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sovereignties of inferior degree, to have cherished, on its two great 

 rivers, two mighty kingdoms, while the Peninsula, till subdued by 

 Akber and Aureng-Zebe, exhibited a third, formed exactly on the 

 same feudal principles. Alexander, on his invasion of the Panjab, 

 experienced the truth of this statement, in the formidable opposition 

 which he met with from Porus ; and the report of the ambassadors 

 of Seleucus, at Pallibothra, fully confirms it with respect to the re- 

 gions adjoining the Ganges. The confederated rajahs, who so long 

 bade defiance to the Mohammedan armies in the Deccan, leave in 

 our minds no doubt of this fact in regard to the Peninsula. The 

 most powerful, because the most remote from foreign invasion, of 

 these kingdoms, seems to have been that on the Ganges, of which 

 Oude, Pallibothra, Canouge, and Gour, were the successive capitals. 

 When the early Mohammedan sultans of the Gaznavide dynasty 

 conquered the Superior India, they politically made Delhi, founded 

 on the ruins of the ancient Hastanapoor, which seems to have 

 been the first imperial city of Hindostan, and stands on the river 

 Jumna that disembogues its water into the Ganges, their principal 

 residence, because it was more central, and placed them nearer their 

 territories on the west of the Indus, which extended even to the 

 capital of their hereditary domain. Afterwards even Lahore and 

 Cabul became the successive abode of those sovereigns, who erected 

 in them magnificent palaces ; while the victories of Akber, in the 

 Deccau, gave being to the superb palace and splendid decorations 

 of Agra. The puissant sovereign of the empire on the Ganges, an 

 empire which comprehended Delhi and the Dooab, and extended to 

 the eastern limits of the Panjab, seems to have been for many ages 

 acknowledged Lord Paramount of India ; and accordingly we have 

 seen, that, when Judishter celebrated the great festival of the 

 RAISOO, to the capital of that empire all the inferior rajahs flocked, 

 and at a very late period of its glory, an instance related in the 



