The empire of India . ttheir independence, and, at Baroda, Gwalior, Indore andNagpur, to found miUtary kingdoms which upheldMahratta dominion and prestige. After no long intervalthey were to meet a stronger force in the British armies. On behalf of the Mahrattas it cannot be claimed thatthey attempted to administer the provinces that theysubjugated. The first use of their conquests was to extorta heavy tribute from a wasted country. In the king-doms that they founded, their concern with their sub-jects was limited to the taxes that could be wrung fromthem : crime was left unchecked, and the co
The empire of India . ttheir independence, and, at Baroda, Gwalior, Indore andNagpur, to found miUtary kingdoms which upheldMahratta dominion and prestige. After no long intervalthey were to meet a stronger force in the British armies. On behalf of the Mahrattas it cannot be claimed thatthey attempted to administer the provinces that theysubjugated. The first use of their conquests was to extorta heavy tribute from a wasted country. In the king-doms that they founded, their concern with their sub-jects was limited to the taxes that could be wrung fromthem : crime was left unchecked, and the coimtry waspervaded by troops of adventurers who practised brigan-dage as their means of UveHhood. It is hardly possibleto conceive conditions that were more miserable for thepoor than those which lay, a century ago, on the advancingtrack of British generals. The domination of the Sikhs was of very differentorigin. It arose from a religious movement which in thefifteenth century offered the Hindus a simpler creed— 226. THE SIKHS a compromise between their own and that of Islim, tinged,moreover, it may appear, by Nestorian preached the Unity of God, the brotherhood of man, thelove of God for man and communion with God by religiousecstacy, and it rejected caste and the Brahmin the Punjab these protestant doctrines won butfew declared converts, although some of their teachershave influenced for good a very large section of Hindusociety. In the Punjab they became the gromid-workof a separate sect, whose adherents—known as Sikhs,or disciples —were recruited originally from all castesof the population and were united by their reverence for asacred book. Cruelly persecuted by the Mohammedansthey were transformed from a pietistic into a warlikeconfederacy, which ousted Mohammedan rule from thePunjab and, under Ranjit Singh, developed remarkablemilitary vitality. But the power of the Sikhs did notendure half a century. In 1848 it yielded to the Bri
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookidempireofindi, bookyear1913
