Races. PART I heard the Mussulman war-cry. Fifty years had not elapsed since the death of Mahommed, LECT. IV. when the Arab horsemen were seen in Mooltan. Sind was next invaded,—Mooltan subdued under Kasim, in 711. A Turkish dynasty founded by Alptegin supplied, however, the first great Mussulman conqueror in Northern India, Mahmoud of Ghuznee, 997-1030; but even his conquests comprise little more than Guzerat and the Punjab. The tenth and most famous expedition to India, was marked by the storming of the celebrated fortified temple of Somnath, in Guzerat, dedicated to Siva, whose idol was daily washed in Ganges water, brought for the purpose, while the revenues of 10,000 villages were devoted to the support of the temple. When the temple was taken, the Brahmins offered large sums for the ransom of the idol; Mahmoud broke it with his mace, and a flood of jewels poured forth, far exceeding in value the ransom offered. It is the gates of this temple, reputed to be of sandalwood, which were brought back from Ghuznee by our troops on the second Afghanistan campaign, and formed the subject of a proclamation by Lord Ellenborough, much talked of at the time. The object of the measure was to give witness that the tide of victory had, after more than eight centuries, flowed back for the first time from India westward. As an act of defiance to Islam, it may not have been without its bearing on the present struggle. It was nearly two centuries later, however, before a new dynasty, that of the house of Ghor, took Delhi, afterwards the seat of the Mussulman power in India, and spread their conquests Races. LECT. IV. as far as Bengal (1176-1206). The Deckan PART I. was invaded towards the close of the thirteenth century (1294), and by 1310 the Mussulman arms had been pushed as far as Cape Comorin. One of the great disasters of Indian history falls at the close of the fourteenth century. In 1398, Timour the Lame,-Timourlenk or Tamerlane, invaded Northern India, defeated the then reigning Mussulman sovereign, and sacked and burned Delhi, massacreing all the inhabitants. The sack lasted five days, Timour remaining a tranquil spectator, and celebrating a feast in honour of his victory. From Timour was descended Baber (15041530), the founder of the greatest Mussulman dynasty of India,-that of the so-called "Great Moguls" of Delhi,-under the shadow of whose name the present warfare is waged against us by the insurgents. The names of his five first successors, Humayoon, Akbar, Jehangeer, Shah Jehan, Aurungzebe, (1530-1707,) are household words in India, and are connected with innumerable palaces, mosques, monuments, public works still existing, with innumerable tales and legends present to every mind, with many practices and customs still prevalent. Akbar, through his ministers, was the author of the financial system, which still forms the substratum of our own. The reign of Shah Jehan is always referred to as the standard era of Mogul prosperity. The height of Mogul splendour was reached under Aurungzebe, although his long reign (1661-1707) was also the period of the decline of the empire. The great feature of Aurungzebo's reign indeed, G Races. PART I. the rise of the last Hindoo power-that of the Mahrattas-is so inseparably connected with the LECT. IV, later history of British India, that it will be necessary to dwell upon it hereafter in some detail. Suffice it here to say that, under Aurungzebe's successors, the decline of the Mogul empire was rapid. The vice-royalties, and other inferior governments even, into which it was parcelled out, became first independent, then encroached upon each other and upon the parent empire, until eventually they were all, with one exception, absorbed into British India. Mussulman invaders from without helped internal dismemberment, and imperial Delhi, in the course of the eighteenth century, was sacked by every enemy in turn-by Persian, by Mahratta, by Afghan. The last effort of Mussulman life was the foundation of the new Mussulman kingdom of Mysore in Southern India, which extended Mussulman sway over provinces, such as Malabar, that had never been subjected to it. Its splendour, however, was as brief as it was vivid; two reigns compose its whole history. With Hyder Ali it rose; with Tippoo Sultan it perished, in the last year of the eighteenth century. The only fragment of Mussulman rule which subsists is the country of the Nizam, once the Mogul viceroy of the Deckan for the emperors; an English ally, almost an English vassal, yet surrounded by a turbulent and dangerous Mussulman population. There may be a few more petty Mussulman chiefs still ruling under British protection, such as the Nawab of Bhopâl in Hindostan. But every Indian Mussulman yet looks forward to the day when his creed shall rule India. THE CHRISTIANS. 83 LECTURE V. THE CHRISTIANS AND THEIR ALLIES. The Syrian Christians-The Armenians-The PortugueseSketch of their History-The Dutch-The English-The Danes and their Glory-The French and their InfluenceDifference between the English and other Nations: the English not Settlers-English Phariseeism towards the Half-Bloods-Insignificance of the permanent English Element-The Indigo-Planters-The Presidential Cities-Simla and the Hills-Coffee-Planters of Wynaad, &c.-The floating English Population; Civil and Military Services-Railway Men and their Value-The Weakness of the English Element our own doing-Tendency of the Insurrection to evolve a Christendom in India-The Native ConvertsObstacles to Conversion-Christian Allies: The Jews-The Parsees-The Parsee Knight and Baronet. PART I. I HAVE called the last stratum of Indian society the Christian. But the application of the term here is indeed wholly inappropriate. The Chris- LECT. V. tian elements in India form a most various group of deposits; a local vein running deep in the soil; a line of boulders and shingle fringing the sea-coast and the banks of one great river; a topdressing scattered, more or less, over the whole face of the country. The earliest of these, however curious, has never had any political importance. In the earliest ages of the Church, Christianity is said to have been carried by St. Thomas to India. Whether this be true or not certain it is that PART I. within the first few centuries of our era, ChrisRaces. tians affiliated to the Syrian Church became LECT. V. settled on the western coast of the Deckan. Their descendants-probably now much dwindled in number, and now reckoned at 100,000, called the Nazarene or Syrian Christians-are to be found at the extreme south of the peninsula, chiefly within the protected state of Travancore, keeping up their own ritual and connexion. Their creed is very debased, their social position generally very degraded. Yet the very fact of their existence is such a protest against the pretended catholicity of the Romish Church, that the latter has been unremitting in her endeavours to absorb or extirpate them, never sparing persecution when feasible. Two or three years back, the London papers contained a quaint touching appeal by a prelate of this community, who had never been allowed to reach his flock. There is another race of Christians, the Armenians, which I may place at once with the Syrians as equally ancient in point of ritual, although of later date in their arrival,—the first Armenians in India having been, I believe, like the Parsees, of whom I am about to speak, refugees from Mahommedan persecution farther west. Whilst the Syrian Christians do not differ in colour from other natives, are fixed to the soil, follow all usual handicrafts and employments, and belong to the lowest classes of society, the Armenians of India are, as elsewhere, rich merchants and money-dealers. frequenting large cities. I do not know whether their presence in India is to be regarded as an advantage. Since Russia obtained, unnoticed by Western Europe, the cession |