READING HALL DOORS OF WISDOM

"THIRD MILLENNIUM LIBRARY"

BABAR

CHAPTER XIV

EMPIRE.

1520-30 A.D.

The chief work of the remaining two years of Babar’s life was to quench the last sparks of rebellion. We have said nothing so far about the organization or polity of the empire,—which now stretched from Kunduz and Badakhshan by the Oxus to the borders of Bengal, and from the Himalayas to Gwáliar,—because Babar had no time to organize. A large part of the Empire was scarcely controlled at all, and the polity of Hindustan under his rule was simply the strong hand of military power where it could be used. The lands and cities of the more settled regions were parceled out among his officers, or jágirdárs, who levied the land-tax from the peasant cultivators, the duties from the merchants and shopkeepers, and the poll-tax from non-Muslims. The great zamindars or landholders were often in but nominal dependence on the crown; and India, as Erskine observes, was rather a congeries of little states under one prince, than one regular and uniformly governed kingdom. The frontier and mountain districts, indeed, could hardly be said to have submitted in more than form; the Afghan tribes were still practically independent; and in Sind on the west, and Bihar on the east, the imperial authority was very lightly recognized.

Bihar gave most trouble. The Afghan insurgents still held out in the eastern part of Babar’s empire, and had even assumed the offensive when they saw him busy with the Rajput campaigns. Treachery and deserters had swelled their numbers, and they had advanced into the Doab, stormed Shamsábád, and driven the imperial garrison out of Kanauj. As soon as Chanderi had fallen, Babar set out (February 2, 1528) to punish their temerity. He crossed the Jamna—an operation which with his large force took several days—and, sending on a light reconnaissance to Kanauj, discovered that the enemy, abandoning the city on the news of his approach, had hurriedly recrossed the Ganges, and were now mustered on the east bank to dispute his passage. The Emperor reached the great river on February 27, and encamped opposite the insurgents. Collecting thirty or forty of the enemy’s  boats, he ordered a bridge to be thrown across the broad stream. The Afghans mocked at so wild a project, but the bridge went on; and the skillful fire of the match­locks and artillery, discharged from an island and from a battery on the bank, protected the engineers who were constructing the pontoon. Ustád Ali even succeeded in firing off the big cannon called Dig Gházi (“Victorious gun” a title it had won in the battle of Kanwaha) no less than sixteen times a day, which was clearly a record performance at that time; but a still more ponderous piece unluckily burst at the first discharge.

On March 13 the bridge was finished, and some of the infantry and the Punjab troops were sent over to skirmish. The next day a large part of the army crossed, and were at once engaged by the Afghans, who were supported by elephants. Babar’s troops held their footing stubbornly till night, when they crossed back and rejoined the rest of the army on the west bank. On the two following days the artillery and the whole of the imperial forces were safely got across, but the enemy had prudently decamped. They were hotly pursued nearly as far as Oudh, with the loss of their families and baggage, and many were overtaken and slain. The Afghan army was utterly dispersed for the time, and Babar returned to Agra for the rainy season.

Frequent and prolonged attacks of fever had warned him that the climate of India was not to be trifled with, and his peculiar febrifuge—consisting in translating a religious tract into verse—did not answer his expectations. His wandering, restless life, too, was telling upon his hardy constitution. He notes that since the age of eleven he had never kept the great annual feast after Ramazan twice in the same place. Yet between his fits of fever his vigor remained extraordinary. He had been known to take up a man under each arm, and run with them round the battlements of a fortress, leaping the embrasures; and even in March, 1529, he notes: “I swam across the river Ganges for amusement. I counted my strokes, and found that I swam over in thirty-three strokes. I then took breath, and swam back to the other side. I had crossed by swimming every river I had met, except only the Ganges”. He was also perpetually in the saddle, riding eighty miles a day sometimes, and the rapidity of his marches was often amazing.

At Agra, in December, he gave a splendid garden entertainment, and the names of the guests show the extent of his power and reputation. There were noted Khwájas from his lost Samarkand, ambassadors from the Uzbeg Sultan, from the Shah of Persia, and from the King of Bengal, who all received magnificent presents in return for their offerings. A touching part of the ceremony was Babar’s grateful gift of costly dresses and valuables “to the men who had come from Andiján, who, without a country, without a home, had roamed with me in my wanderings in Súkh and Hushyár and many lands, my tried veterans”. There were fights of camels and elephants and rams, and wrestling matches, to amuse the visitors; and during dinner the Indian jugglers and tumblers performed wonderful tricks, which Babar had never seen before. Dancing girls added their peculiar charm, and in the evening money was freely scattered in the crowd: “there was a precious hubbub”.

The city in which he gave this tamásha was a very different place from the Agra he had found. His delight in running water had led him to sink wells and build tanks among the tamarinds beside the Jamna, and to lay out gardens, where he planted the rose and narcissus in regular parterres. He employed six hundred and eighty masons daily on his new buildings, and though he confesses that he had to proceed “without neatness or order, in the Hindu fashion”, yet he produced edifices and gardens of very tolerable regularity. In India a “garden” includes a dwelling, and Babar’s Chárbágh with its marble pavilions and beds of roses must have been a delightful palace. The Indians, who had never seen this sort of pleasure-ground, called it “Kabul”; and we may be sure the name carried sweet associations to the designer.

He was not left long in repose. The Afghans in Bihar were not yet quelled. Mahmud Lodi, the brother of Sultan Ibrahim, had arrived among them, and they flocked to the standard of their hereditary king. Jaunpur and most of Bihar declared for him, and the many factions laid aside their rivalries for the moment to support the last chance of an Afghan restoration. Babar received this news in the middle of January, 1529, whilst he was staying at Dholpúr, preparing for a predatory campaign in the west. He at once returned to Agra and led his army out. On reaching the Ganges he was met by his son Askari, whom he had sent on a few weeks before to take the command in the eastern provinces. Having been fully informed as to the situation of the enemy, the Emperor marched down the right bank of the river, while Askari’s force kept pace with him on the other side, camping opposite his father each night. At the news of his approach the large army of the Afghans, numbering, it was said, a hundred thousand men, hastened away: the Lodi pretender fled from before Chunár, to which he was laying siege; Shir Khan escaped from Benares; and as Babar pressed on past Allahabad, Chunár, Benares, and Gházipúr, to Baksar (Buxar), several of the Afghan leaders came in to offer their submission; and Mahmud, finding himself almost deserted, sought protection with the Bengal army.

The Kingdom of Bengal had long been independent of Delhi, and Babar had no immediate intention of subduing it, so long as it did not interfere with him. The King, Nasrat Shah, had sent ambassadors to Agra, who had professed amity, and even paid pishkash or tribute; and the reports from Bengal had so far been entirely reassuring. Nevertheless the Bengal troops were now massed on the frontier and were apparently supporting the defeated Afghans. On the other hand, it was possible that they were merely taking precautions against the war being carried into their own country. An envoy from the King of Bengal was informed that no injury was intended towards his country, but that the Emperor was resolved to quell the rebels wherever they might be found. The envoy departed with the customary gifts and robe of honor, but it became clear that his master meant war. Reinforced by 20,000 men from Jaunpur, Babar resolved to force the passage of the Gogra in face of the Bengalis. He made unusually elaborate preparations, for he knew the enemy were skillful gunners, and were in great force. Ustád Ali was to plant his cannon, feringi pieces, and swivels (zarb-zan) on a rising ground at the point between the two rivers, and also keep up a hot fire from his matchlock-men upon the Bengali camp on the east bank of the Gogra. A little below the junction of the rivers, Mustafa was to direct a cannonade from his artillery, supported by matchlocks, on the enemy’s flank, and upon the Bengal flotilla which lay off an island. A number of sappers were sent to raise the batteries and set up the guns and ammunition stores. The main army was formed up in six divisions, four of which, under the Emperor’s son Askari, were already north of the Ganges. These were to cross the Gogra by boats or fords, and keep the enemy busy while the artillery was being carried across, and a strong force was sent ahead to divert their attention. The fifth division under Babar himself was to cover Ustád Ali’s batteries above the confluence, and then to cross the Gogra under the cover of the guns; whilst the sixth went to the support of Mustafa’s artillery on the right bank of me Ganges.

On Sunday and Monday, May 1 and 3,1529, these two divisions crossed the Ganges, and on Tuesday they marched on to the Gogra. Ustád Ali at the confluence was making excellent practice with his feringis upon the Bengal vessels in the river. Babar, who was suffering, went on board one of his boats, and took a dose of bhang—he had not given up his bolus, as well as his cup. Wednesday was spent in skirmishes with the Bengal boats, (several of which were captured,) in searching for a ford, and preparing for the forcing of the river. Meanwhile news came that Askari had got his divisions over the Gogra, and on the morning of Thursday, May 6, the battle began. The Bengal army, as was foreseen, moved up the river to meet Askari, and Babar at once ordered the fifth and sixth divisions to cross anyhow, swimming, in boats, or on bundles of reeds, and take the enemy in the rear. The movement was brilliantly carried out in the face of a determined resistance. Attacked in front and rear and flank, the enemy broke and fled. Good generalship had once more guided valor to victory.

The result was the collapse of the Afghan rebellion, and the conclusion of a treaty of peace with Bengal. In three battles Babar had reduced northern India to submission.

It was the last exploit of his life: his diary stops soon afterwards, save for a few fragments. One of the entries shows that he was writing in the midst of his campaigns, for he records how the rainy season burst upon him in a violent storm on May 26, which blew the tent down over his head so suddenly that “he had not time to gather up his papers and the loose sheets that were written”. “The books and sheets of paper” he adds, “were drenched and wet, but were gathered together with much pains, folded in woolen cloth, and placed under a bed over which carpets were thrown to dry and press them”.

We need not follow him on his journey back to Agra. One of the latest notes in the diary mentions his reunion with his wife, the beloved mother of Humayun and of his three sisters, “Rose-blush”, “Rosy-face” and “Rose-form”. “It was Sunday at midnight when I met Maham”—he had not seen her for very long. One of his first visits was to his aunts. He had brought ninety-six of his women relations from Kabul, and he made a point of going to pay his respects to them every Friday when at Agra. When his wife remonstrated with him on his going out in the heat to see them, he replied that his aunts had neither father nor brother, and there was none but he to comfort them. If no very devoted lover, Babar was certainly an admirable “family man”.

In the intervals of his campaigns he wrote that valuable description of Hindustan which displays his undiminished interest in natural history, and his singular quickness of observation and accurate commemoration of statistical details. Though he had conquered his new empire, he did not love it. “The country and towns of Hindustan” he writes, “are extremely ugly. All its towns and lands have a uniform look; its gardens have no walls; the greater part of it is a level plain”. He found the plains monotonous after the mountain scenery of Kabul and the well-watered orchards of Farghana.

“Hindustan” he adds, “is a country that has few pleasures to recommend it. The people are not handsome. They have no idea of the charms of friendly society. They have no genius, no intellectual comprehension, no politeness, no kindness or fellow-feeling, no ingenuity or mechanical invention in planning or executing their handicrafts, no skill or knowledge in design or architecture. They have no good horses, no good flesh, no grapes or musk-melons, no good fruits, no ice or cold water, no good food or bread in their bazars, no baths or colleges, or candles or torches—never a candle-stick!”.

He might have modified this sweeping condemnation if he, had lived longer in India and seen more of its races, and indeed he does admit that there are advantages even in India,—for example, in the abundance of workmen of all trades, and that “the climate during the rains is very pleasant”; but on the whole “the chief excellency of Hindustan is that it is a big country, with plenty of gold and silver”. But his perverse prejudice was deeply rooted, and one can see that even from the throne at Agra ho looks back, with regret to his own land, the land of melons and cool waters. Writing in February, 1539, to his old general, Khwája Kalán, in Afghanistan, in the midst of his triumphs, he says:

“The affairs of Hindustan have at length been brought to some degree of order, and I trust in Almighty God that the time is near at hand when, through his favor, everything will be quite settled here. As soon as that is done I shall set out for your quarters, God willing, without losing a moment. How can the delights of those lands ever be erased from the heart? How can one like me, who has vowed abstinence and purity of life, possibly forget the delicious melons and grapes of that happy land? The other day they brought me a musk-melon: as I cut it up I felt a deep home-sickness, and sense of exile from my native land, and I could not help weeping.

He has forgotten nothing of the beauties of his own Farghana, or of Kabul, the country of his adoption. He orders repairs of the castle and great mosque, as if he were on the spot. There is a portico that must be seen to, and a garden that needs more water, a plantation that should be renewed, and orchards to be sown with “beautiful and sweet-smelling flowers and shrubs”. He remembers with regret the joyous days he spent by the Kabul river, yet he is glad that he has had strength to reform. He admits that he “had much difficulty in reconciling himself to the desert of penitence” but he persevered:—

“Distraught I am since that I gave up wine;

Confused, to nothing does my soul incline.

Regret did, once my penitence beget;

Now penitence induces worse regret”.

“Excuse me” he continues, “for wandering into these follies. For God’s sake, do not think amiss of me for them. I wrote last year the quatrain I quoted, and indeed last year my desire and longing for wine and conviviality were excessive beyond measure; so much that I have even found myself shedding tears of vexation and disappointment. This year, thank God, these troubles are over, and this I ascribe chiefly to my occupying my mind with poetry. Let me advise you too to adopt a life of abstinence”.

Writing a little earlier (Nov. 13, 1528) to his eldest son, Humayun, to congratulate him on the birth of his first child, he is full of interest in the political abate of the Oxus country. Matters had arrived there at a point in which it seemed possible that the throne of Samarkand might be recovered; and Babar enjoins his son to advance with the support of his brothers to “Hisar, Samarkand, or Merv, as may be most advisable ... This is the time for you to court danger and hardship, and show your valor in arms. Fail not to quit yourself strenuously to meet every emergency: indolence and ease agree ill with kingship”. If the attack succeed, Babar will make an imperial government of Samarkand, with Humayun on the throne.

The letter is full of good advice, not only as to the campaign (which never came off), but on various matters of conduct; Humayun is to act handsomely by his brother Kamran, the ruler of Kabul; he is not to complain of his own loneliness in Badakhshan—it is unworthy of a prince;—he is to consult his Begs and ministers, avoid private parties, and call all the court to public levees twice every day; and pay special deference to Khwája Kalán, and keep up the strength and discipline of the army. Small faults do not escape the parental critic. “You have indeed written me letters”, says Babar, “but you certainly never read them over: had you attempted to read them you would have found it impossible”. Babar himself could hardly make them out, with their crabbed writing—addressed to the man who invented the special script called the Babari hand!—and their misspellings, and attempts at far-fetched idioms. “Write unaffectedly, says the critic, clearly, with plain words, which saves trouble to both writer and reader”. “The language of kings” it was said, “is the king of languages”, and Babar well understood how to write the royal tongue.

Not long after this, when the hopes of a reconquest of Samarkand were over, Humayun felt a longing to be with his father again, and set off from Badakhshan with impetuous haste, giving no notice of his coming. He found his parents at Agra :—

“I was just talking with his mother about him when in he came. His presence opened our hearts like rosebuds, and made our eyes shine like torches. It was my rule to keep open table every day, but on this occasion I gave feasts in his honor, and showed him every kind of distinction. We lived together for some time in the greatest intimacy. The truth is that his conversation had an inexpressible charm, and he realized absolutely the ideal of perfect manhood”.

How devotedly Babar loved his son was seen a few months later, when the young man was brought back by boat from his country estate at Sambhal in the last stage of fever. The doctors were powerless, and it was suggested that nothing could save him but some supreme sacrifice to God. Babar eagerly caught at the hope, and resolved at once to lay down his life for his son. In vain the wise men remonstrated, and begged him to give riches and treasure, or the great diamond of the Rajas—anything but himself. “Is there any stone” he answered, “that can be weighed against my son? Rather shall I pay his ransom myself, for he is in a grievous case, and my strength must bear his weakness”. He entered his son’s chamber, and going to the head of the bed, walked gravely three times round the sick man, saying the while: “On me be all that you are suffering.

“I have prevailed” at last he was heard to cry; “I have taken it!”. Indeed, in his own words: “At that moment I felt myself quite borne down, whilst he became buoyant and well. He arose in complete health, and I—I sank down in extreme illness. I called the chief men of the empire and the persons of greatest influence, and putting their hands in Humayun’s in token of investiture, I solemnly proclaimed him my successor, and assigned him the throne”.

These were probably almost the last words Babar wrote,—if, indeed, he wrote them at all. The frequent illnesses from which he had suffered in India, culminating in the nervous prostration that succeeded his anxiety for his son, had undermined his great strength. On December 26, 1530, he passed away in his beautiful garden-palace at Agra—a man of only forty-eight, a king of thirty-six years but years crowded with events, with hardships, tumult, and strenuous energy. The boy prince who had fought for his heritage long and indomitably with hordes of savage Mongols and Uzbegs, and only relinquished the hope of his ancestral throne after a struggle of twenty years, had at last found the way to a greater and nobler empire—whose splendor and ancient glory he had not yet learned to realize—but which he left, a magnificent heirloom, for his grandson Akbar to cherish and enrich.

Babar lies in his grave in the garden on the hill at Kabul, which he had chosen for his tomb, —“the sweetest spot of the neighborhood”—surrounded by those he loved, by the sweet-smelling flowers of his choice, and the cool running stream, beside which he once delighted to sit and gaze on the beautiful world. The people still flock to the spot, and offer prayers at the simple mosque which an august descendant built in memory of the founder of the Indian Empire. Babar was dead, but he had done what nothing could efface.

Death makes no conquest of this Conqueror,

For now he lives in Fame.