860 Lieut. -Colonel Briggs on the Life and Writings ofFerishla. 



sors found it politic to bestow on the military chiefs of the people they had 

 conquered honourable employ under their respective governments. The 

 Muhamedans, in fact, retained no certain hold in India till they amalga- 

 mated with its inhabitants ; and the strength of each kingdom and princi- 

 pality rose or fell, in proportion to the degree of conHdence bestowed on its 

 native population, and to the share they bore in the government and offices 

 of the state. The splendour, power, and magnificence of the court of Dehli, 

 during the fourteenth century, arc strongly contrasted with the imbecility 

 whicli marked its fallen state in the fifteenth ; and which led to its total 

 downfall in the sixteenth. The same people who resisted for forty years 

 with almost superhuman skill and valour the hosts of Zengiz Khan in the 

 thirteenth century, were subdued in one battle by Baber, with less than 

 twelve thousand men, in 15'26. Of the thirteen Muhamedan princes who 

 ruled independently of the kings of Dehli during the fourteenth and fif- 

 teenth centuries, eleven fell before the power of Akber in one reign : 

 and his great grandson Aurungzeb, who ruled over the greatest extent of 

 Indian empire of which we have any certain account, paved the way for its 

 total dissolution in the short period of a few years. Can it be supposed that 

 the great exertions made at one time, and the mighty revolutions so rapidly 

 effected at others, were the mere result of accident ? Ferishta has, I think, 

 satisfactorily shewn how they came to pass. His pages are full of incident 

 and amusement to the mere man of letters, and of instruction to the soldier, 

 the philosopher, and the statesman ; and they exhibit to the present posses- 

 sors of India, examples of the energy which its population is capable of 

 exerting when smarting under injustice and oppression. 



In this point of view the necessity of studying Indian history deserves 

 to be strongly inculcated on the minds of all who are appointed to rule 

 over that important part of the British empire ; and we are, I conceive, 

 highly indebted to Ferishta for aftbrding us the means of doing so, through 

 a channel so devoid of fiction, and so free from prejudice, as the work of 

 that celebrated historian. 



Before concluding this essay it was my intention to have said something 

 of that superb city in which Ferishta wrote his work ; but neither the time 

 nor space allotted for this paper admit of my doing so at present. A city 

 with ramparts from ten to twenty feet in width, mounted with cannon, and 

 five miles in circumference, exhibits a picture of no ordinary interest. Here 

 we find the remains of superb mosques, or public places of worship, one of 



