Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IX.djvu/219

INDIA 207 Sanskrit, in which their sacred books were written. The Vedas, supposed to have been compiled about the 14th century B. 0., are es- teemed the holiest. Two great dynasties, the kings of the race of the sun, who reigned in Ayodha, the modern Oude, and the race of the moon, who reigned in Pruyag, the modern Allahabad, figure in the legends of their early history, and their contests are recorded in the poem known as the JUahabharata. The most celebrated of these sovereigns was Rama or Eamchnnder, who is supposed to have lived in the 12th or 13th century B. 0. His deeds are the subject of the great epic poem the Ramayana. Subsequently long civil wars raged among the princes of the lunar race, which culminated in a great battle where the armies of 56 kings fought for 18 days. But the first event in the history of India of which we have an authentic account was the inva- sion by the Persians under King Darius, about 518-512 B. C. The Persian monarch conquer- ed and annexed to his empire provinces on the Indus so rich and extensive that, according to the Grecian historians, their tribute furnished one third of the revenues of the Persian crown. In 327 B. 0. Alexander the Great, having over- thrown the Persian empire, invaded India, de- feated Porus, one of the kings of the country now called the Punjaub, and penetrated with his army as far as the Hyphasis (the Sutlej or its upper branch, the Beas). The historians of his expedition describe the manners, customs, and pursuits of the Hindoos in a way that shows they have changed but little since. In the division of the Macedonian empire after the death of Alexander, Seleucus, one of his gene- rals, obtained the eastern part, and founded the Bactrian kingdom, which included the prov- inces on the Indus. He attempted conquests beyond that river, and was involved in war with Chandragupta, king of Maghada, whom the Greeks called Sandracottus. With this monarch Seleucus made a treaty by which the Greeks relinquished all claim to any posses- sions east of the Indus. The kingdom of Ma- ghada comprised the greater part of northern and central India, and lasted till about 195 B. 0. Its capital, Palibothra, was on the Ganges, but its precise site is unknown. After its downfall India was divided into a number of kingdoms, of whose history little is known, and that little has been gathered principally from inscriptions and coins. India's relations with the external world were again renewed about A. D. 715, when the Mohammedan governor of Bassorah sent by sea an army not exceeding 8,000 in number, commanded by Mohammed Kasim, to obtain restitution of an Arab vessel which had been taken near the mouths of the Indus not long previously. Kasim landed near the mouth of the Indus, and succeeded in conquering Sinde and the southern part of the Punjaub, where the Mohammedans retained power for about forty years, when they were expelled by the Rajpoots. India re- 427 VOL. ix. 14 mained unmolested from that time till 977, when Subooktugeen, the Afghan sultan of Ghuzni, invaded a portion of the Punjaub and took possession of Peshawur, but did not long retain his conquests. His son Mahmoud made his first expedition into India in 1001, at the head of an army of 42,000 men, and conquered a portion of the north. In the course of his reign of 38 years, which ended in 1030, he made 10 expeditions into India for conquest and plunder. He left extensive pos- sessions in western India to his successors, one of whom, Masaoud III., greatly extended the Mohammedan rule. He carried his con- quests beyond the Ganges, and transferred his court from Ghuzni to Lahore. He was the first Mohammedan sovereign whose capital was within the limits of Hindostan. In the early part of the 12th century a civil war among the Mohammedan conquerors resulted in placing the house of Ghore on the throne of Lahore. One of the monarchs of this dynasty, Shahab ud-Din, better known as Mohammed Ghore, overthrew the kings of Delhi and Ajmeer, conquered Benares, Gwalior, Guzerat, and many other cities and provinces, and at the time of his death in 1205 was master of near- ly all the country north of the Nerbudda, including Bengal, Sinde, and Guzerat. Under his successor, Kuttub ud-Din, a Turkish slave who had been educated by Shahab ud-Din, the Mohammedan dominions in India were sepa- rated from the Afghan empire and formed an independent kingdom, the capital of which was Delhi. Kuttub ud-Din was the founder of a dynasty known as the slave kings, ten in number, five of whom were violently de- posed, and the last, Kei Kobad, was murdered in 1288. The most eminent of these sov- ereigns, Altmish, extended his dominions by conquests southward, and at the end of his reign all India N. of a line running from Surat to the mouth of the Ganges acknowl- edged the authority of the court of Delhi. Kei Kobad was succeeded by Jelal ud-Din, the founder of the dynasty known as the house of Khilji. During his reign, his nephew Alia ud- Din, an able and ambitious general, invaded and conquered a large part of the Deccan, and on his return from this expedition caused his un- cle the emperor to be assassinated, and usurped the throne in 1296. He was one of the most eminent of the Mohammedan rulers of Hindo- stan, and in his reign of 20 years considerably enlarged the empire, maintained a brilliant court, patronized learning and the arts, and successfully repelled several great invasions of the Moguls or Tartars who had established themselves in the countries west of the Indus. He died in 1316, poisoned, it was generally thought, by his vizier. His three successors died by violence, and in 1321 the house of Khilji became extinct. Five emperors of that dynasty had reigned 33 years, and all had perished by poison or the sword. Togluk Shah, the founder of the house of Togluk, ascended