eat of dominion is changed. Nineveh, built by Ninus out of the
spoils he brought back from the wide range of his conquests,
continued to be the residence of the court and the principal seat of
its military establishments for thirteen centuries to the reign of
Sardanapalus. During the whole of this time it was the practice of
the sovereigns to collect from all the provinces of the empire their
respective quotas of troops, and to canton them within the city for
one year, at the expiration of which they were relieved by fresh
troops.' In the last years of Sardanapalus, four provinces of the
empire, Media, Persia, Babylonia, and Arabia, are said to have
furnished a quota of four hundred thousand; and, in the rebellion
which closed his reign, these troops were often beaten by those from
the other provinces of the empire, which could not have been much
less in number. The successful rebel, Arbaces, transferred the court
and his own appendages to its capital, and Nineveh became deserted,
and for more than eighteen centuries lost to the civilized world.[5]

Babylon in the same manner; and Susa, Ecbatana, Persepolis, and
Seleucia, all, one after the other, became deserted as sovereigns
changed their residence, and with it the seats of their public
establishments, which alone supported them. Thus Thebes became
deserted for Memphis, Memphis for Alexandria, and Alexandria for
Cairo, as the sovereigns of Egypt changed theirs; and thus it has
always been in India, where cities have been almost all founded on
the same bases--the residence of princes, and their public
establishments, civil, military, or ecclesiastical.

The city of Kanauj, on the Ganges, when conquered by Mahmud of
Ghazni,[6] is stated by the historians of the conqueror to have
contained a standing army of five hundred thousand infantry, with a
due proportion of cavalry and elephants, thirty thousand shops for
the sale of 'pan' alone, and sixty thousand families of opera
girls.[7] The 'pan' dealers and opera girls were part and parcel of
the court and its public establishments, and as much dependent on the
residence of the sovereign as the civil, military, and ecclesiastical
officers who ate their 'pan', and enjoyed their dancing and music;
and this great city no sooner ceased to be the residence of the
sovereign, the great proprietor of all the lands in the country, than
it became deserted.

After the establishment of the Muhammadan dominion in India almost
all th