History of India . been tried for a few months, MohammadShah received the title of emperor, which he retainedfor twenty-eight years. It was but a title, however,for the power .and the glory had departed from thehouse of Babar, and Mohammad was able only to pre-serve some semblance of authority by intrigue andcombination with the various governors and adventurerswho now partitioned the distracted empire. By suchmeans he contrived to rid himself of the dictatorshipof the Barha Sayyids, two brothers who for some yearshad usurped the supreme control of affairs in the timeof their wretched tool, Fa
History of India . been tried for a few months, MohammadShah received the title of emperor, which he retainedfor twenty-eight years. It was but a title, however,for the power .and the glory had departed from thehouse of Babar, and Mohammad was able only to pre-serve some semblance of authority by intrigue andcombination with the various governors and adventurerswho now partitioned the distracted empire. By suchmeans he contrived to rid himself of the dictatorshipof the Barha Sayyids, two brothers who for some yearshad usurped the supreme control of affairs in the timeof their wretched tool, Farrukhsiyar. But there wereother forces which he could not master. Among these the Sikhs were no longer to be reck-oned, for they had been put down in the time ofthe Sayyids with remorseless brutality, and for manyyears this vaUant people was scarcely heard of. TheMarathas, on the other hand, were increasing in powerevery year. Their only rival in the Deccan was ChinKulich Khan, better known as Asaf Jah, the founder. 3 oa -a. -iS o -O o — a. ^ i PAETITION OF THE EMPIRE 179 of the dynasty of the Nizams of Haidarabad whichexists to this day; and Asaf Jah found it expedientto make terms with the enemy and to submit to theirsystem of levying the chauth, a kind of Danegeld bymeans of which the Marathas systematically extendedtheir influence with less trouble than if they hadimmediately insisted on territorial cessions. By theskilful policy of Balaji, and his even abler son,Baji Rao, the earliest of the Peshwas — the real lead-ers, who stood towards the hereditary Maratha rajamuch as the Shogan did to the Mikado before the Jap-anese revolution — this system of blackmail was en-larged until it was accepted not only in the Deccan, butin Gujarat, Malwa, and even as far north as Bandel-khand. By this time some famous names, such as PUajiGaikwar, Holkar, and Sindhai began to appear amongthe officers of the peshwa, and save for old Asaf Jah,who was now the leading man in India, there
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