influence or interest in Hindostan. It was re served for the princes of the next family, who, by deposing Khosru, obtained possession of his empire, to fix their capital in India, and to establish permanently the Mussulman belief on the throne of Dehli. The father of Hassan ben Hossain owed his fortunes and advancement to the government of Gaur to the seventh Ghaznavide Sultan Ibrahim, but Hassan taking advantage of the weak and disordered state of the empire of Ghazna under Bharâm Shah, invaded it, and after various success, both in his reign and that of his successor Khosru Shah, he took the latter prisoner, and he died in confinement ten years after the loss of his kingdom.

Previous to the final conquest of Ghazna, Has san met with one of those singular reverses of fortune which are only to be met with in oriental story having invaded the dominions of the Seleucidæ, he was taken prisoner, and appears to have been made the personal attendant of Sangiar the then reigning monarch, in which situation he so much ingratiated himself by his talents for poetry and for flattery, that the conqueror sent him back laden with gifts to his own ca

The succession of these princes is a little different in Dow's Ferishta, where we find two Khosrus after Bahrâm, the first of whom reigned seven years; and it was his son who was imprisoned by the Gauride Mahommed.

pital, where he died either in the same year in which he took Khosru Shah prisoner, or that immediately following it.

Mahommed Seifeddien succeeded his father Hassan, and reigned seven years, which were of little importance to India; but the joint reigns of Giath'o'dien Abulfutteh and Shahabo'dien Abul Muzzuffur which lasted forty years, and the short period of four years during which the latter survived his beloved brother and friend, fixed the first Mussulman empire within India Proper on the throne of Dehli.

The history of the immediate cause of the revolution which subverted the ancient Hindû monarchy of Indra-Patti or Dehli, is among the most romantic that even the annals of the East present.

Jya Chandra, Emperor of India, whose capital was Canoge, was not in truth the legitimate sovereign of the country; that title belonged to the young hero Pithaura king of Dehli, whose noble character and unhappy fate are the theme of both Mussulman and Hindû writers: the two monarchs appear, however, to have lived for some years in good intelligence, till upon occasion of a solemn sacrifice at the capital of Jya Chandra, where the functions of officiating priests were to be performed by sovereign princes; Pithaura, not choosing to perform an inferior part while his

rank as superior lord should have made him the high priest, absented himself from the ceremony, and thus incurred the enmity and persecution of the monarch of Canoge. Shortly afterwards, a more romantic adventure terminated not only in the destruction of Pithaura but in his own ruin. Jya Chandra had adopted as his daughter a beautiful and accomplished damsel with whom the king of Sinhala-Dwipa or Ceylon had presented him, during an excursion he had made to that island under pretence of a pilgrimage, but in reality to exact tribute from the kings of the southern provinces. This damsel he had promised in marriage to a neighbouring monarch, but she, being enamoured of the valorous and noble Pithaura, refused her consent. Pithaura being at that time at Dehli and hearing of her affection, disguised himself, his brothers and attendants as the servants of a bard whom he sent to the court of Jya Chandra; and having by his means obtained an interview with the fair prisoner, for such she had been since her avowal of her affection for Pithaura, he carried her off in safety to Dehli during a species of tournament held by Jya Chandra, though not without a combat which deprived him of some of his bravest warriors.

The king of Canoge, in order to revenge himself the more completely for this insult, implored the assistance of Shahab'o'dien, who ac

cordingly marched with a powerful army against Pithaura, who roused himself from the delights of his capital and the indulgence of his love to meet the Mussulmans in the plains of Thanessar, where he was defeated and slain A. D. 1194*. His capital immediately fell, and Shahab'o'dien fixed in it the first and greatest of the Mahomedan monarchies of India; and very shortly afterwards overthrew Jya Chandra himself, and thus obtained the most extensive and richest provinces of Hindostan.

When Shahab'o'dien found himself sole master of the extensive dominions of the Ghaznavide sultan, increased by his récent conquests, his regret at having no male children induced him to adopt several of his slaves, among whom he divided his empire. Of these, Tegh Ildiz in Ghazna, Nassuro'dien in Multan, and Cuttubo’dien Ibec in Dehli, founded powerful dynasties after the death of Mahmoud the immediate successor of Shahabo'dien, of the Gauride family, and who reigned seven years. Mahmoud fell a victim to the indignation excited by his treachery in betraying the young prince Ali Shah into the hands of his rival on the throne of Khouaresm, Mohammed Shah, and was consequently murdered in his bed A. D. 1212t;

when the crown of Ghazna was seized by the same Mohammed Shah the Khouaresmian*.

But his dominion in India was rather nominal than real, as he was employed during the whole of it in war with Gengis Khan, whom he had imprudently provoked. In 596 of the Hegirat, sultan Mohammed invaded Khorassan, and in one of those battles which in the East have usually decided the fate of nations, obtained entire possession of that country. The following year he made an incursion into Tartary, during which he took Samarkand and Bochara, and defeated the eastern Tartars and Turks in a pitched battle, on which occasion he received the name of Iskender Thani. Meanwhile his lieutenant in Transoxania, who was governor of Otrar the

* The Khouaresmian dynasty takes its name from the country of Khouaresm on the Oxus. The first of these sovereigns Cottub'o'dien Mohammed ben Bousteghin Gurckeh, who reigned thirty years, established himself under the Seleucidæ in the year of the Hegira 491, A. D. 1097; his successors were: Atsiz who reigned twenty years; I lArslan seven years; Sultan Shah twenty-one years; Takash eight years; Cuttub o'dien Mahommed ben Takash twenty-one years: this king was succeeded by Rocneddin Gorsang, Gaiath o❜dien Mirsha, and Gelal'o dien Maubek Berni, who at different times reigned eleven years to the extinction of the dynasty in A. H. 628, or A. D. 1231. It was the sixth of these, Cuttub o'dien Mahommed ben Takash, who obtained the dominions of the Ghaznavide sovereigns.

† A. D. 1199.