History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v3.c31.20

v3.c31.20

By the grace of God this third volume of the History of Mediæval Hindu India as I had projected it several years back is ready and I place it before the indulgent reader under the second name of ‘The Downfall of Hindu India.’ Indeed the idea of writing this history was originally suggested to me by Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, as Mediæval Hindu empire in its decline and fall struck me as greatly resembling the Roman empire. It fell before the Turks* like the other and its fall closed with the taking of Kanauj on the Ganges as the latter’s did with the storming of Constantinople on the Bosphorus. The Grecian capital became, moreover, the seat of the Turkish Mahomedan empire in Europe as Delhi became the seat of Turco-Afghan Mahomedan empire in India. The Greeks or Eastern Romans had declined in martial virtues and the same may be said of the Hindus generally, though the Rajputs, unlike the Greeks, even then maintained their high reputation for valour and love of independence and still maintain their semi-independence in the sands and hills of Rajputana. Prithviraj and Jaichand strike us, unlike the last Grecian emperors, as redoubtable warriors who have immortalised their names in Indian history by their tragic but heroic end on the battlefield. Yet for various reasons, the generality of the people in Hindu India had become meek and accepted dependence without a tough national struggle.