Humayun died by an accident in 1556, leaving but a circumscribed kingdom, surrounded on every side by active foes, to his son Akbar, then a boy of only fourteen years. Akbar the Great, the real founder of the Mogul empire as it existed for two centuries, was the contemporary of Queen Elizabeth of England. He was born in 1542, and his reign lasted from 1556 to 1605. When his father died he was absent in the Punjab, fighting the revolted Afghans, under the guardianship of Bairam Khan, a native of Badakshan, whose military skill largely contributed to recover the throne for the Mogul line. For the first seven years of his reign Akbar was perpetually engaged in warfare. His first task was to establish his authority in the Punjab, and in the country around Delhi and Agra. In 1567 he stormed the Rajput stronghold of Chitor, and conquered Ajmere. In 1570 he obtained possession of Oudh and Gwalior, In 1572 he marched in person into Gujarat, defeated the last of the independent sultans of Ahmedabad, and formed the province into a Mogul viceroyalty or subah. In the same year his generals drove out the Afghans from Bengal, and reunited the lower valley of the Ganges to Hindustan. Akbar was then the undisputed ruler of a larger portion of India than had ever before acknowledged the sway of one man. But he continued to extend his conquests throughout his lifetime. In 1578 Orissa was annexed to Bengal by his Hindu general Todar Mall, who forthwith organized a revenue survey of the whole province. Kabul submitted in 1581, Kashmir in 1587, Sind in 1592, and Kandahar in 1594. At last he turned his arms against the Mahommedan kings of the Deccan, and wrested from them Berar; but the permanent conquest of the south was reserved for Aurangzeb. Entry: HISTORY
As the land furnishes the main source of Indian revenue, so the assessment of the land tax is the main work of Indian administration. No technical term is more familiar to Anglo-Indians, and none more strange to the English public, than that of land settlement. No subject has given rise to more voluminous controversy. It will be enough in this place to explain the general principles upon which the system is based, and to indicate the chief differences of application in the several provinces. That the state should appropriate to itself a direct share in the produce of the soil is a fundamental maxim of Indian finance that has been recognized throughout the East from time immemorial. The germs of rival systems can be traced in the old military and other service tenures of Assam, and in the poll tax of Burma, &c. The exclusive development of the land system is due to two conditions,--a comparatively high state of agriculture and an organized plan of administration,--both of which are supplied by the primitive village community. During the lapse of untold generations, despite domestic anarchy and foreign conquest, the Hindu village has in many parts preserved its simple customs, written in the imperishable tablets of traditions. The land was not held by private owners but by occupiers under the petty corporation; the revenue was not due from individuals, but from the community represented by its head-man. The aggregate harvest of the village fields was thrown into a common fund, and before the general distribution the head-man was bound to set aside the share of the state. No other system of taxation could be theoretically more just, or in practice less obnoxious to the people. Such is an outline of the land system as it may be found at the present day throughout large portions of India both under British and native rule; and such we may fancy it to have been universally before the Mahommedan conquest. The Mussulmans brought with them the avarice of conquerors, and a stringent system of revenue collection. Under the Mogul empire, as organized by Akbar the Great, the share of the state was fixed at one-third of the gross produce of the soil; and a regular army of tax-collectors was permitted to intervene between the cultivator and the supreme government. The entire vocabulary of the present land system is borrowed from the Mogul administration. The zamindar himself is a creation of the Mahommedans, unknown to the early Hindu system. He was originally a mere tax-collector, or farmer of the land revenue, who agreed to furnish a lump sum from the tract of country assigned to him. If the Hindu village system may be praised for its justice, the Mogul farming system had at least the merit of efficiency. Shah Jahan and Aurangzeb extracted a larger land revenue than the British do. When the government was first undertaken by the East India Company, no attempt was made to understand the social system upon which the land revenue was based. The zamindar was conspicuous and useful; the village community and the cultivating ryot did not force themselves into notice. The zamindar seemed a solvent person, capable of keeping a contract; and his official position as tax-collector was confused with the proprietary rights of an English landlord. The superior stability of the village system was overlooked, and in the old provinces of Bengal and Madras the village organization has gradually been suffered to fall into decay. The consistent aim of the British authorities has been to establish private property in the soil, so far as is consistent with the punctual payment of the revenue. The annual government demand, like the succession duty in England, is universally the first liability on the land; when that is satisfied, the registered landholder has powers of sale or mortgage scarcely more restricted than those of a tenant in fee-simple. At the same time the possible hardships, as regards the cultivator, of this absolute right of property vested in the owner have been anticipated by the recognition of occupancy rights or fixity of tenure, under certain conditions. Legal rights are everywhere taking the place of unwritten customs. Land, which was before merely a source of livelihood to the cultivator and of revenue to the state, has now become the subject of commercial speculation. The fixing of the revenue demand has conferred upon the owner a credit which he never before possessed, by allowing him a certain share of the unearned increment. This credit he may use improvidently, but none the less has the land system of India been raised from a lower to a higher stage of civilization. Entry: ADMINISTRATION
JAHANGIR, or JEHANGIR (1569-1627), Mogul emperor of Delhi, succeeded his father Akbar the Great in 1605. His name was Salim, but he assumed the title of Jahangir, "Conqueror of the World," on his accession. It was in his reign that Sir Thomas Roe came as ambassador of James I., on behalf of the English company. He was a dissolute ruler, much addicted to drunkenness, and his reign is chiefly notable for the influence enjoyed by his wife Nur Jahan, "the Light of the World." At first she influenced Jahangir for good, but surrounding herself with her relatives she aroused the jealousy of the imperial princes; and Jahangir died in 1627 in the midst of a rebellion headed by his son, Khurram or Shah Jahan, and his greatest general, Mahabat Khan. The tomb of Jahangir is situated in the gardens of Shahdera on the outskirts of Lahore. Entry: JAHANGIR
HUMAYUN (1508-1556), Mogul emperor of Delhi, succeeded his father Baber in India in 1530, while his brother Kamran obtained the sovereignty of Kabul and Lahore. Humayun was thus left in possession of his father's recent conquests, which were in dispute with the Indian Afghans under Sher Shah, governor of Bengal. After ten years of fighting, Humayun was driven out of India and compelled to flee to Persia through the desert of Sind, where his famous son, Akbar the Great, was born in the petty fort of Umarkot (1542). Sher Shah was killed at the storming of Kalinjar (1545), and Humayun, returning to India with Akbar, then only thirteen years of age, defeated the Indo-Afghan army and reoccupied Delhi (1555). India thus passed again from the Afghanis to the Moguls, but six months afterwards Humayun was killed by a fall from the parapet of his palace (1556), leaving his kingdom to Akbar. The tomb of Humayun is one of the finest Mogul monuments in the neighbourhood of Delhi, and it was here that the last of the Moguls, Bahadur Shah, was captured by Major Hodson in 1857. Entry: HUMAYUN
When, therefore, Baber invaded India in 1525, the greater part of the country was Mahommedan, but it did not recognize the authority of the Afghan sultan of the Lodi dynasty, who resided at Agra, and also ruled the historical capital of Delhi. After having won the battle of Panipat (1526) Baber was no more acknowledged as emperor of India than his ancestor Timur had been. Baber, however, unlike Timur, had resolved to settle in the plains of Hindustan, and carve out for himself a new empire with the help of his Mogul followers. His first task was to repel an attack by the Rajputs of Chitor, who seem to have attempted to re-establish at this time a Hindu empire. The battle was fought at Sikri near Agra, and is memorable for the vow made by the easy-living Baber that he would never again touch wine. Baber was again victorious, but died shortly afterwards in 1530. He was succeeded by his son Humayun, who is chiefly known as being the father of Akbar. In Humayun's reign the subject Afghans rose in revolt under Sher Shah, a native of Bengal, who for a short time established his authority over all Hindustan. Humayun was driven as an exile into Persia; and, while he was flying through the desert of Sind, his son Akbar was born to him in the petty fortress of Umarkot. But Sher Shah was killed at the storming of the rock-fortress of Kalinjar, and Humayun, after many vicissitudes, succeeded in re-establishing his authority at Lahore and Delhi. Entry: HISTORY
No district of India can boast of a more ancient history than Karnal, as almost every town or stream is connected with the legends of the _Mahabharata_. The town of Karnal itself is said to owe its foundation to Raja Karna, the mythical champion of the Kauravas in the great war which forms the theme of the national epic. Panipat, in the south of the district, is said to have been one of the pledges demanded from Duryodhana by Yudisthira as the price of peace in that famous conflict. In historical times the plains of Panipat have three times proved the theatre of battles which decided the fate of Upper India. It was here that Ibrahim Lodi and his vast host were defeated in 1526 by the veteran army of Baber; in 1556 Akbar reasserted the claims of his family on the same battlefield against the Hindu general of the house of Adil Shah, which had driven the heirs of Baber from the throne for a brief interval; and at Panipat too, on the 7th of January 1761, the Mahratta confederation was defeated by Ahmad Shah Durani. During the troublous period which then ensued the Sikhs managed to introduce themselves, and in 1767 one of their chieftains, Desu Singh, appropriated the fort of Kaithal, which had been built during the reign of Akbar. His descendants, the bhais of Kaithal, were reckoned amongst the most important Cis-Sutlej princes. Different portions of this district have lapsed from time to time into the hands of the British. Entry: KARNAL
FITCH, RALPH (fl. 1583-1606), London merchant, one of the earliest English travellers and traders in Mesopotamia, the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean, India proper and Indo-China. In January 1583 he embarked in the "Tiger" for Tripoli and Aleppo in Syria (see Shakespeare, _Macbeth_, Act I. sc. 3), together with J. Newberie, J. Eldred and two other merchants or employees of the Levant Company. From Aleppo he reached the Euphrates, descended the river from Bir to Fallujah, crossed southern Mesopotamia to Bagdad, and dropped down the Tigris to Basra (May to July 1583). Here Eldred stayed behind to trade, while Fitch and the rest sailed down the Persian Gulf to Ormuz, where they were arrested as spies (at Venetian instigation, as they believed) and sent prisoners to the Portuguese viceroy at Goa (September to October). Through the sureties procured by two Jesuits (one being Thomas Stevens, formerly of New College, Oxford, the first Englishman known to have reached India by the Cape route in 1579) Fitch and his friends regained their liberty, and escaping from Goa (April 1584) travelled through the heart of India to the court of the Great Mogul Akbar, then probably at Agra. In September 1585 Newberie left on his return journey overland via Lahore (he disappeared, being presumably murdered, in the Punjab), while Fitch descended the Jumna and the Ganges, visiting Benares, Patna, Kuch Behar, Hugli, Chittagong, &c. (1585-1586), and pushed on by sea to Pegu and Burma. Here he visited the Rangoon region, ascended the Irawadi some distance, acquired a remarkable acquaintance with inland Pegu, and even penetrated to the Siamese Shan states (1586-1587). Early in 1588 he visited Malacca; in the autumn of this year he began his homeward travels, first to Bengal; then round the Indian coast, touching at Cochin and Goa, to Ormuz; next up the Persian Gulf to Basra and up the Tigris to Mosul (Nineveh); finally via Urfa, Bir on the Euphrates, Aleppo and Tripoli, to the Mediterranean. He reappeared in London on the 29th of April 1591. His experience was greatly valued by the founders of the East India Company, who specially consulted him on Indian affairs (e.g. 2nd of October 1600; 29th of January 1601; 31st of December 1606). Entry: FITCH
ATTOCK, a town and fort of British India, in the Rawalpindi district of the Punjab, 47 m. by rail from Peshawar, and situated on the eastern bank of the Indus. Pop. (1901) 2822. The place is of both political and commercial importance, as the Indus is here crossed by the military and trade route through the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan. Alexander the Great, Tamerlane and Nadir Shah are believed to have successively crossed the Indus at or about this spot in their respective invasions of India. The river runs past Attock in a deep rapid channel about 200 yds. broad, but is easily crossed in boats or on inflated skins of oxen. The rocky gorges through which it flows, with a distant view of the Hindu Kush, form some of the finest scenery in the world. In 1883 an iron girder bridge of five spans was opened, which carries the North-Western railway to Peshawar, and has also a subway for wheeled traffic and foot passengers. The fort of Attock was built by the emperor Akbar in 1581, on a low hillock beside the river. The walls are of polished stone, and the whole structure is handsome; but from a military point of view it is of little importance, being commanded by a hill, from which it is divided only by a ravine. On the opposite side of the river is the village of Khairabad, with a fort, also erected by Akbar according to some, or by Nadir Shah according to others. The military importance of Attock has diminished, but it still has a small detachment of British troops. Entry: ATTOCK
_History._--According to legends, which may or may not have a substantial basis, Delhi or its immediate neighbourhood has from time immemorial been the site of a capital city. The neighbouring village of Indarpat preserves the name of Indraprashta, the semi-mythical city founded, according to the Sanscrit epic _Mahabharata_, by Yudisthira and his brothers, the five Pandavas. Whatever its dim predecessors may have been, however, the actual history of Delhi dates no further back than the 11th century A.D., when Anangapala (Anang Pal), a chief of the Tomara clan, built the Red Fort, in which the Kutb Minar now stands; in 1052 the same chief removed the famous Iron Pillar from its original position, probably at Muttra, and set it up among a group of temples of which the materials were afterwards used by the Mussulmans for the construction of the great Kutb Mosque. About the middle of the 12th century the Tomara dynasty was overthrown by Vigraha-raja (Visala-deva, Bisal Deo), the Chauhan king of Ajmere, who from inscribed records discovered of late years appears to have been a man of considerable culture (see V. A. Smith, _Early Hist. of India_, ed. 1908, p. 356). His nephew and successor was Prithwi-raja (Prithiraj, or Rai Pithora), lord of Sambhar, Delhi and Ajmere, whose fame as lover and warrior still lives in popular story. He was the last Hindu ruler of Delhi. In 1191 came the invasion of Mahommed of Ghor. Defeated on this occasion, Mahommed returned two years later, overthrew the Hindus, and captured and put to death Prithwi-raja. Delhi became henceforth the capital of the Mahommedan Indian empire, Kutb-ud-din (the general and slave of Mahommed of Ghor) being left in command. His dynasty is known as that of the slave kings, and it is to them that old Delhi owes its grandest remains, among them Kutb Mosque and the Kutb Minar. The slave dynasty retained the throne till 1290, when it was subverted by Jalal-ud-din Khilji. The most remarkable monarch of this dynasty was Ala-ud-din, during whose reign Delhi was twice exposed to attack from invading hordes of Moguls. On the first occasion Ala-ud-din defeated them under the walls of his capital; on the second, after encamping for two months in the neighbourhood of the city, they retired without a battle. The house of Khilji came to an end in 1321, and was followed by that of Tughlak. Hitherto the Pathan kings had been content with the ancient Hindu capital, altered and adorned to suit their tastes. But one of the first acts of the founder of the new dynasty, Ghias-ud-din Tughlak, was to erect a new capital about 4 m. farther to the east, which he called Tughlakabad. The ruins of his fort remain, and the eye can still trace the streets and lanes of the long deserted city. Ghias-ud-din was succeeded by his son Mahommed b. Tughlak, who reigned from 1325 to 1351, and is described by Elphinstone as "one of the most accomplished princes and most furious tyrants that ever adorned or disgraced human nature." Under this monarch the Delhi of the Tughlak dynasty attained its utmost growth. His successor Feroz Shah Tughlak transferred the capital to a new town which he founded some miles off, on the north of the Kutb, and to which he gave his own name, Ferozabad. In 1398, during the reign of Mahmud Tughlak, occurred the Tatar invasion of Timurlane. The king fled to Gujarat, his army was defeated under the walls of Delhi, and the city surrendered. The town, notwithstanding a promise of protection, was plundered and burned; the citizens were massacred. The invaders at last retired, leaving Delhi without a government, and almost without inhabitants. At length Mahmud Tughlak regained a fragment of his former kingdom, but on his death in 1412 the family became extinct. He was succeeded by the Sayyid dynasty, which held Delhi and a few miles of surrounding territory till 1444, when it gave way to the house of Lodi, during whose rule the capital was removed to Agra. In 1526 Baber, sixth in descent from Timurlane, invaded India, defeated and killed Ibrahim Lodi at the battle of Panipat, entered Delhi, was proclaimed emperor, and finally put an end to the Afghan empire. Baber's capital was at Agra, but his son and successor, Humayun, removed it to Delhi. In 1540 Humayun was defeated and expelled by Sher Shah, who entirely rebuilt the city, enclosing and fortifying it with a new wall. In his time Delhi extended from where Humayun's tomb now is to near the southern gate of the modern city. In 1555 Humayun, with the assistance of Persia, regained the throne; but he died within six months, and was succeeded by his son, the illustrious Akbar. Entry: DELHI
The town, the name of which is usually derived from Dhara Nagari (the city of sword blades), is of great antiquity, and was made the capital of the Paramara chiefs of Malwa by Vairisinha II., who transferred his headquarters hither from Ujjain at the close of the 9th century. During the rule of the Paramara dynasty Dhar was famous throughout India as a centre of culture and learning; but, after suffering various vicissitudes, it was finally conquered by the Mussulmans at the beginning of the 14th century. At the close of the century Dilawar Khan, the builder of the Lat Masjid, who had been appointed governor in 1399, practically established his independence, his son Hoshang Shah being the first Mahommedan king of Malwa. Under this dynasty Dhar was second in importance to the capital Mandu. Subsequently, in the time of Akbar, Dhar fell under the dominion of the Moguls, in whose hands it remained till 1730, when it was conquered by the Mahrattas. Entry: THE
_History._--The history of so large a province as Bengal forms an integral part of the general history of India. The northern part, Behar (q.v.), constituted the ancient kingdom of Magadha, the nucleus of the imperial power of the successive great dynasties of the Mauryas, Andhras and Guptas; and its chief town, Patna, is the ancient Pataliputra (the Palimbothra of the Greeks), once the capital of India. The Delta or southern part of Bengal lay beyond the ancient Sanskrit polity, and was governed by a number of local kings belonging to a pre-Aryan stock. The Chinese travellers, Fa Hien in the 5th century, and Hsüan Tsang in the 7th century, found the Buddhist religion prevailing throughout Bengal, but already in a fierce struggle with Hinduism--a struggle which ended about the 9th or 10th century in the general establishment of the latter faith. Until the end of the 12th century Hindu princes governed in a number of petty principalities, till, in 1199, Mahommed Bakhtiyar Khilji was appointed to lead the first Mussulman invasion into Bengal. The Mahommedan conquest of Behar dates from 1197 A.D., and the new power speedily spread southwards into the delta. From about this date until 1340 Bengal was ruled by governors appointed by the Mahommedan emperors in the north. From 1340 to 1539 its governors asserted a precarious independence, and arrogated the position of sovereigns on their own account. From 1540 to 1576 Bengal passed under the rule of the Pathan or Afghan dynasty, which commonly bears the name of Sher Shah. On the overthrow of this house by the powerful arms of Akbar, Bengal was incorporated into the Mogul empire, and administered by governors appointed by the Delhi emperor, until the treaties of 1765, which placed Bengal, Behar and Orissa under the administration of the East India Company. The Company formed its earliest settlements in Bengal in the first half of the 17th century. These settlements were of a purely commercial character. In 1620 one of the Company's factors dates from Patna; in 1624-1636 the Company established itself, by the favour of the emperor, on the ruins of the ancient Portuguese settlement of Pippli, in the north of Orissa; in 1640-1642 an English surgeon, Gabriel Boughton, obtained establishments at Balasore, also in Orissa, and at Hugli, some miles above Calcutta. The vexations and extortions to which the Company's early agents were subjected more than once almost induced them to abandon the trade, and in 1677-1678 they threatened to withdraw from Bengal altogether. In 1685, the Bengal factors, driven to extremity by the oppression of the Mogul governors, threw down the gauntlet; and after various successes and hairbreadth escapes, purchased from the grandson of Aurangzeb, in 1696, the villages which have since grown up into Calcutta, the metropolis of India. During the next fifty years the British had a long and hazardous struggle alike with the Mogul governors of the province and the Mahratta armies which invaded it. In 1756 this struggle culminated in the great outrage known as the Black Hole of Calcutta, followed by Clive's battle of Plassey and capture of Calcutta, which avenged it. That battle, and the subsequent years of confused fighting, established British military supremacy in Bengal, and procured the treaties of 1765, by which the provinces of Bengal, Behar and Orissa passed under British administration. To Warren Hastings (1772-1785) belongs the glory of consolidating the British power, and converting a military occupation into a stable civil government. To another member of the civil service, John Shore, afterwards Lord Teignmouth (1786-1793), is due the formation of a regular system of Anglo-Indian legislation. Acting through Lord Cornwallis, then governor-general, he ascertained and defined the rights of the landholders in the soil. These landholders under the native system had started, for the most part, as collectors of the revenues, and gradually acquired certain prescriptive rights as quasi-proprietors of the estates entrusted to them by the government. In 1793 Lord Cornwallis declared their rights perpetual, and made over the land of Bengal to the previous quasi-proprietors or _zamindárs_, on condition of the payment of a fixed land tax. This piece of legislation is known as the Permanent Settlement of the Land Revenue. But the Cornwallis code, while defining the rights of the proprietors, failed to give adequate recognition to the rights of the undertenants and the cultivators. His Regulations formally reserved the latter class of rights, but did not legally define them, or enable the husbandmen to enforce them in the courts. After half a century of rural disquiet, the rights of the cultivators were at length carefully formulated by Act X. of 1859. This measure, now known as the land law of Bengal, effected for the rights of the under-holders and cultivators what the Cornwallis code in 1793 had effected for those of the superior landholders. The status of each class of persons interested in the soil, from the government as suzerain, through the _zamindárs_ or superior landholders, the intermediate tenure-holders and the undertenants, down to the actual cultivator, is now clearly defined. The act dates from the first year after the transfer of India from the company to the crown; for the mutiny burst out in 1857. The transactions of that revolt chiefly took place in northern India, and are narrated in the article INDIAN MUTINY. In Bengal the rising began at Barrackpore, was communicated to Dacca in Eastern Bengal, and for a time raged in Behar, producing the memorable defence of the billiard-room at Arrah by a handful of civilians and Sikhs--one of the most splendid pieces of gallantry in the history of the British arms. Since 1858, when the country passed to the crown, the history of Bengal has been one of steady progress. Five great lines of railway have been constructed. Trade has enormously expanded; new centres of commerce have sprung up in spots which formerly were silent jungles; new staples of trade, such as tea and jute, have rapidly attained importance; and the coalfields and iron ores have opened up prospects of a new and splendid era in the internal development of the country. Entry: BENGAL