INVASIONS OF INDIA FROM CENTRAL ASIA, LONDON: RICHARD BENTLEY AND SON, 1879. Reproduced By Sani H. Panhwar California 2014 PREFACE. To understand the history and present position of India, it is absolutely necessary to have some acquaintance with the history of Central Asia. For from Central Asia (known as Scythia, Tartary, or Turkestan in past times) India has always been ruled in historic, and presumably in prehistoric, times. Some have supposed Bactria, or Balkh, to have been the site of the Garden of Eden. In long past ages, the Aryans are thought to have held an extensive empire in the mountains of the Hindoo Kush. From thence they invaded India, and their descendants form the military, sacerdotal, and mercantile class of Hindoos in India to this day. The Brahmin, the Rajpoot, and the Buniah are the descendants of Aryans of Bactria. The lower castes and the servile class are the descendants of the people they subdued. But the Aryan masters of India in their -turn were subdued from Central Asia in historic times. They were conquered by the race that we call Tartars. The fierce and rude soldiers of Turkestan have ruled India for the last eight hundred years, since A.D. 1002. Alexander the Great conquered India in 324 B.C. He followed the road which so many Tartar invaders have since taken—through Persia, Kandahar, and Ghuzne, through Afghanistan to the Indus. But the Greek invasion was a mere passing inroad, and left little mark on the people of India. This is the first historical invasion of India recorded. The next invader was Mamood of Ghuzni, in A.D. 1002. He was a Turk, who, from the mountains of Afghanistan, formed a magnificent empire. He ruled not only India, but Bokhara, Kashgar, Khorassan, and other provinces of Central Asia. The invasion of Mamood of Ghuzni was a long and lasting evil. His soldiers were from Turkestan. By the Koorum Valley he made thirty inroads into the rich, level, unwarlike land of Hindustan. He destroyed the fanes of the Hindoos, carried away the inhabitants into hopeless slavery, and subjected the afflicted land to every misery, and every degradation. From this time the Tartars of Central Asia, finding the invasion of India so easy, so profitable, and, in their idea, so meritorious an act in a religious point of view, have continually poured down to plunder the plains of India. I have used the word Tartar.’ It is used to describe numerous races of Central Asia, much as the word Frank’ is applied by Asiatics to all Europeans. No tribe of Central Asia ever called themselves Tartars. It is said that the vanguard of Genghis Khan were called Tatars,’ from Tatar Khan, the brother of Moghul Khan, a remote ancestor of the Moghuls. But their enemies in Europe called them Tartars, asserting they that came from Tartarus. The invasion of Europe by Genghis Khan in 1238, caused the greatest consternation. The Moghuls were then the master race of Turkestan. Starting from thence they conquered China, India, Georgia, Circassia, Astrachan, Livonia, Moscow. From their conquest of Russia, through Poland, they reached Germany, and even the shores of the Baltic. For two hundred years the Moghuls (Tartars) ruled Russia. Si vous grattez le Russe; vous trouvez le Tartare, says the proverb. Gibbon remarks of the Moghul occupation of Russia: A temporary ruin in other countries was less fatal than the deep and perhaps indelible mark which servitude of two hundred years has imprinted on the character of the Russians.’ The once master races called Tartars in Europe were either Moghuls, Turks or Usbegs, races kindred to each other. The third invasion of India from Central Asia was also a mere passing inroad, that of the Moghuls under a brother of Genghis Khan in 1303. It brought to India all the horrors that Russia, Hungary, and Germany experienced from the same barbarians—razed cities, whole sale massacres, hopeless slavery. In consequence of this invasion, all the races of Central Asia are called Moghuls by the people of India to this day—Turk, Turcoman, Usbeg, and Persian are to them Moghuls, as all Europeans are Franks. The fourth invasion of India was that of the Turks under Tamerlane, when Delhi was sacked and its inhabitants ruthlessly massacred, in 1398. The fifth invasion of India from Central Asia was under Sultan Baber, in 1525; the sixth, under Nadir Shah, 1739; the seventh under Abdulla, a Turcoman, in 1761. Soon afterwards British rule was established, and the invasion of India from Central Asia ceased. It is of these last invasions that this work treats. The history of India teaches that in past ages who-ever held the crown of Turkestan held that of India also, if not in his hand at least within his grasp. Turkestan has gone through the following revolutions, which have left indelible marks not only on India but on Europe. The earliest record of Turkestan that history gives is that of the Huns under Attilla, in 450 A.D. The Huns lost their supremacy in Central Asia, which was acquired by the Avares, or Geougens. The Khan of Geougen was killed by the Turks in 545 A.D. The Turks who were his slaves and workers in iron, rose on their masters under Bertezana, their first leader. The Turks of Constantinople were a branch of this race of Central Asia. Four hundred families marched from the Oxus in 1299; they gained Asia Minor by conquest, and entered Europe in 1353. The Turkish supremacy in Turkestan fell before the all-conquering Moghuls under Genghis Khan in 1224. The Turks, however, recovered their supremacy in Central Asia, under Tamerlane, in 1383. Tamerlane, like Genghis Khan, was a world-wide conqueror, ruling Turkestan, Kipzak (the Cossack country), Russia, Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, Armenia, Georgia, and conquering India. He left to his descendants twenty-seven crowns, including that of the Crimea. But one hundred and twenty years later, in 1506, the possessions that he had acquired were lost b),.. his descendants to a new tribe of Moghuls, the Usbegs, who have ruled Turkestan for the last three hundred and seventy years, and who have fallen to the Muscovite in our day. The Turks of Central Asia, of Samarcand, like the Turks of Constantinople, ceased to be a rude, wandering tribe. Among the beautiful mountains of Southern Turkestan, in a temperate climate, with every gift of nature lavished in profusion, Samarcand rose, decked with the spoil of a thousand cities of Asia Minor, Syria, and of India. Samarcand, the city of Tamerlane, was such a city as Cairo, Constantinople, Bagdad, or Delhi. It was full of splendid mosques, built by workmen brought from India and Damascus, beautiful gardens, magnificent palaces; full of trade, and full of wealth. Samarcand was celebrated for its manufactory of paper; and from thence also came Kermizi, crimson velvet, the cramoisy of the old ballads. The mulberry abounds in Turkestan, and considerable quantities of silk were manufactured, and all the fruits of Southern Europe grow there in profusion. The Turks of Samarcand had an extensive literature. Their language is the parent of Osmanli Turkish; they can boast of poets, geographers, historians, astronomers, and endless theological writers on the tenets of the Moslem creed. Two of their books, the Institutes of Tamerlane’ and the ‘Life of Sultan Baber,’ have been translated into English. The martial spirit of the Turks, their despotic government, their unjust laws of land, their barbarously cruel punishments, were not drawn wholly from the Koran, though fostered and preserved by it, but from the laws of Genghis Khan—a work they looked upon as semi-divine. The Moghuls obtained many of their ideas, practices, and cruelties from the Chinese, with whom they were brought much in contact, from the circumstances of their geographical position. The Russians are the heirs to the Tartar supremacy in Europe and Central Asia, we are the heirs of the same race in India. CONTENTS. THE TURKISH INVASION OF INDIA, UNDER SULTAN BABER, IN 1525. CHAPTER I. FROM KABUL TO PKSHAWUR. Usbegs —Sultan Baber —The invasion of India —Turks and Moghuls— Jellalabad—The river Kabul—The Kheiber Pass – .. .. .. 1 CHAPTER II FROM PRSHAWUR TO DELHL Peshawur— The King of Delhi—The March to Delhi—The Battle of Paniput— Delhi—The fall of Agra—The Koh-i-noor - .. .. .. 12 CHAPTER III. THE TURKS AS RULERS OF INDIA. The Treasurer of Ibrahim—The discontent of the Turks —Baber poisoned —.The Battle of Sikri — Turkish Victory — The Rajpoots - .. .. 23 CHAPTER IV. THE DEATH OF BARER. Humayon’s return to Kabul—The taking of Chanderi—Baber’s death —Turkish rule—The Turks driven from India - .. .. .. .. 38 CHAPTER V. THE HISTORY OF NOOR MAHAL. The Palace of an Empress—The Sun of Women—Prince Selim-Baffled longings— Marriage - .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 48 PART II Noor Mahal in the palace—Murder of Shere Afghan—Neglect and success— Noor Mahal’s unbounded power—Her reverses, widowhood and death – 56 CHAPTER VI. AURUNGZEBE. Hypocrisy of Aurugzebe—His long and prosperous reign—The fatal policy of religious persecution - .. .. .. .. .. .. 71 THE PERSIAN INVASION OF INDIA, UNDER NADIR SHAH, IN 1739. CHAPTER I. THE COURT OF THE GREAT MOGHUL. The feeble rule of Mohammed—The traitors Cuttulick Khan and Saadat—Their overtures to Nadir Shah—A great Durbar at Delhi – .. .. 81 CHAPTER II. THE BATTLE OF PANIPUT. Rise of Nadir Shah —He becomes a bandit—Is made King of Persia—He conquers Central Asia—Passes the Kheiber-- Great Battle and Victory of Paniput — .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 94 CHAPTER III. THE BACKING OF DELHI. Nadir Shah enters Delhi—Mohammed, a prisoner—The fate of Saadat—Rapacity of the Persians—A rising of the towns-people—Terrible Massacre—Nadir Shah returns to Persia—His death – .