rmy.

The number of persons slain on this occasion has been differently
estimated, and from the nature of the scene it could not be correctly
ascertained. An author who has been often referred to conjectures that
about one hundred twenty thousand perished; while another European
writer nearly doubles this amount. But an Indian historian of
respectability reduces this exaggerated estimate to the moderate
calculation of eight thousand persons: and there is every reason to
conclude that his statement is nearer the truth than any of those which
have been mentioned. Two nobles who were supposed to have caused the
riot fled, with conscious guilt, to a small fortress near Delhi. They
were pursued, taken, and put to death with those who were deemed their
accomplices, who amounted to about four hundred persons.

A very few days after the occurrence of these events, a marriage was
celebrated between the second son of Nadir and a princess of the
imperial house of Timur; and the succession of festivities that attended
these nuptials gave a color of joy to scenes which abounded with misery;
but the majority of the inhabitants of Delhi appear to have been of a
light and dissolute character. We are indeed told by an Indian author
that numbers regretted the departure of the Persians. The drolls and
players of the capital began, immediately after they went away, to amuse
their countrymen with a ludicrous representation of their own disgrace;
and the fierce looks and savage pride of their conquerors, which had
been so late their dread, became in these imitations one of their chief
sources of entertainment.

Nadir remained at Delhi fifty-eight days (1739). Before he quitted it,
he had a long and secret conference with Mahomet Shah, in which it is
supposed he gave him such counsel as he deemed best to enable him to
preserve that power to which he was restored. To all the nobles of the
court he spoke publicly, and warned them to preserve their allegiance to
the Emperor, as they valued his favor or dreaded his resentment. To
those who were absent he wrote in similar terms; he informed them that
he was so united in friendship with Mahomet Shah that they might be
esteemed as having one soul in two bodies; and, after desiring them to
continue to walk in the path of duty to the imperial house of Timur, he
concluded these circular-letters in the following words: "May God
forbid! but if accounts of your rebelling against your Emperor should
rea