out in vain for such
personalities in the antiquity and middle ages of India. Not that the
princely thrones were wanting in great men in ancient India, for we
find abundant traces of them in Hindu folk-lore and poetry, but these
sources do not extend to establishing the realistic element in details
and furnishing life-like portraits of the men themselves. That the
Hindu has ever been but little interested in historical matters is a
generally recognized fact. Religious and philosophical speculations,
dreams of other worlds, of previous and future existences, have
claimed the attention of thoughtful minds to a much greater degree
than has historical reality.

[Footnote A: This essay is art enlarged form of an address delivered
on the occasion of the birthday of King Wilhelm II of Wuerttemberg, on
February 25, 1909.]

The misty myth-woven veil which hangs over persons and events of
earlier times, vanishes at the beginning of the modern era which in
India starts with the Mohammedan conquest, for henceforth the history
of India is written by foreigners. Now we meet with men who take a
decisive part in the fate of India, and they appear as sharply
outlined, even though generally unpleasing, personalities.

Islam has justly been characterized as the caricature of a religion.
Fanaticism and fatalism are two conspicuously irreligious emotions,
and it is exactly these two emotions, which Islam understands how to
arouse in savage peoples, to which it owes the part it has played in
the history of the world, and the almost unprecedented success of its
diffusion in Asia, Africa and Europe.

About 1000 A.D. India was invaded by the Sultan Mahmud of Ghasna.
"With Mahmud's expedition into India begins one of the most horrible
periods of the history of Hindustan. One monarch dethrones another, no
dynasty continues in power, every accession to the throne is
accompanied by the murder of kinsmen, plundering of cities,
devastation of the lowlands and the slaughter of thousands of men,
women and children of the predecessor's adherents; for five centuries
northwest and northern India literally reeked with the blood of
multitudes."[1] Mohammedan dynasties of Afghan, Turkish and Mongolian
origin follow that of Ghasna. This entire period is filled with an
almost boundless series of battles, intrigues, imbroglios and
political revolutions; nearly all events had the one characteristic in
common, that they took place amid murder, pillage