POLITICAL CONDITIONS IN NORTHERN INDIA 189

and the Panjab. Throughout this vast region, the flood of anarchy that had been rising since Aurangzib's death was now at its height; and as the struggle over the ruins of the fallen empire was sharpest at the cap- ital and the centres of power, the districts round Delhi THE JAMl' MASJID AT LUCKNOW. and Agra, Lucknow and Benares, were perhaps more persistently fought over than any other parts of India. Two centuries of systematic despotism had long since levelled and pulverized the independent chiefships or tribal federations in these flat and fertile plains, traversed by highways open to every successive invader. So when the empire toppled over under the storms of the eighteenth century, there were no local breakwaters to check the inrush of confusion. The Marathas