Life and Conditions of the People of Hindustan (1200–1550 A.D.) c4.s1.t1.7

c4.s1.t1.7

However, when we come to fix the territorial and cultural limits of Hindustan we are faced with many difficulties. The central administration, usually established at Delhi, was practically the only unifying force in the country, and its territorial area differed from dynasty to dynasty, even from sovereign to sovereign. To put it negatively, we might say that strictly speaking, the land to the west of the Indus was not included in Hindustan, for the Sultans of Delhi had no effective political control over it, although isolated attempts may have been made to reduce some parts to subjection.¹ Kashmir was similarly shut off from the rest of India, and thus closed to the operation of direct influences from outside.² Again, inaccessibility kept the regions of Rajputana, Gondwana, and Assam more or less immune from effective interference of the Sultans of Delhi. It has been remarked that the kingdom of Delhi varied in its territorial extent from time to time. For example, when Bahlul Lodi was invited to take the throne some time after the invasion of Timur, almost every town had its own ruler, and the titular Sayyid monarch ruled only over the city of Delhi and a few neighbouring villages. So that the humorous people of Delhi used to remark that the dominions of the ‘Lord of the World’ extend from Delhi to Palam (a neighbouring village).³ On the other hand the kingdom of Sultan Muhammad Tughluq penetrated far into the Deccan, and a more central capital was found in Deogir in south. Between these two extremes lay varying types of monarchies, the extent of whose dominions was determined according to the rule of despotism, by the length of their swords. Roughly speaking, we may say that the territory of Hindustan, which was subject to more or less uniform political influences, comprised the Punjab, the valleys of the Indus, the Jumna and the Ganges as far as Gaur or Lakhnauti, and the fertile province of Oudh, with various strongholds such as Ajmer, Bayana, Ranthambhor, Gwalior, and Kalinjar to the West. It did not include the Himalayas, where Hindu princes ruled undisturbed; and a wide tract at the foot of the mountains, including the greater part of Katehr, the modern Rohilkhand, and the sub-montane tracts of Oudh were left unexplored.¹ The political territory, however, is hardly an adequate measure of the spheres of cultural influences, for in the course of time, even the inaccessible regions of Rajputana assimilated the culture of their neighbours so well that it became difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish between a Rajput and a Mughal.