PEN PICTURE OF DELHI.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXX, Issue 3446, 10 February 1912, Page 9

PEN PICTURE OF DELHI.

INDIA’S NEW CAPITAL

“Only those who have been in India can actually realise the splendour of such pageants under cloudless skies of deepest azure,” says the, . ‘‘Times” of those unprecedented sceiios 'which, have been witnessed at Delhi within the last few days, of which the centre and pivot have been the King and Queen of the British Empire. In the Fort of Delhi the Mogul Emperoors of old held their Court. Today the Imperial headquarters are on the historic plain of Delhi, and the Royal Standard floats over a vast encampment under canvas covering some twenty-five square miles. And at the great Durbar, on Tuesday, the King announced that the seat of the Indian Government is to be trail sferred from Calcutta to Delhi. THE DURBAR CITY.

“No other city in India has made history as Delhi has,” says the “Times.” “Though in the European mind Delhi is perhaps chiefly associated with tho days of the Mogul Empire, there is no other part of India in which are gathered together so many memories of Indian history at least as precious to the Hindu as to the Mahomedan. On the plain of Delhi were fought out in prehistoric times the fierce conflicts of ancient Aryan races round which th poetic genius of Hinduism has woven the wonderful epos of the Mahabbarata. |

“The whole plain of Delhi is sacied soil to the. devout Hinu. On a mound just beyond the city stands the granite shaft of one of Asoka’s pillars, which, even though mutilated and only transported to Delhi by Firoz Shah, recalls the apostolate of the great Buddhist Emperor of India who recorded on one of the finest of his edicts, prohibiting the taking of life. “Again, at the very foot of the Kutab Minar, the loftiest and noblest minaret from which the Muslman call to prayer has ever gon forth, the celebrated Iron Pillar commemorates the

victories of the ‘Sun of Power,’ Chandragupta Vikramadytia, the great Hindu Emperor of the Gupta Dynasty, with whoso name, under the more popular form of Rajah Bikram. Indian legend associates brilliant memories of a Golden Age under Hindu rulers. This Iron Pillar was erected on its present site by one of the Rajput Princes who built the Red Fort in the middle of the eleventh century and founded the first city actually known to history as Delhi.

“The Mahommedan period represents indeed but one phase in the history of Delhi—a phase of chequered" fortunes and manifold vicissitudes, which the advent of British power alone rescued from overwhelming disaster. For in the very Palace, even in the very Hall of Private Audience where the Emperor Aurungzeb had sat in the pride of power beneath the famous inscription: ‘lf a Paradise there he on earth, It is here, it is here, it is here,’

his wretched successor, Shah Alam 11., had His eyes gouged out by the Rohilla chieftain Glmlam Kadir; and it was there again that, in 1803, already an old man, decrepit and sightless, he welcomed his deliverer in Lord Lake, who had routed the Mahratta forces under the walls of Delhi. THE LAST OF THE MOGULS.

“Only once more, some fifty years later, was Delhi to witness a renewal of the life-and-death struggle which had so often been waged in its historic plain for the possession of India. Then the last of the Moguls went forth into exile, the East India Company disappeared out of history, and India passed under the direct and supreme authority of the British Crown. Yet Delhi remains to the present day the Imperial City of India par excellence. “Historically as well as geographically it represents the very, heart of India ; and whenever occasion requires some great and solemn gathering at which expansion is to be given of the majesty and power of the Indian Empire, Delhi, at once without question, resumes its inherited position of primacy as ‘the King’s House.’ ”