< Page:History of India Vol 3.djvu
This page needs to be proofread.

126

ALA -AD -DIN KHALJI wife the queen of his victim, a Hindu princess to whom such an alliance was an unspeakable profanation; the wives and daughters of the royal family and of the great nobles were delivered over to the scum of Khusru's pariahs; " the flames of bloodshed and brutality red- dened the sky." The holy Koran was dese- crated; idols were set up in the mosques. The reign of an unclean pariah was as revolting to the Hindus them- selves as to the Mos- lems. Had a Rajput attempted to rally the still powerful forces of his countrymen and to make a bid for the throne, the chaos of the times might have given him a chance of suc- cess. The stubborn de- fence of Rantambhor and Chitor showed that the Hindu chiefs were far from subdued. But no In- dian of any race or creed, save the outcast sweepers of his own degraded and despised class, would follow a Parvani. The hope of the Moslems lay in one man, the only man of whom the Hindu upstart went in abject fear. SCENE IN GWALIOR.

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.