And yet as one stands beneath it, marking here and there the half-obliterated traces of previous cutting on the stones of the wonderful tapering pillar, all corbeilled with encircling balconies, and banded in dexterous art with interlaced lettering; as one looks round on the dismantled ruins of still more ancient temples, the mind suddenly ceases to give the glory to Kutb-ud-din, and turns almost with amaze to the thought of the Hindu architects who built it to order out of their dishonoured shrines.
Think of it! Art, true Art rising superior to Self! Surely as they chiselled at those interlaced attributes of the One Unknowable, Unthinkable, they must have been conscious that though all things in this life were--as their religion told them--but Illusion, behind that Illusion lay Reality.
And so their work comforted them.
How much of India is built into this watch tower of her gods? The best of her, anyhow, and English civilisation can scarcely add an additional story to this record of her past.
To Kutb-ud-din Eîbuk, however, belongs the glory of inception; therefore also some forgiveness, which, in truth, he sorely needs. For from the beginning his attitude towards strict morality is, to say the least of it, doubtful. He was a beautiful Turki slave, the avowed pet and plaything of his master Shahâb-ud-din, who gave him "his particular notice, and daily advanced him in confidence and favours."
He appears to have been diplomatic, for on one occasion, being questioned by the king as to why he had divided his share of a general distribution of presents amongst the other retainers, he kissed the ground of Majesty's feet, and replied, that being amply supplied already by that Majesty's favours, he desired no superfluities.
This brought him the Master of the Horse-ship, from which he went on to honour after honour, until in the year A.D. 1193 he was left as viceroy in India. Thenceforward he was practically king. It was he who took Delhi after a conflict in which the river Jumna ran red with blood. It was he who commanded the forces at Etawah, and it was his hand which shot the arrow that, piercing the eye of the Benares Râjah, cost him his life and the loss of everything he possessed.
A quaint picture that, by the way, of the search for Jai-Chund's body amidst the huge heaps of the slain, and its final recognition after weary days by "the artificial teeth fixed by golden wires." Had dentistry got as far in the West, I wonder?
Then it was Kutb-ud-din who presented to his master the three hundred elephants taken at Benares; amongst them the famous white one which refused to kneel like the others before the M'lechcha, king though he might be. The beast's independence serving him better than a man's would have done, since it brought no punishment, but the honour of being pad elephant to the viceroy thenceforth.
And it was he who marched his forces hither and thither, "engaged the enemy, put them to flight, and having ravaged the country at leisure, obtained much booty."