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At the very foot of the Kutub Minar the famous Iron Pillar commemorates the victories of the "Sun of Power," the Hindu Emperor of the Gupta dynasty with whose name, under the more popular form of Raja Bikram, Indian legend associates the vague memories of a golden age of Hindu civilisation in the fifth and sixth centuries.
They continued the bewildering lunar year of the Hijra, with its thirteenth month every third year; but, to increase the confusion, the Moghul Emperors also reckoned by Turkish cycles while the Hindus tenaciously maintained in matters of business their national Sambat, or era of Raja Bikram Ajit.
Strange to say, however, his fame has never been so popular as that of his son, Chandragupta II., Vikramadytia, the Sun of Power, who reigned in turn for nearly forty years, and has lived in Hindu legend as the Raja Bikram, to whom India owes her golden age.
The attempt was no sooner made than his son, Karak Bikram Sah, imagining that his father's life was at stake, rushed forward to save him, and seizing a kukri, had already dealt Bum Bahadoor a severe blow, when he was cut down by Dere Shum Shere Bahadoor, then a youth of sixteen or seventeen.
And there's old Bikram Shamsher Jang scorching up and down the pig-paths of Khatmandu on a motor-cycle. Wouldn't that maharajah you? And the Shah of Persia, that ought to have been Muley-on-the-spot for at least three, he's got the palanquin habit. And that funny-hat prince from Korea wouldn't you think he could afford to amble around on a milk-white palfrey once in a dynasty or two?
And there's old Bikram Shamsher Jang scorching up and down the pig-paths of Khatmandu on a motor-cycle. Wouldn't that maharajah you? And the Shah of Persia, that ought to have been Muley-on-the-spot for at least three, he's got the palanquin habit. And that funny-hat prince from Korea wouldn't you think he could afford to amble around on a milk-white palfrey once in a dynasty or two?
Suddenly a bugle sounds; the judge enters his box; the ever popular old 'Bikram, who officiates as starter, ambles off on his white cob, and after him go half-a-dozen handsome young fellows, their silks rustling and flashing through the fast rising mist. A hundred field-glasses scan the start; all is silent for a moment. 'They're off! shout a dozen lungs. 'False start! echo a dozen more.
Local tradition is doubtless quite wrong in assigning to Raja Bikram the noble gateway which is the only monument of Hindu architecture at its best that Ujjain has to show to-day.
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