of Delhi, what became of it? Two years later Mohammad bin Tughlaq tried to re-people Delhi. But he did not succeed. He had previously made it into a “perfect desert”, as an eye-witness tells us. It is possible to make a garden into a wilderness quickly; but it is not easy to re-convert the wilderness into a garden. Ibn Battuta, an African Moorish traveller, who was with the Sultan, returned to Delhi, and he says that “it is one of the greatest cities in the universe. When we entered this capital we found it in the state which has been described. It was empty, abandoned, and had but a small population.” Another person, describing the city as spreading over eight or ten miles: “All was destroyed. So complete was the ruin, that not a cat or a dog was left among the buildings of the city, in its palaces or in its suburbs.”
This madman ruled as Sultan for twenty-five years, right up to 1351. It is amazing how much knavery and cruelty and incompetence in their rulers people will put up with. But in spite of the servility of the people Mohammad bin Tughlaq was successful in breaking up his empire. The country was ruined by his mad schemes and by heavy taxation. There were famines, and at last there were revolts. Even in his lifetime, from 1340 onwards, large areas of the empire became independent. Bengal became independent. In the south several States arose. Chief of these was the Hindu State of Vijayanagar, which arose in 1336 and within ten years was a great Power in the south.
Near Delhi you can still see the ruins of Tughlaqabad, which was built by Mohammad’s father.
67
Chengiz Khan Shakes up Asia and Europe
June 25, 1932
In many of my recent letters I have referred to the Mongols and hinted at the terror and destruction that they caused. In China our account of the Sung dynasty stopped with the coming of the Mongols. In western Asia again we come up against them, and there is an end of the old order. In India the Slave Kings escaped them, but none the less they created enough commotion. All Asia seems to have been brought low by these nomads from Mongolia. And not Asia only, but half Europe too. Who were these amazing people who suddenly burst forth and astounded the world? The Scythians and the Huns and Turks and the Tartars—all from Central Asia—had already played a notable part in history. Some of these peoples were still prominent; the Seljuq Turks in western Asia, the Tartars in northern China and elsewhere. But the Mongols had so far done nothing much. Probably no one in western Asia knew much about them. They belonged to many unimportant tribes in Mongolia and were subject to the Kin Tartars, who had conquered the north of China.
Suddenly they seemed to gain power. Their scattered tribes joined together and elected a single leader, the Great Khan, and swore allegiance and obedience to him. Under him they marched to Peking and put an end to the Kin Empire. They marched west and swept away the great kingdoms they found on their way. They went to Russia and subdued it. Later they wiped off completely Baghdad and its empire and went right up to Poland and central Europe. There was none to stop them. India escaped by a sheer chance. One can well imagine what the amazement of the Eurasian world must have been at this volcanic eruption. It almost seemed like a great natural calamity, like an earthquake, before which man can do little.
Strong men and women they were, these nomads from Mongolia, used to hardship, and living in tents on the wide steppes of northern Asia. But their strength and hard training might not have availed them much if they had not produced a chief who was a most remarkable man. This was the person who is known as Chengiz Khan (or Genghiz or Jenghiz or Jengiz Khan—there are many ways of spelling it). He was born in 1155 AC and his original name was Timuchin. His father, Yesugei-Bagatur, died when he was a little boy. “Bagatur”, by the way, was a favourite name for Mongol nobles. It means “hero” and I suppose the Urdu bahadur comes from it.
Although just a little boy of ten, with no one to help him he struggled on and on, and ultimately made good. Step by step he advanced till at last the great Mongol Assembly, called the Kurultai, met and elected him the Great Khan or Kagan or Emperor. A few years before he had been given the name of Chengiz.
A Secret History of the Mongol People written in the thirteenth century, and published in China in the fourteenth century, describes this election: “And so, when all the generations living in felt tents became united under a single authority, in the year of the Leopard, they assembled near the sources of the Onan, and raising the White Banner on Nine Legs, they conferred on Chengiz the title of Kagan.”
Chengiz was already fifty-one years of age when he became the Great Khan or Kagan. He was not very young, and most people at this age want peace and quiet. But this was only the beginning of his career of conquest. This is worthy of notice, as most great conquerors do their conquering when fairly young. This also reminds us that Chengiz did not simply dash across Asia in a fit of youthful enthusiasm. He was a cautious and careful middle-aged man, and every big thing he did was preceded by thought and preparation.
The Mongols were nomads, hating cities and the ways of cities. Many people think that because they were nomads they must have been barbarians. But this is a mistaken idea. They did not know, of course, many of the city arts, but they had developed a way of life of their own and had an intricate organization. If they won great victories on the field of battle, it was not because of their numbers, but because of their discipline and organization. And above all it was due to the brilliant captainship of Chengiz. For Chengiz is, without doubt, the greatest military genius and leader in history. Alexander and Caesar seem petty before him. Chengiz was not only himself a very great commander, but he trained many of his generals and made them brilliant leaders. Thousands of miles away from their homelands, surrounded by enemies and a hostile population, they carried on victorious warfare against superior numbers.
What was the map of Asia and Europe like when Chengiz appeared striding over it? China to the east and south of Mongolia was split up. To the south was the Sung Empire, where the Southern Sungs held sway; to the north, with Peking for their capital, was the empire of the Kin or Golden Tartars, who had driven out the Sungs; to the west, over the Gobi desert and beyond, was the Hsia or Tangut Empire, also nomadic. In India we have seen that the Slave Kings ruled in Delhi. In Persia and Mesopotamia, rig
ht up to the frontiers of India, there was the great Muslim kingdom of Khwarazm or Khiva, with its capital at Samarqand. West of this were the Seljuqs, and in Egypt and Palestine the successors of Saladin. Round Baghdad, the Caliph ruled under the protection of the Seljuqs.
This was the period of the later Crusades. Frederick II of Hohenstaufen, the stupor mundi, was the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire. In England it was the period of the Magna Carta and after. In France, King Louis IX reigned, who went to the Crusades, got captured by the Turks and was then ransomed. In eastern Europe, there was Russia, apparently divided into two States, that of Novgorod in the north and Kiev in the south. Between Russia and the Holy Roman Empire were Hungary and Poland. The Byzantine Empire still flourished round Constantinople.
Chengiz prepared carefully for his conquests. He trained his army and, above all, he trained his horses and remounts, for to a nomad people nothing is more important than horses. He then marched east and almost put an end to the Kin Empire of northern China and Manchuria, and took Peking. He subdued Korea. He appears to have been on good terms with the Southern Sungs who even helped him against the Kins, not realizing that their turn might come next. Chengiz also conquered the Tanguts later.
Chengiz—“The Scourge of God”
After these victories Chengiz might have rested. He seems to have had no desire to invade the west. He wanted friendly relations with the Shah or King of Khwarazm. But this was not to be. There is an old Latin saying which means that those whom the gods wish to destroy they first drive mad. The Shah of Khwarazm was bent on bringing about his own destruction and he did everything possible to accomplish this. Mongol merchants were massacred by a governor of his. Chengiz even then wanted peace and sent ambassadors asking that the governor be punished. But the foolish Shah, vain and full of his own importance, insulted these ambassadors and had them put to death. This was more than Chengiz could stand; but he was not to be hurried. He made careful preparations and then marched with his host westward.
Glimpses of World History Page 32
