[Sidenote: India, and Indo-China.]
12. In India the most powerful sovereign was the Sultan of Delhi,
Nassiruddin Mahmud of the Turki House of Iltitmish;[5] but, though both
Sind and Bengal acknowledged his supremacy, no part of Peninsular India had
yet been invaded, and throughout the long period of our Traveller's
residence in the East the Kings of Delhi had their hands too full, owing to
the incessant incursions of the Mongols across the Indus, to venture on
extensive campaigning in the south. Hence the Dravidian Kingdoms of
Southern India were as yet untouched by foreign conquest, and the
accumulated gold of ages lay in their temples and treasuries, an easy prey
for the coming invader.
In the Indo-Chinese Peninsula and the Eastern Islands a variety of
kingdoms and dynasties were expanding and contracting, of which we have at
best but dim and shifting glimpses. That they were advanced in wealth and
art, far beyond what the present state of those regions would suggest, is
attested by vast and magnificent remains of Architecture, nearly all
dating, so far as dates can be ascertained, from the 12th to the 14th
centuries (that epoch during which an architectural afflatus seems to have
descended on the human race), and which are found at intervals over both
the Indo-Chinese continent and the Islands, as at Pagan in Burma, at
Ayuthia in Siam, at Angkor in Kamboja, at Borobodor and Brambanan in Java.
All these remains are deeply marked by Hindu influence, and, at the same
time, by strong peculiarities, both generic and individual.
[Illustration: Autograph of Hayton, King of Armenia, circa A.D. 1243.
"... e por so qui cestes lettres soient fermes e establis ci avuns escrit
l'escrit de notre main vermoil e sayele de notre ceau pendant...."]
[1] See Heyd, Le Colonie Commerciali degli Italiani, etc., passim.
[2] We endeavour to preserve throughout the book the distinction that was
made in the age of the Mongol Empire between Khan and Kaan
([Arabic] and [Arabic] as written by Arabic and Persian authors). The
former may be rendered Lord, and was applied generally to Tartar
chiefs whether sovereign or not; it has since become in Persia, and
especially in Afghanistan, a sort of "Esq.," and in India is now a
common affix in the names of (Musulman) Hindustanis of all classes;
in Turkey alone it has been reserved for the Sultan. Kaan, again,
appears to be a form of Khakan, the [Greek: Chaganos] of the
Byzantine historians, and was the peculiar title of the supreme
sovereign of the Mongols; the Mongol princes of Persia, Chaghatai,
etc., were entitled only to the former affix (Khan), though Kaan and
Khakan are sometimes applied to them in adulation.
