ll's.

"When the Hindoo rajahs, or princes of Hindostan, submitted to
Tamerlane, it was on these capital stipulations: that the emperor should
marry a daughter of Rajah Cheyt Sing's house; that the head of this
house should be in perpetuity governors of the citadel of Agra, and
anoint the king at his coronation; and that the emperors should never
impose the _jessera_ (or poll-tax) upon the Hindoos."

Here was a conqueror, as he is called, coming in upon terms; mixing his
blood with that of the native nobility of the country he conquered, and,
in consequence of this mixture, placing them in succession upon the
throne of the country he subdued; making one of them even hereditary
constable of the capital of his kingdom, and thereby putting his
posterity as a pledge into their hands. What is full as remarkable, he
freed the Hindoos forever from that tax which the Mahomedans have laid
upon every country over which the sword of Mahomet prevailed,--namely, a
capitation tax upon all who do not profess the religion of the
Mahomedans. But the Hindoos, by express charter, were exempted from that
mark of servitude, and thereby declared not to be a conquered people.
The native princes, in all their transactions with the Mogul government,
carried the evident marks of this free condition in a noble independency
of spirit. Within their own districts the authority of many of them
seemed entire. We are often led into mistakes concerning the government
of Hindostan, by comparing it with those governments where the prince is
armed with a full, speculative, entire authority, and where the great
people have, with great titles, no privileges at all, or, having
privileges, have those privileges only as subjects. But in Hindostan the
modes, the degrees, the circumstances of subjection varied infinitely.
In some places hardly a trace at all of subjection was to be discerned;
in some the rajahs were almost assessors of the throne, as in this case
of the Rajah Cheyt Sing. These circumstances mark, that Tamerlane,
however he may be indicated by the odious names of Tartar and Conqueror,
was no barbarian; that the people who submitted to him did not submit
with the abject submission of slaves to the sword of a conqueror, but
admitted a great supreme emperor, who was just, prudent, and politic,
instead of the ferocious, oppressive, lesser Mahomedan sovereigns, who
had before forced their way by the sword into the country.

That country resembled mor