226 The Kirdn-us-Sci'dain of Mir Khusrau. [No. 3, 



as we have said, Mir Khusrau strikes out a new line for himself; 

 and he is, we believe, the first, and we might almost add the last, 

 of his country's poets who has been bold enough to look away from 

 the past to the present, and seek for his inspiration in the actual 

 scenes transpiring before his eyes. 



He lived in a stirring time. His father was a military chief of 

 the Pre-Moghul empire, and fell in battle when his son was nine years 

 old. Khusrau was born A. H. 651 (A. D. 1253,) and he died A. H. 

 725 (A. D. 1325.) For many years he was attached to the court, 

 and he shared many of the adventures of his royal patrons. He was 

 contemporary, in his youth, with the last Slave Kings, and he out- 

 lived the whole Khilji dynasty. He had been born under Nasir-ud- 

 Dfn, and his early patron was Prince Muhammad, the ' Black Prince' 

 of Indian history, whose valour and taste and untimely death throw 

 such a colour of romantic interest round his father Bulbun's court, 

 in spite of his mean jealousies and tyrannical policy. He was at 

 the court when the revolution took place, by which the sceptre passed 

 from the Slaves to the Khilji dynasty, and he saw the whole course 

 of Ala-ud-din's strangely eventful career, — beginning with the basest 

 ingratitude and murder, and ending Lord of all India, with a wider 

 empire than any of his predecessors ; though that empire was 

 not fated to remain in his family, but passed soon after his death to 

 a stranger. Nor was the aspect of India itself less stirring than the 

 changeful history of its Kings. When Khusrau was bom, the great 

 storm of Moghul invasion which had devastated all central Asia, 

 was still threatening from the North-west. He was five years old 

 when the tidings came which spread a thrill of horror through the 

 Muhammadan world, that Baghdad was taken and the last of the 

 Caliphs slain by the idolaters ! He saw Ala-ud-din's adventurous plunge 

 into the unknown forests of the Deccan, and he lived to see Warangol 

 taken in 1323, the last Hindu kingdom of the South subverted and 

 its Bsija brought a prisoner to Dehli ! 



Living then, as he did, in such a busy time, we need not wonder that 

 a man who with all his faults was a true poet, could see materials for 

 romance in the present around him, as well as in the legendary 

 glories of Alexander and Chosroes. Two of his poems have, for their 

 subjects, scenes which he had either witnessed or heard of from 



