of the Wahaby power. Ibn Saoud had just died; but in January 1815, Abdallah, his son, who bore a still higher military reputation, met the Pacha at Byssel, with 25,000 men,—a light, loose host, chiefly mounted upon camels. Yet so long as they kept to the high rockygrounds, the Egyptian army was never able to gain any advantage. At length Mahommed Ali, by causing his troops to betake themselves to a feigned flight, succeeded in drawing the Arab army down into the plain, where the regular and weighty charge of the Egyptian cavalry proved irresistible against this irregular mass. The Wahabys were totally routed, with the loss of five thousand men; their camp, baggage, and most of their camels, falling into the hands of the conqueror.

After this victory, numerous schiechs, who had formerly wavered, gave in their submission. Yet the Pacha brought back his troops to the Hedsjas in a most reduced and exhausted state, not exceeding fifteen hundred men, with three hundred horses, and three hundred out of the ten thousand camels, which he had either carried with him, or captured. Thus he was in no condition to renew offensive operations, while the enemy recruited their strength, and obliged Tousoun to conclude a peace, by which the Wahaby power was left almost unbroken. Mahommed Ali, however, returned to Egypt, with the firm determination to regard this treaty as little as he had ever done any engagement which interfered with his ambitious views. Resolving to strain every nerve for the complete overthrow of the Wababy dominion, he sent, in August 1816, Ibrahim, the most energetic and ferocious of his warlike family, with a large reinforcement, to take the chief command, Here Mr Burckhardt's relation closes; but from other accounts, and particularly from that lately given by Mr Webster, we know that the Egyptian chief, after a protracted contest, was completely successful, and closed the campaign with the capture and destruction of the hostile metropolis. Ibrahim 'Pacha,' says this traveller, is remembered as the scourge of "Arabia, and the curse of Derayeh. Mahommed, in his moment ، of passion against Abdallah, had threatened to destroy the city, 6 so that not one stone should be left upon another. Ibrahim 6 was the unrelenting executor of his father's menaces. The Wahaby capital was entirely destroyed, and the inhabitants thrust forth into the desolate wilderness, to starve and die, or 'obtain refuge where they best could.'* Abdallah and all his family were made prisoners, and brought to Cairo, where their arrival in November 1818 was celebrated by a festival of seven

* Travels through the Crimea, Turkey, and Egypt. Vol. ii. p. 108.

days. He was then sent to Constantinople, where an ungenerous enemy caused him to be led three days through the streets, and then beheaded. Thus closed the career of the Wahabys.

Notwithstanding the valuable additions made to our knowledge by this volume, we are far from thinking that Arabia is yet adequately known. While we have journal upon journal of travels through the beaten tract by the Euphrates and Kourdistan, we are not aware that any adventurer has attempted to penetrate across the plains and pastoral hills of Central Arabia. Yet he would there see, in their utmost purity, Bedouin manners, which are altered much, and usually for the worse, by intercourse with the Turks and the inhabitants of cities. Our author, we may observe, considers, that no recommendation of any chief, though he were the most powerful in the East, would be of any value in this quarter, and that the traveller must trust entirely to his own address and resources.

ART. V.-Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajpoot States of India. By Lieutenant-Colonel JAMES TOD, late Political Agent to the Western Rajpoot States. Vol. I. 4to. London: 1829.

F the Centre and West of India, notwithstanding our long connexion with the country, our knowledge is to this hour very imperfect. To say nothing of the hill and mountain tribes, how little are we acquainted with the inhabitants of Guzerat, of Cutch, of Sinde, of the Punjab, and of Rajpootana ! The bulk of Europeans conceive of the people of India, as of a homogeneous mass; yet its various nations are as much disunited by physical circumstances, and as broadly discriminated by language, complexion, habits, and character, as are the inhabitants of the different countries of Europe, not excluding even the Turks. The fruits of this partial knowledge of the people of India are apparent every day, in the discordant estimates of their character, published by witnesses who equally deduce their opinions from local experience and observation.* Many a fierce collision on this point may be referred to a cause similar to that which produced a tilting-match between the knights-errant in the story book, who saw only the opposite sides of the shield. Rajasthan, Rajwarra, Raetana, or Rajpootana, the country of

*Bishop Heber observes, There are a great many people in Calcutta 'who maintain that all the natives in India are alike.'

the Rajpoots, has been revealed to us so recently, that it may be regarded, in some respects, as a new discovery. One of the important results of the great war of 1817-18, has been the extension of our knowledge respecting Central India. The total overthrow of the Mahratta dominion, under the iron yoke of which this fair portion of the country had groaned for the preceding half century, brought us into contact and alliance with the states of Rajpootana; a part of Hindostan where the primitive institutions of its singular people have been, perhaps, less impaired by time, and by the rude hands of the Moslems, than even in Southern India. Creeds have changed, races have mingled,' says their historian, and names have been effaced from the " page of history; but in this corner of civilisation, we have no such result: the Rajpoot remains the same singular being as in the days of Alexander.'

Without adopting the avowedly crude speculations of Sir William Jones, respecting the Hindu empires of Ayodhia and Indraprestha, it cannot admit of doubt, because the fact is established by relics, and by evidence of infinitely more value than tradition, that, at a period very remote, Hindostan was the seat of an extensive, a flourishing, an enlightened dominion. A peo'ple,' observes a very fierce Hindu-mastix,† who could pro'duce works on philosophy and theology, like the Vedas and Darshanas; on civil and canon law, like the Smritis; whose poets were capable of writing the Mahabharata, the Rámáyana, ' and the Sri Bhagavata; whose libraries contained works on philology, astronomy, medicine, the arts, &c.; and whose colleges were filled with learned men and students, can never be placed among barbarians.' North-western India seems to have been eminently rich and powerful in the time of the father of Greek history, who represents the last Satrapy of Darius Hystaspes, consisting of the country on the Indus, (the historian's description of which applies, Major Rennell says, literally to Rajpootana,) as the most numerous nation known;' and adds, that it contributed six hundred talents in golden ingots,‡ a tribute far exceeding, according to the lowest estimate, that of Babylon and Assyria, one of the richest satrapies. Arrian likewise attests the wealth, the prosperity, and the power of this portion of

6

The term Rajpoot' is an idiomatical corruption of the Sanscrit Rajaputra, the son of a king.' The Rajpoots are considered to be the only, or at least the purest remains, of the Chyhatrisa caste, to which the ancient princes of India belonged.

+ Ward's View of the Hindus, vol. i. p. 50.

Thal. c. 95,

'India. It is highly interesting, then, to investigate the traces of this ancient civilisation,-to search for even the mutilated relics of a government 2000 years old; and, after having expended so much laborious study, with so little comparative effect, in the south and east of India, it may be expected that the facilities now afforded for research in the west, will not be neglected.

Although, until the appearance of Sir John Malcolm's Memoir of Central India, a few casual and scanty notices were all that modern writers added to the meagre accounts of the Rajpoots given by early travellers; they were described by these travellers in terms calculated to provoke curiosity. The power of their princes, at a time when the rest of India was enslaved by the Moguls; the courage and generous qualities of the people, are extolled by authors of different nations, English, French, and German, who visited India in the beginning of the seventeenth century. Sir Thomas Roe, our ambassador to the Mogul Court, in 1615, mentions, with a kind of enthusiasm, in one of his letters, a Rajpoot prince whom he met there, the true descended heir of Porus, that was overcome by Alexander, called Ranna + and he describes, as well as Sir Thomas Heibert, in glowing colours, the splendid remains of Cheetore, the ancient capital of Mewar. Mandelslo, who visited the court of Jehangir, a few years after Roe, expatiates upon the power of the Rajpoot princes, then vassals of the empire. 4 Hawkins, in 1610, found that most of the great munsubdars at Agra were Rajpoots; and Master Nicholas Withington, a plain-spoken Englishman, which was left in the Mogul's city by Captain Best,' in 1613, tells us, in his Tractate published by Purchas, that the Mogul says, the Razbootch knows as well to die as any in the world.' That accurate traveller, Bernier, bears testimony to the military virtues of the Rajpoots, observing, that they wanted nothing but order and discipline to make excellent soldiers, which is exactly true at the present day; that they were superior to the troops of the Mogul; and that the latter kept them in subjection by dexterously fomenting the discord which sprung out of the conflicting interests, feuds, and prejudices of the different states, which have ever proved the bane of this martial race.

* Lib. v. c. 25.

1

Rana is the title of the Prince of Mewar. The descent of the family from Porus, is nearly as apocryphal as their own asserted genealogy, derived from the Sun.

The details given by Herbert, respecting Western India, are full and accurate, but sadly disguised by his vile affectation and Euphuism.

t

1

The testimony of Mahommedan writers is still more favourable to the Rajpoot character, because it is often wrung from unwilling witnesses. In that curious work, the Memoirs of the Emperor Baber, written by himself-perhaps, without exception, the best translated and best edited work in our languagethe accomplished King of Ferghana reluctantly acknowledges that he was almost foiled by the Mewar prince and his Rajpoot auxiliaries. Hemayoon, Akbar, and Jehangir, (who was the son of a Rajpoot princess,) wielding the whole force of the empire, and aided by recreant Rajpoots, were unable to complete the conquest of this corner of India, as the latter rather coyly confesses in his own Memoirs; confirming the remark of Sir Thomas Roe, that the emperor subdued the Prince of Mewar more by composition than by force, having rather bought him than 6 won him.'

6

From its geographical character and position, Rajpootana is an outwork of India, in a quarter upon which a land invasion is most likely to burst; it has consequently been the scene of many a bloody struggle, when its boundaries were much wider than they are at present. From the time of Alexander, till the establishment of the Mogul dynasty in India, there are records of distinct inroads of hostile people, assimilated to each other only by the ferocity with which they strove to obliterate the traces of the arts of Rajasthan. To their being placed in this post of danger-a country in many parts studded with natural fortresses, and well adapted for defence may be attributed, in a great measure, the heroic character, and martial propensities, of the Rajpoot tribes, which have been cherished amongst them by institutions bearing a remarkable analogy to the feudal and chivalric customs of the West.

Colonel Tod, whose splendid work is before us, possessed advantages, accidental as well as inherent, for the office of historian of Rajpootana, not often combined. He was officially employed, in the whole, for nearly twenty years in the country; latterly as political agent from the British government to the . Western States, when they became our subsidiary allies. The disorganized condition of the States, exhausted by Mahratta exactions, and swarming with thieves, afforded a fine opportunity to a person of his ardent temperament to endeavour to re-adjust the scattered fragments of government. He tried, and he appears to have succeeded almost beyond hope. Colonel Tod has drawn a contrast between Mewar as it is, and as it was, which is really astonishing; and if we scrupled to trust the fidelity of his picture, the representation given by a perfectly disinterested