life by strokes of policy and firmness that might have become a veteran statesman. Having possessed himself of the treasures of his father Shahjee, at that time minister to one of the Mussulman kings in the Deccan, he speedily collected around him a band of adventurers, with whom having made himself master of the hillforts and strong places along the Ghauts, he plundered and harassed the neighbouring states, carrying terror even into the armies of Aurung Zebe, in whose power the chance of war once placed him and his son, but from whom he found means to deliver himself, to gain new victories, and at length to organize his kingdom.

It was in 1674 that he caused himself to be. crowned at Poonah, and had money coined in his name, and from that time the authority of a monarch being added to the spirit of an adventurer and the boldness of a warrior, his arms were irresistible, and though he died in 1680, the impulse he had given to his people continued, and under his successors, whether of his own family or of the usurping Peishwas, carried terror and devastation over the whole of Hindostan and the Deccan for seventy years.

The causes of the fall of the Mahratta power are even more obvious than those of its rise. When Sevajee, in organizing his kingdom, supposed it to be always at war, and its king at the

head of his troops, he gave the death-blow to the power of his descendants, by leaving the whole civil authority and administration in the hands of the viceroy and Peishwa. Accordingly his grandson Shahoo, the third of his family who succeeded him, was soon confined in the fortress of Sittara, and the ambitious Peishwa Balajee governed, in his master's name it is true, but entirely by his own authority. The other nobles of the council, of course jealous of the Peishwa, formed their separate parties, and pursued their separate interests, and while they pillaged Dehli and Agra, overrun Guzerat, ravaged Bengal and Orissa, and even carried their incursions to the gates of Madras, those internal quarrels were fermenting, which after the battle of Pamput, A. D. 1761, disunited the Mahratta chiefs for ever, and have thus secured the peace of India.

When I visited Poonah in 1810 the melancholy spectacle of ruined towns and villages but too plainly marked the camps of the rival chiefs, who alternately pretended to defend, or openly attacked the capital, and it would not be easy for Sevajee to recognize, in the British cantonments which surround the capital and imprison its chief, the scene of that greatness which he raised, and of that power which rendered him the dread of the greatest monarch of Hindostan.

In the slight sketch I have given you of the different Hindû kingdoms of India, I have not attempted to give all the details which I might have collected, but only to awaken your curiosity. Before I quit the subject I must mention the kingdom of Nepaul, which, although without the limits of India proper, must be considered as a Hindû kingdom, as its inhabitants are believers in the Brahminical religion, and their customs and manners prove them to be of the same families. Like that of the other Hindû kingdoms, the early history of Nepaul is obscured by superstitious fables, and its beautiful valley is reputed to have been a favoured dwelling-place of the gods, after the lake which once filled it had been dried up.

The historians of Nepaul preserve the memory of several dynasties who have reigned over the country, the greater number of which have proceeded from foreign conquerors, who appear always to have found that beautiful country an easy prey. If the first dynasty was of native princes, the second was of invading Rajepoots, deposed by the Kerats, a mountain tribe from the East, and these were displaced by a tribe of Xetries, who reigned in different branches, nearly three thousand years. The kingdom was then divided into three separate sovereignties, in which state it continued for two centuries, when

one of the rival monarchs calling in Prithi Narrayn, a powerful prince of the Rajepoot tribe, and surnamed Goorkhali, from his dominion of Goorkha, that artful stranger contrived to reunite the divided branches of the kingdom under his own dominion, and in A. D. 1768, became sole master of Nepaul. His son succeeded him in 1771, and dying two years after, left his kingdom to his infant son, who still occupies the throne, and whose minority was passed under the alternate guidance of his uncle and his mother, both of whom appear to have possessed uncommon abilities, and it is only to be regretted that their want of cordiality produced much evil, when a better understanding between them might have been of service to the state. Our chief knowledge of Nepaul we owe to Col. Kirkpatrick, who visited that country in the capacity of an ambassador when the English were applied to by the Nepaul government, for their good offices in the war between Nepaul and Thibet, when a Chinese army marching to the defence of the Lama, brought the Nepaulese to humiliating terms, before the arrival of the British embassy.

LETTER XI.

THE first attempt of the Mahomedans towards the conquest of India was made during the reign of the Kalif Omar*, who sent Maganeh Abul Aas, from Bahrein to the mouth of the Indus; but the expedition failed of success, and it was not till the reign of the Kalif Walid † that Sind was occupied by the Mussulmans, from which period their incursions into the fertile countries of Hindostan became more frequent and successful, till they at length obtained complete possession.

The first Mussulman prince however who made a serious impression on India, was the Sultan Mahmud Sebectaghin, who reigned at Ghazna. His father Sebectaghin appears to have been a soldier of fortune, and being too far from the seat of the Kalifat to fear its power, he erected an independent sovereignty at Ghazna, nominally however subject to the Kalif; for on the accession of Mahmud to his father's power, after a successful expedition to Balk, we find him receiving the robe of honour and the investiture as Sultan, from Kalif Cader, in the year of the Hegira 389 4.

* A. D. 636. A. H. 15.

†A. D. 717. A. H. 99.

i. e. A. D. 998-9.