April 20.

As English history to the vast majority of Englishmen begins with the Norman, so does also the modern history of India begin with the Mohammedan, conquest. As early as in the eighth century Arab conquerors² made incursions into Scinde as far as Hyderabad, only to be driven back by a revolt of Hindoos; but it was not until the eleventh century that Sultan Mahmoud, the second of the House of Ghuznee, established a Mohammedan garrison³ to the south of the Indus at Lahore, nor until the end of the twelfth century that Shahab-ud-din penetrated⁴ as far as Benares and fixed⁵ the seat of government at Delhi. It was at his death that India assumed the form of an independent kingdom distinct from the governments to the north of the Indus; and it was only a few years later that the invasion of the Moguls under Zinghis Khan heralded⁶ the approach of the race that was first to gather the greatest portion of the peninsula into a single empire, and to found a dynasty which should rule it. The battle of Delhi placed Baber, the first of this dynasty, in possession of the capital, and set up therein the throne of the Great Mogul. Baber's grandson, Akbar, after fifty years of conquest, wise policy and incessant⁷ labour, reduced the whole of Hindostan and great part of the Deccan under the Mogul Empire, dividing it for administrative⁸ purposes into eighteen provinces, each under the rule of a governor or subahdar. But the Deccan had never been firmly secured; and even after the Hindoos had submitted there were Mohammedan[168] chieftains who refused to acknowledge the supremacy⁹ of the Moguls. Too jealous, however, to unite in resistance, these chieftains allowed themselves to be crushed in detail; and in 1656 the Emperor Shah Jehan seemed to have established his authority over all the Mohammedan kingdoms of the Deccan. But even so the work of Shah Jehan did not endure. In the

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