Raiders from the North

that he, in turn, did not yet fully comprehend. Except that he already knew he didn’t like the climate. Sweat was trickling down his face and the air felt almost solid, as if it had never known a breath of wind. Beneath his plumed headdress, his head throbbed.

At least they’d not encountered any hostility as they advanced. Sometimes Babur had seen small groups watching curiously from a distance as his long line of horsemen and endless baggage carts passed by. Now, shading his eyes, he could see a jumble of low, mud-built thatched houses to one side of the wide track they were following. Golden cakes of animal dung were drying in the sun. Skinny, pale-furred dogs were lying in the meagre pools of shade and a few scrawny hens were running about. Of people there was no sign, either outside the houses or in the surrounding fields where thin-legged white egrets pecked insects off the backs of water buffalo with their yellow bills.

All in all, it looked a mean little settlement. Babur turned away, but then he noticed something else just beyond the village, a large, curiously shaped sandstone edifice within a low, walled compound. Its scale seemed out of proportion with the village. As he drew nearer he saw that the front facade of the main building was a carved mass of what looked like intertwined figures, arms and legs protruding everywhere. Several times on the long road to Panipat he’d glimpsed similar buildings but had had neither the time nor the inclination to examine them.

He signalled a halt. ‘Find out what this place is,’ he ordered his qorchi.

Fifteen minutes later, the squire returned with a tiny old man, desiccated face furrowed as a walnut and eyes filmy with age, together with one of Babur’s captains, Junayd Barlas. As a youth, Junayd had learned Hindi from a Hindustani carpet dealer who had settled in Kabul. Babur had appointed him his interpreter until he could find a better one.

‘This man says it is a Hindu temple, Majesty,’ Junayd explained. ‘I think he is one of its priests.’

‘I’d like to see it.’ Babur dismounted and examined the priest more closely. The man was almost entirely naked except for a loincloth which, wound around his think flanks and passing between his legs, was secured to a string around his waist. Around his left shoulder and passing under his right arm was a long loop of cotton thread. His coarse white hair and beard were long and straggling and there was what looked like a smudge of ashes on his forehead. In his right hand he carried a wooden stick, as gnarled as himself.

Slowly the priest led the way into the compound. The main building was indeed like nothing Babur had ever seen before. Its front was a seven-tiered structure perhaps thirty feet wide at the base, which tapered into a squared-off tower at the top. Carved figures of humans — men and women — with voluptuous bodies and staring, bulbous eyes, wearing clinging, seemingly semi-transparent garments, with jewels on their foreheads and around their necks and arms, covered the facade. Interspersed with these figures — some of whom seemed to be dancing and others about to copulate — were strange, fierce-looking, warlike characters — demons, perhaps, or gods. Some had the heads of animals — monkeys and elephants.

Babur stared. So much elemental life and vitality, but what did it mean? A doorway led into the building. To one side a flight of narrow dark stairs ascended to the upper storeys. There was a strong smell he didn’t recognise, a scent richer, sweeter and far more pungent than sandalwood.

The priest glanced over his shoulder. Satisfied that Babur was still close behind, he walked on, his staff tapping the dusty stone slabs on the ground. Babur followed him into the building’s square inner courtyard around which ran a covered gallery. The walls were carved with scenes from what he supposed must be some Hindu folktale or legend. Warriors, with the faces of monkeys, brandishing short swords appeared to be crossing a bridge to an island to do battle.

Richly carved sandstone pillars depicting more well-fleshed bodies — some with four, six or even eight arms — supported the gallery. On one side of the courtyard was a large white stone statue of a kneeling bull, a string of marigolds round its muscular neck and sticks of incense burning in a brass pot before it. Nearby, with lighted candles surrounding it, was a simple column of black stone — basalt perhaps — rounded at the top and in places worn so smooth the stone shone like marble. In front of it lay small offerings of oil, food and lotus flowers.

‘What is that?’ Babur asked.

Junayd Barlas consulted the priest but appeared to have difficulty in understanding the answer. At last he said, ‘They call it a lingam, Majesty. It represents the male sexual organ and is a symbol of fertility.’

But Babur’s attention had been caught by something else on the other side of the courtyard, a larger-than-life stone figure of a powerfully built man sitting cross-legged with arms raised beneath a carved canopy. Under his elaborate headdress, the face was strong, determined, forceful, the eyes staring ahead.

‘That is one of their gods — they call him Shiva,’ said the interpreter, after another hurried consultation with the priest. But the old man evidently had something else to say because he was continuing to mutter. Junayd Barlas bent lower to catch his words. ‘The priest wishes you to know some words from one of their holy books. “Behold, I am come. I am Shiva, the destroyer. .”’

The priest was watching him with a sly expression. What was he trying to say? That Babur was the destroyer who had come amongst them — or that the Hindus and their gods would destroy him. .?

He turned and strode from the inner courtyard, back through the main building and swiftly out of the compound. He mounted his horse and, taking a drink of water from a cup his squire held up to him, signalled that he was ready to ride on. With his bodyguards behind him, he kicked his horse on without a backward glance at the temple and its mystifying figures.

A few yards further on, directly in their path, a cow sprawled contentedly on the ground, apparently untroubled by the cloud of black flies buzzing round its long-lashed eyes. It was a wide-horned beast and, by the standards of Babur’s homeland, a scraggy creature, its bony hips and ribs clearly defined beneath its dull brown hide. One of Babur’s men trotted forward and prodded it with the butt of his spear. The animal emitted a groan of protest but didn’t move. The man reversed his spear, intending to give the cow something sharper to think about when, from somewhere behind Babur, came an angry cry.

Looking around, he saw the priest rush forward with more speed than he would have thought possible for such a spindly frame. The old man’s face was contorted as he shouted, waving his arms and his stick. Two of Babur’s bodyguards jumped off their horses and seized him before he could come too close to Babur.

Babur signalled to Junayd Barlas. ‘What does he want?’

‘He is cursing you, Majesty.’

‘I’ll have him flogged for his insolence.’

‘You don’t understand, Majesty, he says the Hindus consider the cow a sacred creature that must be left free to roam where it will. He feared you were about to kill it. .’

Babur looked down at the old man. ‘Let him go. And tell him I didn’t understand. Tell him I meant no disrespect to his faith.’

As he listened to Junayd Barlas’s translation, the old man’s expression relaxed. By now the cow had become bored and rising clumsily to its feet ambled off to the shade of a tree. Babur’s army was free to advance once more through his new possessions.

Four days later, Babur and his army reached Delhi, whose governor offered no resistance. It was the largest and most populous city he’d ever seen. The airy grace of Samarkand or Herat was missing but some parts were not unpleasing. He inspected the large sandstone mosques, delicately arched palaces and a curiously carved two hundred and forty foot high, tapering tower — the Qutb Minar — built centuries earlier for reasons no one seemed to know. Complexes of royal tombs — domed, pillared, colonnaded — were everywhere. These smacked to Babur of conceit — clearly the Delhi sultans had wished to be as splendid in death as they had been in life. Now all they had left were these cities of the dead. .

Babur didn’t linger long — just long enough to have the khutba read in his name in the Friday Mosque and to inspect the contents of the imperial treasuries, filled with enough jewels, pearls and gold to justify the expedition on their own account. However, Ibrahim’s nervous former chamberlain in Delhi — summoned before Babur — quickly volunteered that the main treasure was, just as Babur had thought, in Agra. He had done well to despatch Humayun there. After ordering an inventory to be made and appointing one of his commanders as the city’s new governor, Babur set out south-east along the river Jumna to join Humayun in Agra.

The heat was so intense that Babur was surprised any living thing could stir. Yet as his journey continued he noticed more people than before. Soon the roads and fields seemed filled with them, staring and apparently unafraid. The tight discipline he had insisted on must be having its effect. . His new subjects — the men half naked