Kingdoms are shrunk to provinces, and chains
Clank over sceptred cities; nations melt
From power's high pinnacle, when they have felt
The sunshine for a while, and downward go,
Like lauwine loosened from the mountain's belt.

—Childe Harold iv., 12.

WHAT is chiefly wanting to throw light on Mirza Haidar's history, is the narrative of some judicious European traveller— a contemporary, or nearly so—who might have afforded an outside view of the state of Central Asia at the period in question, and thus have brought some of our author's state­ments into touch with Western aspects of history. The Tárikh-i-Rashidi refers, for the most part, to the darkest times in the annals of the inner Asiatic States: when strife and disorder prevailed, and no commanding personality or stable dynasty existed in any quarter, to check confusion and form a centre of security. In the days of Chingiz and his immediate successors, Mongol rule was supreme over the greater part of Central Asia and China. The Khans were in most respects uncouth and uncivilised, but their government was a vigorous and consistent one while it lasted. They had confidence in their strength, and were, for that reason probably, liberal and tolerant in their general policy, when dealing with the many foreign nations with whom they came in contact. They knew, also, how to ensure order in their own possessions, and thus attracted envoys, merchants, and missionaries, who have been the means (whatever it may be worth) of handing them down in history with perhaps their best side foremost.

The decay of Mongol authority and the rise of Musulman influence, changed all this in the more westerly regions, while, on the side of China, the accession of an unwarlike dynasty tended to weakness at the extremities of the empire, and laid open large tracts of the interior of the continent to the misrule of unstable and lawless tribes, whose chiefs, while unable to gain permanency for themselves, repelled all intercourse with civilised nations, and were the means only of intensifying the barbarism of their people. For a time, towards the end of the fourteenth century and the early part of the fifteenth, the ascendency of Timur and his immediate descendants proved, to some extent, an agency for the preservation of order, and perhaps prevented the tide of nomad misrule from overwhelm­ing the whole of the best parts of Central Asia. Except for this check, it is probable that the relapse into barbarism would have been even more lasting than it was, and would have had more far-reaching results. But the times of Timur and Ulugh Beg were stormy ones, and had little of the steadying influences of those of the Mongols. Being Musulman rulers, the advance of Islam, and the intolerance that always goes hand in hand with that system of religion and government, was encouraged, so that as soon as the secular authority of the Timuri began to weaken, the religious element grew stronger and came to the front. Saints and religious pretenders increased in numbers, and nothing is more clear in Mirza Haidar's history than the influence they gained in all political affairs. Each Khan and Chief, besides many of the leading Amirs, he tells us, retained at their headquarters one or more of these advisers; and he shows how in his own case, and in that of his master, Said Khan, they gained an altogether inordinate degree of control over their patrons. Even such barbarous tyrants as Abá Bakr of Kashghar, and the most blood-thirsty of the Uzbeg chiefs, seem to have honoured them with superstitious reverence, and to have accepted their guidance. It was in deference, appa­rently, to the teachings of this class, and under the pretence of religious zeal, that all the worst deeds of these potentates were done—that plundering expeditions assumed the name of holy wars, that murders, prompted in reality by fear or revenge, were committed under priestly sanction, and that wholesale slavery was carried on as a meritorious measure of conversion from infidelity.

Under such conditions as these Central Asia must have been impenetrable to European travellers, whether missionaries or merchants, while it is impossible to imagine that any European monarch would depute envoys to such rulers as Shaibani Khan or Mirza Abá Bakr, as they had done to the Mongol Khákáns and to Timur. Even when these personages had disappeared, Uzbegs, Uzbeg-Kazáks, and Kirghiz, acting under chiefs whose names are scarcely known in history (but who were to the full as rude and lawless), were always at war with each other or with their neighbours. They kept the whole of the country north of the Sir and the Tian Shan in a state of tumult, and consequently closed to all foreign intercourse; whilst they were, besides, the means of weakening the governments—such as they were—of Khorasán, Transoxiana, and Alti-Shahr, and assisted in cutting them off from the West. In the days of the grandsons and early successors of Chingiz Khan, we find envoys like Plano Carpini and Rubruk traversing Asia with safety from the Ural to the northern confines of Mongolia, and there finding Europeans in the service of the Khákáns; the Polos could march backwards and forwards from the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf, to China, and carry with them their wares in security; while preaching friars and missionaries, such as Odoric of Pordenone, John of Marignolli, William of Modena, and their companions, were tolerated not only as travellers, but as pro­pagandists.

These are only a few among those whose names happen to have been preserved in documents which they, or their friends, left behind them, and which have survived till modern times. But for one who committed his experiences to writing, there must have been many of the same class who attempted nothing in the shape of a record, and as many more whose journals, letters, or what not, have been lost during the intervening ages, or which have not yet come to light. In short, all that we know of the early part of the Mongol period, or from the middle of the thirteenth century to nearly the middle of the fourteenth, points to order and security, and thus to a constant intercourse with the West and Europe. But for the whole of what may be called the authentic period of Mirza Haidar's history—i.e., from the second half of the fourteenth century until it closes in the middle of the sixteenth—not a single instance can be mentioned of a European having visited any of the regions of Central Asia, east of Samarkand.

If any there were, no vestige of them has survived; indeed, the party of missionaries, twenty in number, with six lay companions, who had been sent forth from Avignon in 1333 under Friar Nicholas, as Bishop of Cambulu (Khan Báligh), can only be traced as far as Almáligh, and seems never to have been heard of later than 1338.* The latter date would fall within the reign of the Chaghatai Khan, Buzun, and at a time when no Khan was reigning in Moghulistan. As far as can be gathered from the imperfect chronology of those times, as furnished by Mirza Haidar's history, Isán Bugha, the first Moghul Khan, was already dead, and the second, Tughluk Timur, had not yet succeeded him. Probably Amir Bulaji, the Dughlát, was the Ulusbegi, or chief of the tribe, and he, as we are told, was a Musulman of very recent date. Whether the disappearance of the friars had any connection with the rise of Islam in the country at that time, or with the general disorder that prevailed, can only be a matter of conjecture. All that is certain is that no other European is heard of in Central Asia till the embassy of Ruy Gonzalez Clavijo from Henry III. of Spain to the Court of Timur, which reached Samarkand in 1404, or about a year before Timur's death. The narrative of this embassy, however, does not relate to the part of Central Asia now alluded to, but to the centre of the king­doms, mentioned above, as forming a barrier against the mis­rule of the barbarous nomads farther east. Don Ruy's narrative therefore cannot be utilised to throw light on the obscurities of Mirza Haidar's history, for all that the Tárikh-i-Rashidi relates concerning Transoxiana is amply elucidated by other Musulman chronicles, and among them some of the best. More properly it should be said that from the middle of the fourteenth century no European is heard of in eastern Central Asia till some fifty and odd years after the death of Mirza Haidar, and when the kingdom of the Moghul Khans, having split up into a number of small States, was, to all intents and purposes, at the end of its existence.

And if there were no European spectators to review what was passing in eastern Central Asia, neither does there appear to have been any Musulman annalist contemporary, or even nearly so, with our author, who devoted attention to the Moghul Khanates during this dark period. At any rate, I have met with no writer who has done more than allude to them casually. Perhaps the book which casts the most light on the country and the times, is the Zafar-Náma of Sharaf-ud-Din Ali, Yazdi. As one of the historians of Timur's reign, and the chronicler of his campaigns in Moghulistan, Sharaf-ud-Din has necessarily become an authority on the period ending with the date of Timur's death, although he had never set himself the special task of writing a history of Moghulistan and its Khans. He merely speaks of those against whom his hero, Timur, carried on campaigns or had other direct dealings with, but he in no way professes to write the story of the Moghuls for any period. Thus, his narrative ends about a hundred and twenty years before Mirza Haidar was of an age to begin collecting the traditions, which constitute the groundwork of much of the early part of his own book; and for this interval, as well as for the subsequent quarter of a century (about) over which his life extended, it may be said, I think, that he is the sole Musulman authority for the history of the Moghuls. What the Chinese have recorded is brief and incidental only, as we have seen. Where, however, Sharaf-ud-Din occupied himself with Moghulistan and events connected with it in the neighbouring regions, Mirza Haidar has given no account of his own—he trusted entirely to the Yazdi author, and has simply copied his work. The brief period that falls between the opening date of the Tárikh-i-Rashidi, and the point where the Zafar-Náma takes up the narrative, is dealt with to some slight extent by other Musulman authors, though Mirza Haidar gives his own version of it as founded on the traditions of his ancestors.

It may be regarded, therefore, that his history is the only work we have, which deals with the period subsequent to the accounts furnished by the Zafar-Náma—or from the early years of the fifteenth century to the middle of the sixteenth; while for this epoch Mirza Haidar's evidence is unsupported by any European witness, and only very partially attested to by the Chinese annalists. This solitary, individual character of the book may perhaps enhance its value as a history, and render it indispensable as a reference, for the interval where it stands alone; but it must be admitted that it would have had a still higher value had it been illustrated by outside commen­tary, and had it been connected with Western countries and events by a link of foreign testimony. If, in other words, some European spectator, regarding matters from a different point of view from that of Mirza Haidar, had done for him what Plano Carpini and Rubruk chanced to do for the Jahán Kushai of Juvaini, or Marco Polo for the field covered by authors who treat of the various countries of Asia in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the history of the times might have been worked out to better purpose than is the case now, and fewer doubtful points left unelucidated.

The sequel to the Tárikh-i-Rashidi is, perhaps, scarcely a subject which should encumber this Introduction, yet it may be worth while to sketch very briefly an outline of what took place in Moghulistan and Eastern Turkistan after the last pages of the book were written. At that time the author had been some six years regent of Kashmir, and had already been absent from the kingdom of the Moghuls for about fourteen years, but he continued, it would seem, to keep up communica­tion with his friends in Kashghar till the end, and evidently took a deep interest in all that was happening there. So much was this the case, that in the last recorded chapters of his book,* though he omits much that might have been worthy of notice regarding the events that were passing around him in Kashmir, he gives some particulars of the course of affairs in what may be called his own country.

At the time when he left it, to conduct Said Khan's expedition into Ladak, Tibet and Kashmir, the Kirghiz and the Shaibán Uzbegs, who were the most inveterate enemies of his people, had been so far checked as to admit of the Khan turning his attention to other quarters. Still they were only checked and by no means subdued: in fact, their power was increasing as that of the Moghuls declined, and very shortly after Said Khan's eldest son, Rashid Sultan, came into possession of his father's kingdom, wars broke out afresh with the Kirghiz, and this time also with the Kazák Uzbegs. Again the Khan is said to have been victorious, and is described as defeating the Uzbegs in more than one great battle; but these victories, like the earlier ones, were mere checks to the enemy, and it seems evident that during Rashid's reign they gained in strength and became practically masters of the greater part, if not the whole, of Moghulistan; while the territory of the Khanate became almost entirely confined to the districts of Alti-Shahr.

This Rashid Sultan (otherwise Abdur Rashid Khan) succeeded his father in 1533, and long outlasted our author, for the length of his reign is given by Amin Ahmad Rázi, in the Haft Iklim,* as thirty-three hajra years, which would bring the date of his death to 973 H., or 1565-6 A.D. As Ahmad Rázi's account of the dynasty, though exceedingly brief, is the only one that approaches a consecutive story, it may be followed here. He tells us that Rashid had thirteen sons, the eldest of whom was named Abdul Latif. This prince is extolled for his bravery, and is said to have been sent several times, by his father, into Moghulistan, to oppose the Kirghiz and the Kazáks, and that, though he was always victorious over his enemies, he lost his life during the wars.* His brother Abdul Karim, who was reigning in 1593, when Ahmad Rázi wrote, is also praised for his courage and accomplishments, after the manner of Asiatic writers. Abdul Rahim, the third son, is stated to have left the country without his father's consent and to have led an expedition into Tibet, where he was killed; while the fourth, named Abdul Aziz, died a natural death at the age of sixteen. The fifth son's name was Adham Sultan, but he was known as Sufi Sultan. He had been made governor of Kashghar, by his father, and retained the post for sixteen years, but he survived the latter only for a short time. He appears to have been succeeded at Kashghar by his brother, Muhammad Sultan, the sixth son of Rashid, who was governor of that place at the date of the completion of the Haft Iklim.* The seventh was called Muhammad Báki, but nothing is recorded of him. The eighth was Koraish Sultan, who had dissensions with his brother Abdul Karim, and retired to India, where he was received with every honour, presumably by the Chaghatais. He left two children, who were still alive when Ahmad Rázi wrote his history. Of the five remaining sons of Rashid Sultan nothing is related; the names of three only are mentioned, as Ulus Sultan, Arif Sultan, and Adul Rahim Sultan.

From this meagre account, little can be gathered regarding the course of events during the forty-four years that followed on the close of Mirza Haidar's work.* The only two points that seem clear are, that there was much contention with the Kirghiz and a tendency towards subdivision of the Khanate. At length, however, we come to a ray of light (though, alas, too late to be of great value) shed by a European traveller; for the next glimpse we get of the Moghuls and their State is from the narrative of the Portuguese missionary Benedict Goës, which was mentioned, in the last chapter, as having been partially rescued from oblivion by Father Matthew Ricci of the Jesuit mission at Peking.

Goës, in seeking a road to China, from Agra and Lahore, passed through Afghanistan and over the Pamirs, and reached Yarkand towards the end of 1603. Here he remained for about a year, paying, during that interval, a brief visit to Khotan. After this he proceeded, with many delays, eastward, through Aksu, Chálish (the modern Karashahr) Turfán and Kamul, to Suchou on the western frontier of China, where he died in April 1607. He speaks of Yarkand as the capital of the kingdom of Kashghar, and it was there that resided “the king” whose name was Muhammad Khan. How far this Khan's authority extended is nowhere stated, but the pass with which he furnished Goës' party, for their journey eastward, seems to have been respected, at any rate, as far as Kuchar. Aksu is particularly mentioned as “a town of the kingdom of Cascar” (Kashghar), and the chief there is described as a nephew of the king's, and only twelve years of age; but he is not named. The territory of “Cialis” (Chálish) was governed by an illegitimate son of the king of Kashghar; but here again the traveller furnishes no name, and gives no indication of whether the territory was a dependency, or not, of Muhammad Khan's. Similarly, when mentioning Khotan, he merely alludes to “the prince of Quotan,” but gives no name or other informa­tion regarding him. Thus the only personage whose name can be identified from Goës' narrative, is Muhammad Khan, who appears to be the ‘Muhammad Sultan’ of Ahmad Rázi's list, and the sixth son of Rashid Sultan. This, at any rate, seems possible as far as dates are concerned, though Ahmad Rázi states that Abdul Karim (the second son of Rashid) was the reigning Khan in 1593, and Muhammad Sultan only governor of Kashghar—meaning, presumably, the town and district of that name, but not the entire Khanate. Ten years, however, had passed between the date when Ahmad Rázi wrote and that of Goës' visit to the country. It is just possible, therefore, that Muhammad Sultan may have succeeded his elder brother during the interval, and in that case he would, according to the ordinary custom, have added the title of “Khan” to his name.

The only other name that occurs in the history of Eastern Turkistan as that of a ruler of Kashghar, is one Ismail Khan, who was apparently the last of all the Moghuls to fill that position, if indeed, he was a ruler, or ‘Khan,’ in the proper sense of the word. It would seem from Mr. Shaw's fragmentary papers, mentioned in note 2, p. 121, above, that he was a great-grandson of Rashid Sultan, and he is shown in this degree, in the genealogical table at the end of Section II. of this Introduc­tion. He must have lived in the third quarter of the seventeenth century when the Khwájas held the real and practical authority in the State; while at a somewhat earlier date we hear of one Muhammad Khan as governor at Yarkand, Abdulla at Khotan, Khudabanda at Aksu, and a certain Abdur Rashid in the dis­tricts of Kuchar and Turfán.* But how these personages were descended we are not told. It is probable that all were grandsons or great-grandsons of Rashid Sultan, but it cannot be so said for certain.

Of the Eastern Khanate, or Uighuristán, nothing is to be gleaned from any Musulman author accessible to me, subse­quent to the date of Mirza Haidar's history. A short frag­ment regarding the succession of the Khans, however, is to be found in Dr. Bretschneider's extracts from the Chinese history of the Mings. It is related there that on Mansur Khan's death, in 1545, he designated his eldest son, Sha (Shah Khan), to be his successor; but Sha's brother Ma-hei-ma (Muhammad) laid claim to the throne, and though he did not succeed in obtaining it, took possession of a part of Hami—a province which was included in his brother's dominions.* Afterwards he allied himself with the “Wa-la” (the Oirát or Kalmáks), and with their assistance attacked Shah Khan.

No date for this last event is given, nor is the result of the attack mentioned; it is not clear, therefore, whether he gained the throne by force, or by what means. All that is vouchsafed is that Shah Khan died in 1570, and was succeeded on “the throne of Tulufan” (Turfán) by Ma-hei-ma, when three other brothers revolted against him. One of these was named So-fei (Sufi), of whom it is recorded that he “aspired to the crown,” called himself Su-tan (Sultan), and that he sent an embassy to China.*

As the Khans and their descendants tottered to their fall, the Kirghiz began to descend into the lowlands of Alti-Shahr and in­terfere, directly, in the affairs of their old opponents. They were, in some cases, the supporters of influential priests, or Khwájas, who were rapidly acquiring an influence that was to gain for them the sovereign power in the country; but without attempt­ing here to follow all the gradual changes that brought about the establishment of these new rulers, it may be said generally, that before the middle of the seventeenth century, the priests and saintly teachers, spoken of above, had acquired so great an authority, that the governing power of the country was rapidly passing into their hands. Their ascendency was the direct result of the encouragement they had received, for some genera­tions past, from the superstitious Khans and Amirs of all the surrounding countries, and it is hardly a matter for surprise that their power, as a class, should develop, or if, when the authority of the dynastic chiefs in Eastern Turkistan was decaying, they should take advantage of the situation to build up a government of their own. As Khwájas, or reputed descen­dants of the Prophet, their lineage was undeniable, and ranked, in the estimation of Musulman zealots, far in advance of that of any of the Khans or Sultans who held the secular power. They had no special nationality, but formed a class or brother­hood of devotees, banded together in aim and design, though wandering or dwelling, separately, in all the countries of Central Asia. They became expounders of the Musulman law, and the executive authority (such as it was) dare not oppose them; they were also workers of miracles and healers of the sick, and in these capacities obtained a hold over the minds of the mass of the people. “Their tombs,” Dr. Bellew tells us, “were con­verted into sacred shrines endowed with all sorts of munificent virtues. Rich grants of land were apportioned by successive Khans for the support of their establishments, whose presiding elders in return dispensed, in the name of their patron saint, endless favours and bounties to an illiterate and superstitious peasantry.”*

The Khwájas, in short, were a class that had been evolved by all that had gone before, during the rule of the Moghul Khans —a rule that had begun with the raiding and lawlessness of irresponsible nomads, and had ended with the hypocrisy and fanaticism that usually mark a people incapable of attaining to any degree of civilisation. In the Khwájas they unconsciously raised up rivals who were to displace their house, while these, within little over a century, had, for much the same reasons as their predecessors, to quit the stage and make room for others. They had scarcely begun to wield the power that had fallen into their hands when, as is the case with most governments and dynasties of Asia, discord began to spring up among them, and their brotherhood was divided into two opposing camps. One of these was known as the party of the “White Moun­tain,” and the other as that of the “Black Mountain”—the Ak-tághlik and the Kara-tághlik. Their feuds were at first based on religious dissensions, but this rendered them none the less bitter: they soon developed into political strife, which would speedily have brought about the end of their rule, but for the support that both parties obtained from the Kirghiz. The White mountaineers summoned the nomad clans from Moghulistan, while the Black mountaineers called in those from the Pamir region; and though the White party, under the leadership of the celebrated saint, Khwája Hidáyat Ullah (better known as Hazrat Afák) obtained the upper hand for a time towards the end of the seventeenth century, their perpetual contentions resulted in the entire country falling first into the hands of the Kalmáks, and finally passing to the rule of the Manchu Emperors of China.

Thus the Kirghiz were amply avenged on their ancient enemies, and began to form the great confederacies that have endured to the present day.

They and their kinsmen, the Kazáks, not only prospered in their own way, but multiplied, so that at the present time they represent a large section of the population in the Russian Asiatic dominions. Both families are found spread over the whole of the provinces of Central Asia, north of the Sir and the western Tian Shan, in large, if somewhat scattered, com­munities. Thus, of the Kirghiz proper (the ‘Black,’ or ‘Hill,’ Kirghiz of the Russians), the estimates compiled by Mr. P. Lerch in 1873, from various sources, show a total of about 176,000 persons,* while a good many more, for whom no numerical estimate is forthcoming, are known to exist in the Chinese provinces to the east of the Russian possessions, and in the hill tracts of Southern Farghána and the Pamirs. The Kazáks—the Uzbeg-Kazák of Mirza Haidar—are even more numerous. For those who are still nomadic in their mode of life, sufficiently ample statistics were available, about twenty years ago, to enable Mr. Lerch to sum up their total numbers, in Russian territory, as some 867,000 souls. But to this section also, some addition would have to be made for com­munities living in Chinese territory. Moreover, the figures furnished refer only to the nomads among both the Kazák and the so-called Kirghiz proper. There are, however, sections of settled Kazáks who are fairly numerous in the Zaráfshán valley, Kuráma, etc., but they are so much intermingled with the Uzbegs and Tájiks of those regions, that their strength was not (at the time Mr. Lerch wrote) to be ascertained with any degree of certainty.*

At the same time the other tribal enemies of the Moghuls— the Uzbegs proper—who had become established in Trans-oxiana since the early part of the sixteenth century, continued their sway under the dynasty then founded, down to a date about coeval with the break up of the Moghul kingdom; while, indirectly and after many vicissitudes, they gave rise to the line of bokhara Khans now reigning. Mirza Haidar's own successors in Kashmir are, for some thirty-five years subsequent to his time, to be found among the members of the families, to whose weakness and incapacity he owed his own successful regency of nearly eleven years—a term not often reached, about that period, by any of the native chiefs. After his death, the same internal strife and disorder prevailed, that had been habitual for many years before his government began, so that no less than eight kings are recorded to have reigned between the years 1551 and 1587, when Akbar stepped in and finally annexed the country to the dominions of the Chaghatais in India.

A small residue of the Moghuls still exists among the Turki inhabitants of Eastern Turkistan. The number is trifling indeed, and they are scattered chiefly among the northern towns, where, however, they form no separate communities; on the contrary, they are so much mixed in blood that no one but their immediate neighbours and associates are aware of any difference in their origin to that of the people around them. Still, a difference is so far acknowledged that they are called, and call themselves, Moghuls. In this capacity it must be said, according to the testimony of Dr. Bellew, that they enjoy very little respect: rather they are given over to the meanest modes of life, and are looked down upon as an inferior people.* It is possible that some may also exist in Western Turkistan, Farghána or Transoxiana, but I know of no mention of them in these countries. In the northern Hazára country, and on the Indian frontier of Afghanistan (among the divisions of the Afridis) we find sub-tribes still flourishing under the name of Mongol or Mangal, who, Sir H. Howorth believes, may very possibly be remnants of the Mongols, and may thus represent the Moghuls of a later date.* Just as the Hazáras still form a people apart, having descended from Mongol invaders of the country they now inhabit, it may also be that the Mangals are a relic of some other Mongolian army which overran Afghani­stan in the days of Chingiz or one of his successors. But whether the features and language of the Mangals show any trace of such an origin, I have no information.

Perhaps it may be in India that Moghuls, of one variety or another, are more numerously represented than elsewhere at the present day. In the course of the operations connected with the compilation of the census of the Punjab, in 1881, Mr. Denzil Ibbetson found large numbers of people claiming the name of Moghul, many of whom, though perhaps descended from the tribesmen who entered India at the time of Baber or Humayun, can scarcely owe their origin to the Moghuls of Moghulistan—the true Moghul Ulus of Mirza Haidar. Such as they are, however, they are chiefly to be found in the neigh­bourhood of Delhi, in the Rawal Pindi division, and on the routes that cross the northern frontiers of the province. In these localities they are divided into numerous sub-tribes, but of real Moghuls among them, only those calling themselves Chaghatai and Barlás seem to be numerously represented. For the former, Mr. Ibbetson gives 23,593 as the total number, and of the latter 12,137.* But how far they have retained the characteristics of their race, or whether, in their changed con­dition, they would be recognised as the blood relations of the present Mongols of Mongolia, or even of the Hazáras of Afghanistan, there is nothing to show. Sill, something of the Mongoloid type must remain, it would seem, to support their individuality as a tribe.

On the frontiers of India, apparently, as in Eastern Turkistan, the descendants of the Moghuls do not bear a good name; but with the people of a tribe that has fallen from a position of supremacy, and one that at no time has had any very high qualities to recommend it, this is perhaps not surprising. The national character of a community would naturally degenerate with the loss of political and military power, and in the absence of a consciousness among its members, that they belonged to a ruling caste. The more remarkable circumstance is that the race, when transplanted to a foreign country as populous as India, should have endured at all, and that it should still show any signs of individuality. The fact that Moghuls of any variety should yet remain as a people, is one more piece of evidence which may be added to those mentioned in Section IV. above, that many hundreds of years are needed to eradicate the Mongol type, or to blot out its racial affinities, even when overlaid by the superior numbers of an alien nation.