Frontispiece.
Page 363.
JEHANGIRE GOING TO VISIT MHER-UL-NISSA.
THE “PRIZE LIBRARY.”
LEGENDARY & ROMANTIC
TALES OF INDIAN HISTORY.
BY
THE REV. HOBART CAUNTER, B.D.
LONDON:
FREDERICK WARNE AND CO.
AND NEW YORK.
PREFACE.
This Volume of Legendary and Romantic Tales of Indian History was oneof a series of historical tales founded on the histories of England,France, Spain, Italy, and India, which obtained great popularity whenfirst published.
The copyright of them having passed to the present Publishers, theyhave been induced to reproduce them in a compact form—complete in asingle volume—in the belief that by so doing they will be adding tothe literary pleasure of another generation.
PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL EDITION.
The success of the several series of “Romantic Tales of History”already published has induced the publishers of these works to extendthem in order to embrace a portion of history generally consideredextremely exuberant in romantic features. The present series will beconfined to the Mahomedan conquests in India, in the records of whichare to be found numerous events of signal and stirring interest,which, while they develope the character of a distant people in aremote age, serve also to confirm many fine axioms of moral truth byexhibiting how, under all the variations of clime and fluctuations ofcircumstance, the great result of human actions is everywhere the same.
This being a portion of history with which the general reader is lessfamiliar than with that embraced in the preceding series of this work,the choice has been made under the impression that it may lead to amore extended reading of those annals which contain some of the mostinteresting facts to be found in the records of ages.
But while I feel that the subject is an important one, I have not beeninsensible to the difficulties with which it is encompassed,[Pg vi] and inproportion to the success of those volumes already before the publichas my consciousness of these difficulties been raised, for, feelingthat I have had greater impediments to success to overcome, I cannotbut be less sanguine in the expectation that I have realized what hasbeen so well done by my predecessors in a similar field.
Romantic as are many of the events which the Mahomedan annals supply,they are nevertheless all of one tone and colouring. They want thedelightful blendings and tintings of social circumstances. Theirprinces were despots, their nobles warriors, their governmentstyrannies, and their people slaves. The lives of their most eminentmen, who were distinguished chiefly for their deeds in arms, presentlittle else than a series of battles. Their principal amusement was thechase, in which similar perils to those presented in war were courtedfor t