CHAPTER VIII.

SEVENTEENTH CENTURY: NADIR SHAH.

BERNIER AND THE TATAR AMBASSADORS AT THE COURT OF AURUNGZEB— A TATAR HEROINE-ROUTE FROM KASHMEER TO KASHGAR-TRAVELS OF BENEDICT GOES AND OTHER MISSIONARIES — ABOU'L-GHAZEE KHAN KHIVA AND BOKHARA IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY-NADIR SHAHENGLISH TRAVELLERS-TRADE-DECADENCE OF PERSIA.

THE annals of Central Asia in the 17th century are stained with the useless bloodshed that characterizes the incessant feuds of petty States submerged in barbarism, and regarding arms and the chase as the only honourable employment for free men. A savage fanaticism passed current for religion, and the capricious will of a narrow-minded and irresponsible despot dispensed with the usual forms and machinery of government. For the rest, what has been written touching the social usages of the Tatars and Moghuls during the previous three centuries will apply, with very slight variation, to the manners and customs of the Oozbegs and Toorkomans down to quite a recent period.

Bernier relates how about the year 1661 the Khans of Oozbeg Tatary sent ambassadors to Aurungzeb to congratulate him on having finally triumphed over his brothers. The real object, however, of this mission was to efface whatever feelings of resentment might have been roused by the coalition of the Oozbeg Chiefs whom he had shut up in Balkh, whence he effected a difficult and disastrous retreat. They came not empty-handed, but brought as presents 'some boxes of choice lapis lazulus, divers camels with long hair, several gallant horses, and some camel-loads of fresh fruit, as apples, pears, raisins, and

melons (for it is chiefly Usbec that furnishes these sorts of fruit, eaten at Dehli all the winter long); and many loads of dry fruit, as prunes of Bokhara, apricots, raisins without any stones that appeared, and two other sorts of raisins, black and white, very large and very good.'

According to that amusing traveller, there was no 'more avaricious and uncleanly nation' than the Tatars, on the surface of the earth. The ambassadors grudged to spend the money that was allowed by Aurungzeb for their maintenance, and 'lived a very miserable life,' altogether unworthy of their position. They were ignorant even of the history of their own people. On one occasion Bernier dined with them. They are not,' he remarks, men of much ceremony; it was a very extraordinary meal for such a one as I, it being mere horseflesh; yet for all this I got my dinner with them; there was a certain ragout which I thought passable, and I was obliged to express a liking of so exquisite a dish, which they so much lust after. During dinner there was a strange silence: they were very busy in carrying in with their whole hands, for they know not what a spoon is; but after that this horseflesh had wrought in their stomachs, they began to talk, and then they would persuade me that they were the most dextrous at bows and arrows, and the strongest men in the world. They called for bows which are much bigger than those of Indostan, and would lay a wager to pierce an ox or my horse through and through.'

His entertainers likewise told him a tale of a Tatar maiden who slew, with arrows and sabre, from twenty to thirty Indians who had plundered her native village in her absence, and carried off captive her aged mother. The old woman warned them that they would do well to let her go free, for it would fare badly with them when her daughter came to know how they had treated her. They naturally laughed at her threats, but had not gone far before the Tatar Brindomart was seen 'prick

ing o'er the plain.' While yet at a great distance she began to discharge her fatal arrows with unerring aim, and, when her quiver was exhausted, charged them sword in hand and rescued the beldame.

Bernier accompanied Aurungzeb to Kashmeer, where he made the acquaintance of some merchants from Kashgaria, who informed him that the quickest and easiest route to their country lay through Great Tibet. They themselves, however, proposed to return home by way of Eskerdon-Iskardo-in Little Tibet, and expected to occupy forty-four days in travelling to Kashgar, described as 'a small town, once the seat of the king of Kacheguer, which is now at Jourkend-Yarkund-lying somewhat more to the north, and ten days journey distant from Kacheguer.' The traders added that from that town to ‘Katay,' on the north-west of China, by way of Khoten, was a distance of two months constant travel, by very difficult roads, and that there was a place where, in what season soever it be, you must march for about a quarter of a league upon ice'-across a glacier.

In the course of the 17th century several Jesuit Missionaries made their way from India to China, in the hope of converting the heathen. The most notable of these was Benedict Goës, who started from Agra in 1602, and travelled by way of Lahore, Attock, and Peshawur to Kabul, where he was detained for a considerable time. At length resuming his journey, he crossed the Hindoo Koosh by the Parwan Pass, ascended the valley of Badakhshan, and traversed the Pameer Steppe to Sarikol, being the first European since Marco Polo who had visited those regions. Thence he proceeded to Yarkund by the Chichiklik Pass and the Tangitar valley, and so passed on to the fulfilment of his bootless mission.

Half a century later the two Jesuit Missionaries Dorville and Grueber penetrated to China from Bengal, and in 1714 another Jesuit, Desideri, adopted Kashmeer as his starting

point. There is not much, however, that is either very entertaining or instructive in the records of their wanderings, or of a nature to arrest the attention of the general reader.

cessor.

Of far greater interest is the 'Genealogical History of the Tatars' commenced by Abou'l-Ghazee Khan, after his abdication of the throne of Khwarezm, and completed by his son and sucAbou'l-Ghazee Khan was born at Urghunj in 1605, and by his mother's side descended in a direct line from Chinghiz Khan. He became King of Khwarezm in 1645, and after a glorious reign of twenty years voluntarily abdicated in favour of his son Anou Shah Mohammed Bahadoor Khan. In his leisure hours after retiring from the management of public affairs, he applied himself with great diligence to the compilation of his History, and on the visible approach of death earnestly commended its completion to his son, who faithfully acquitted himself of the sacred trust. This useful work was translated and annotated by Bentinck, a learned Dutch Orientalist, whose notes, published at Leyden in 1726, convey a lively impression of the general condition of Central Asia at that period.

The description of the kingdom of Khwarezm applies almost equally well to that of the Khanat of Khiva at the present day. In length it extended 440 miles from north to south, and in breadth 340 from east to west. It consisted for the most part of wide plains of sand, fringed by a few ranges of hills, and cultivated only in the vicinity of the Jyhoon and its numerous estuaries and canals. Of pasture land the extent was considerable, and in the irrigated districts fruits and cereals yielded abundant crops. Vines grew well in certain localities, and the melons were famous throughout all Asia. The capital city, Urghunj, had fallen so much to decay that it made ‘but a pitiful figure, being no more than a great scrambling town about a league in compass.'

The kingdom of Bokhara, or, as it was then called by

The inhabitanta consisted of three distinct races, who kept aloof from one another. The most industrins were the Sarts, or Gouers,lants of the early Aryan population, and who are best known by their Persian appellation of Tajeks. The Toorks, or Toorkomana, originally from Toorkestan, were of tall stature and polnues frame, with square flat faces, and of a swarthier compexion fan their brethren who settled in Anatolia and founded the Empire of Turkey in Europe.

The lords of the land, however, were the masterful Oozbegs, who, nevertheless, had been forced to give way before the superior numbers, discipline, and intelligence of the encroaching Muscovites. Though possessing fixed habitations, they were much given to wandering from place to place, carrying with