A.D. 1627 TO A.D. 1657 The Knight-of-the-Rueful-Countenance in his youth, remarkable for his lack of amiability, Shahjahan's character appears to have changed to cheerfulness from...
A.D. 700 TO A.D. 1001 These, as has been said, are the Dark Ages of Hindustan. She has ever been the prey of personality, the willing victim of vitality. From the year B.C. 620, wh...
A.D. 1556 TO A.D. 1605 Here is a subject indeed! Considering the time--a time when Elizabeth of England found that England ready to support her in beheading her woman-cousin, when...
A.D. 1542 TO A.D. 1554 Sher-khan, the man who, worsting Humayon, seized on the throne, had no atom of royal blood in his veins. He was a plain soldier, though of good birth; but, h...
B.C. 326 TO B.C. 320 "Some talk of Alexander...." Who does not know the context? Who also does not think that he knows who Alexander was, who could not, if necessary, reel off a su...
As the mind's eye travels backwards across the wide plains of Northern India, attempting to re-people it with the men of olden time, historical insight fails us at about the sevent...
A.D. 1657 TO A.D. 1707 With Aurungzebe, the Middle Age of Indian History ends. From the date of his death, interest finally ceases to centre round the dying dynasties of India, and...
A.D. 1176 TO A.D. 1206 More than a hundred years had passed since Mahmud of Ghuzni's strong grip had relaxed on India. During that time she had reverted, as she always will revert,...
A.D. 1767 TO A.D. 1773 While Clive was laying the foundation-stones both of the Indian Empire and the Indian Civil Service in Bengal, Madras had had its share of wars and rumours o...
A.D. 1751 TO A.D. 1757 Never was the strange susceptibility of India to the influence of personal vitality better exemplified than in the case of Robert Clive. When, in 1751, he fi...
A.D. 1757 TO A.D. 1767 It was in the year 1757, just one hundred years before the Mutiny, that the battle of Plassey was fought, and that by the enthronement of a Nawab who owed ev...
A.D. 1786 TO A.D. 1811 The heroic age of the history of British India is now past. Forced by Fate and by the strong right hand of two strong men, England, with one eye still fixed...
A.D. 1519 TO A.D. 1530 These eleven years are all that India really can claim of Babar's life; yet ever since the day when, after a fatal battle in 1503, he had taken refuge in a s...
A.D. 1288 TO A.D. 1398 As can easily be imagined, India at the end of those ten Slave reigns (which between them lasted but eighty-two years) was a very different place to what Ind...
A.D. 1773 TO A.D. 1784 It will be remembered that Warren Hastings was the only Member of Council who supported Clive in his decision that all servants of the Company engaging in pr...
A.D. 1389 TO A.D. 1514 For over a hundred and twenty years India remained free from a master hand. It is true that the puppet-king Mahmud, who had fled from Delhi on that fateful n...
A.D. 1605 TO A.D. 1627 These names, "Conqueror of the World" and "Light of the World," are inseparable. It is as well they should be so, for they supply us with the only excuse whi...
B.C. 321 TO B.C. 184 We come here to one of the landmarks of Indian History. There were seven kings of the Maurya dynasty; of these, two gained for themselves an abiding place in t...
A.D. 450 TO A.D. 648 The name Huns has quite a familiar sound. We think of Attila; we remember the 350 pounds weight of gold which Theodosius of Byzantium paid as an annual tribute...
B.C. 2000 TO B.C. 1400 Before entering on its history it is necessary to grasp the size of the great continent with which we have to deal. Roughly speaking, India has fourteen and...
A.D. 1001 TO A.D. 1200 Part II The Great Raider Mahmud being now put past, the Campaigns of the Crescent continued in feebler fashion. In truth, for a few years Mahomed and Masud,...
B.C. 620 TO B.C. 327 We stand now on the threshold of actual history. Before us lie two thousand five hundred years; and behind us? Who can say? From the far distance come the reve...
A.D. 1748 TO A.D. 1751 When the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle ended open warfare between the French and the English, both naturally turned their eyes more keenly upon India. What they s...
A.D. 1707 Before making our volte face, and in future chronicling the history of India from the Western standpoint, it will be well to see what this India was which England set her...
ABOUT B.C. 1400 TO ABOUT B.C. 1000 The area of India which has now to be considered is much larger. Oudh, Northern Behar, and the country about Benares are comprised in it; but Sou...
A.D. 1850 TO A.D. 1857 Beyond the second Burmese war and the annexation of Oude there is little to be recorded in this short period of seven years. The former passed on, as did eve...
A.D. 1742 TO A.D. 1748 The eye of France had been on India for a century and a half, for it was in 1601 that a fleet of French merchant ships set out from St Malo for Hindustan, bu...
A.D. 1206 TO A.D. 1288 "The Empire of Delhi was founded by a slave." So runs the well-known jibe. And it is true; for although India, despite the combined resistance of the Rajputs...
A.D. 308 TO A.D. 450 The curtain rises again upon a wedding; the wedding of Princess Kumari Devi. Eight hundred years before, King Bimbi-sara of the Sesu-naga dynasty had strengthe...
B.C. 231 TO A.D. 45 A growing tide as it nears the springs claims more and more of the shore at each rise and fall. So it was with the tide which on Asoka's death set in around his...