rder of his
father; it is possible that his numerous wandering disciples may in
reality have been murderers and robbers, and that he could at any
time have procured through them the assassination of the Emperor. The
Muhammadan Thugs, or assassins of India, certainly looked upon him as
one of the great founders of their system, and used to make
pilgrimages to his tomb as such; and, as he came originally from
Persia, and is considered by his greatest admirers to have been in
his youth a robber, it is not impossible that he may have been
originally one of the 'assassins', or disciples of the 'old man of
the mountains', and that he may have set up the system of Thuggee in
India and derived a great portion of his income from it.[13] Emperors
now prostrate themselves, and aspire to have their bones placed near
it [_scil._ the tomb]. While wandering about the ruins, I remarked to
one of the learned men of the place who attended us that it was
singular Tughlak's buildings should be so rude compared with those of
Iltutmish, who had reigned more than eighty years before him.[14]
'Not at all singular,' said he, 'was he not under the curse of the
holy saint Nizam-ud-din?' 'And what had the Emperor done to merit the
holy man's curse?' 'He had taken by force to employ upon his palaces
several of the masons whom the holy man was employing upon a church,'
said he.

The Kutb Minar was, I think, more beyond my expectations than the
Taj; first, because I had heard less of it; and secondly, because it
stands as it were alone in India--there is absolutely no other tower
in this Indian empire of ours.[15]

Large pillars have been cut out of single stones, and raised in
different parts of India to commemorate the conquests of Hindoo
princes, whose names no one was able to discover for several
centuries, till an unpretending English gentleman of surprising
talents and industry, Mr. James Prinsep, lately brought them to light
by mastering the obsolete characters in which they and their deeds
had been inscribed upon them.[16] These pillars would, however, be
utterly insignificant were they composed of many stones. The
knowledge that they are cut out of single stones, brought from a
distant mountain, and raised by the united efforts of multitudes when
the mechanical arts were in a rude state, makes us still view them
with admiration.[17] But the single majesty of this Minar of Kutb-ud-
din, so grandly conceived, so beautifully proportioned, so