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Updated: May 2, 2025
In the ruins of seven dead and deserted Delhis round about the present city and the monuments and memorials which commemorate "the old far-off unhappy things" of conquered dynasties and romantic epochs, there is also material for many a volume.
Among the Tales, the Two Delhis; Annie Leslie, by Mrs. S.C. Hall; the Glen of St. Kylas, by Mr. Mr. Ellis, may be read and re-read with increasing interest, which is not a general characteristic of "Annual" sketches. Our extract is one of the most buoyant pieces in the volume By Miss Mitford. This ingenious lady is the most indefatigable of all lady-writers of the present day.
Ruins of the earlier Delhis are about it on every side. Now, at last, a great tract of land has been appropriated for the new seat of government which will rise from the dust. Temporary buildings have been erected. The permanent ones will soon follow. We may be sure that they will be splendid and suited to modern tastes, while they still preserve the characteristic features of Indian architecture.
When a body of those horsemen called Delhis, who are attached to the suite of every Pasha, enters a village, the consternation is general, and followed by a system of exaction that to the unfortunate villager is equivalent to ruin. To complain to the Pasha would be to court instant destruction.
There have been seven Delhis; and it required no little courage to establish a new one the Imperial capital actually within sight of most of them; but the courage was forthcoming.
As I have said, the old Delhis are all about the new one. On the Grand Trunk road out of Delhi proper, which goes to Muttra and Agra, you pass, very quickly, on the left, the remains of Firozabad, the capital of Firoz Shah in the later thirteenth century. Two or three miles further on is Indrapat on its hill overlooking the Jumna, surrounded by lofty walls.
Tradition has handed down a prediction that making Delhi its capital marked the end of each power that asserted itself. Hence there have been many Delhis, as there have been many ancient Romes, and this present Delhi must be succeeded by a new Delhi which British authority and resources will build. The new Delhi will be the ninth, as the present Delhi is the eighth, of the long series.
Altogether scattered over that sun-burnt plain there are the remains of five or six extinguished Delhis, that played their dramas of frustration before the Delhi of the Great Mogul.
The good appearance of the soldiers who were with them, the splendour of the Mahmal, and of the equipage of the Emir el Hadj, who was a commander of the Turkish horsemen called Delhis, drew from the Mekkawys many signs of approbation, such as had been given to those who immediately preceded them. Both caravans continued their route to Arafat without stopping.
With its suburbs it may contain about one hundred and sixty thousand inhabitants, a little more than half of whom are Hindoos, and the remainder nominally Mahometans, in creed. Around the wall stretches a wide, barren, irregular plain, covered, mile after mile, with the ruins of earlier Delhis, and the tombs of the great or the rich men of the Mahometan dynasty.
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