. V, p. 292.

1846

from ever being applicable to the English in India, "the distance of the Portuguese in India from the person of their sovereign, seemed to authorise the most monstrous unchastity, the most enormous rapine, the most crying injustice, covetousness the most insatiable, as also all that which jealousy, hatred and revenge have of atrocious." With all their faults the Portuguese have been pioneers to European civilization in India; they led the way on the Cape route; they afforded a shield to Romish missionary objects; they confronted the Mussalman power in India. It has been remarked that from the time of the Portuguese conquests, the Mahommedans have ceased to extend themselves in any manner. The Portuguese were the first to drive the Mussalmans from the European Peninsula, the first to oppose the Moors in Africa, and the first to check them in India.

The state of India was very different when the Portuguese entered it from what it was when the English proceeded thither. The Portuguese came at the era when Baber ascended the Mogul throne. Some time previous to that, the throne of Jaychand, the last King of Kanauj, was overturned, from which period the grandeur of Kanauj was extinct, and Rajput power, which had so long adorned India with its arts and monuments of civilization, became the spoil of Moslem fury. The kingdom of Bisnagar, now blotted out of the map, was then in its glory; Sanskrit was the court language; nothing was done without the Brahmans; this kingdom in the time of Kosmos, A. D. 537, stretched itself across the whole Peninsula and as far South as Mysore. The crescent is waning: Russia, scarcely in existence four centuries ago, is now stretching the ægis of her power from Constantinople to the Sea of Corea and from the Polar Regions to the territories of Yarkand. All that we can wish for England is, that her power in India may be, like "a fort over a valley, not for destruction, but defence."

AND THE JUMNA.

By R. N. CUST, ESQ., C. S.

1. Murray's Life of Runijt Singh.

2. Malcolm's Sketch of the Sikhs. 3. Anglo-Indian Treaties.

4. Political Relations, N. W. F. 5. Life of George Thomas.

THE

HE Khalsa Army no longer exists, and the integrity of the Punjab, the kingdom created and ably governed by Runjit Singh, has been destroyed. We are now no longer menaced by a licentious army threatening, at every turn of Durbar politics, and factious intrigue, the peace of our provinces: a succession of victories, unequalled in the fierceness of the conflict, and the magnitude of the issue, has lowered the spirit of the last Native power of India, which, though for the space of forty years bound to us only by the brittle chains of friendship and amity, had never before crossed swords with us, but during a period of temporary failure to our arms had proved our faithful ally. Irresistible circumstances, however, hurried on the conflict at a time, when universal peace enabled us to concentrate the strength of our empire, and annihilate the armies of the treacherous invader.

The campaign of 1845-46 will neither be soon nor easily forgotten it will be remembered by many a widow and orphan, as the era from which their worldly distress commenced

:

it will be remembered by those engaged in it with feelings of triumph at the bravery and determination exhibited, and with humiliation, when we reflect upon the difficulty, with which the means of our vast empire are made available, and the slender hold, which, after the lapse of nearly a whole century, we can be said to have upon India. We have indeed much to be proud of, and much to regret in the events, which have lately crowded one upon the other-pride, at the display of the still indomitable valour of the British soldier-regret, at the number of those gallant men, whose services have been lost to their country. The soldier and the statesman will find no unprofitable lesson in pondering the progress and the issue of the campaign of the Sutlej.

But for the present, we must waive the discussion of this subject. Our remarks apply to the battle-field, not to the battle, and we would draw the attention of our readers to the scenes upon which these stirring events have been passingthe plains of Sirhind and Malwa-the countries betwixt the Sutlej and the Jumna.

From the earliest times, going back to a period of dim tradition, these plains have been the battle-field of India It is here and in the country immediately adjoining the opposite banks of each river that the fights of races and religions have been fought : who shall venture to say how often the rich valley of the Ganges has been lost and won on these plains? -how often the conqueror from the west, once established on the threshold of India, has found himself the irresistible master of the riches and resources of the country beyond ? From the days of Alexander to those of Runjit Singh the tide of conquest has flowed through this channel, bringing down a succession of the hardy and fanatical tribes of the west to colonize and deteriorate under the baneful influence of the east:-once, and once only, in the history of ages has the order of things been reversed, and this century has beheld the oftenconquered Hindu carrying on these plains in triumph a sufficient trophy from the tomb of the first, the most fanatical, and still most hated of their Mahommedan conquerors.

A cursory glance at the map of Asia will show how justly the plains of Sirhind are, as their name indicates, entitled to be considered the head or threshold of India: the great Himalaya range presents an unbroken frontier on the east from the confines of Arrakan to the valley of Kashmir—on the west the vast desert of Central India extends from Gujarat, and gradually narrowing may be said to terminate in or adjoining our districts of Hurreanah and Bhutteanah. European art and arrangement has in these days rendered this desert a safe and practicable route for a limited force on friendly terms with the countries on both sides, and the caravans of the Lohani merchant have for ages traversed its sands in security; but to a hostile force advancing from the west these deserts present an ample and sufficient barrier. It is only, therefore, through this narrow neck of country, intervening between the line of hill and desert, that India has ever been open to invasion from the tribes inhabiting Central Asia, who had overwhelmed Hindustan with periodical inundations.

We have said that even from the days of tradition these plains have been the battle-field of India, and our readers, learned in the lore of the Hindus, will scarcely require to be informed that our allusion is to the battle of the Kurukhetra, the contest between the sons of of Kuru and Pandu for the throne of Indraprastha, in which the Hindu poet with a vehemence and variety of imagery not unworthy of him, who sang the wars of Troy, asserts, and boldly maintains that the gods themselves. took a part, and disguised in mortal garb, directed the battle

of the victors. With that strange inconsistency and garrulousness which distinguishes the Hindu poets, Krishna himself is represented as inculcating moral doctrines of a most diffuse and exalted kind, with his armour buckled on, and all but engaged in the fight. Unknown as the circumstances of these battles may be to the European lords of the soil, insignificant as they may appear to be from their results having perished, they are well known to, and intimately blended with the religion of the Hindus. Let him that doubts repair to Thanesur in these plains, and visit the sacred lake that bears the name of the field, of which it is the extreme corner: let the sceptic see the crowds, that resort to bathe in its holy waters-let him count the gold that is poured into the lap of Brahmans, who swarm there beyond calculation-let him hear one of the learned of their number quote with enthusiasm the lines of the Mahabharata which tell of the valour of Arjuna, and the pride of Bhima Sena, and he might well suppose from the fervour of the reciter, that the aged man was narrating some victory, in which he himself, when a youth, had gloried to have taken a share. Such, in all ages, and in all climes, is the power of legendary lore,-intensely increased, when associated with religion, and such a religion as Hinduism. The district of Khytul, uninteresting in any other respect, notorious for the wild and savage nature of its inhabitants, unhealthy in its climate, and unfertile in its productions, has, in the eyes of the Hindus, a sanctity not surpassed by any other district in India. Here the devotee wanders from Tirtha to Tirtha in quick succession: he bathes in the waters of the Saraswati, the stream connected with the Goddess of Wisdom. Intensely ignorant as he is of the object of the circuit he is taking, of the events for the occurrence of which the scenes he visits are renowned, he still fancies he derives some feeling of imbibed sanctity, and the satisfaction attending the performance of a pious and edifying deed, in completing the prescribed bathings and purifications at Pehoa and Thanesur in the field of the Kurukhetra.

Who will venture to fix the dates when the battles alluded to above were fought ?-daily handed down to us in mystic tradition we take them at the value they may seem intrinsically to possess. There may have been-there must have been many a battle, of which we have no record. Many a brave man may have lived and fought before Arjuna and Alexander, but they had no bard to celebrate their victories, or record their virtues : happy may those be considered to whom this favour has by fate been accorded, and doubly valued by us ought the legends of the early state of a people to be!

We pass over a period of years-may be of centuries, and we arrive at the days of Alexander. This period seems to be one upon which tradition and history meet upon neutral ground, and contend for empire. Who can doubt that the hero of Macedon did really penetrate to the Punjab, that his vessels did in truth ride upon the Indus?-but we see all, as it were, through a hazy darkness-we can neither fix with exactness the site of the cities, which he founded, nor the tribes which he conquered : we can neither recognize the traitors, nor the patriots who fought with or died against the enemy from the west. Antiquarians squabble, and commentators differ as to whether Mooltan was the capital of the Malli, or Porus of the family of the Pouravi, who, as the Mahabharata and the drama of Sacontala tell us, were seated on the throne of India. Be it what it may, a great power penetrated in the third century before our era to the neighbourhood of the Sutlej, but turning off ere they reached the plains of Sirhind they conveyed to Europe the origin of those vague rumours of the wealth, the power, and magnificence of Hindustan, on the threshold of which they had stood, and of the inhabitants of which they had collected some varied and distorted information.

We now pass over, in a breath, a period of thirteen centuries: how many dynasties may have risen, and fallen in that period, if Indian dynasties were then liable to the same vicissitude to which they have since been subject! We have no landmark to direct us, no ray of light to attract our attention between the days of the son of Philip and the son of Sebukhtegin. We may conclude that the peninsula of India, if not free from internal broil, was at least unassailed by foreign invaders. We give up that period to the respective supporter of the Buddhistic and Brahmanical theories:-this must have been the time when those vast structures were raised, which still astonish us, when the Hindu people were governed by sovereigns of their own race and religion: it must have been a time, when the temple was crowded with worshippers, and the shrine heaped with rich presents: these must be the good old days, to which the pious must still look back with regret, when kine were not killed, and when Brahmans were worshipped through the land! But a bitter, an uncompromising, a fanatical enemy to the creed of Brahma, to all who bowed down to wood and stone, had sprung into existence in the deserts of Arabia. The fiery tenets of Mahomed had resuscitated the slumbering energy of the races, which had been once great and powerful between the Euphrates and the Mediterranean, and sent forth hordes of warriors prepared to conquer and dic in the name of the