Babar, sixth in descent from Timour, consolidated the states of India under a central government.  His memoirs make one of the most fascinating books ever written.  He lived a stirring and a strenuous life, and the world bowed down before him.  His death was strangely pathetic, and illustrates the faith and the superstition of men mighty in material affairs but impotent before gods of their own creation.  His son and the heir to his throne, Humayon, being mortally ill of fever, was given up to die by the doctors, whereupon the affectionate father went to the nearest temple and offered what he called his own worthless soul as a substitute for his son.  The gods accepted the sacrifice.  The dying prince began to recover and the old man sank slowly into his grave.

The empire increased in wealth, glory and power, and among the Mogul dynasty were several of the most extraordinary men that have ever influenced the destinies of nations.  Yet it seems strange that from the beginning each successive emperor should be allowed to obtain the throne by treachery, by the wholesale slaughter of his kindred and almost always by those most shameful of sins—­parricide and ingratitude to the authors of their being.  Rebellious children have always been the curse of oriental countries, and when we read the histories of the Mogul dynasty and the Ottoman Empire and of the tragedies that have occurred under the shadows of the thrones of China, India and other eastern countries, we cannot but sympathize with the feelings of King Thebaw of Burma, who immediately after his coronation ordered the assassination of every relative he had in the world and succeeded in “removing” seventy-eight causes of anxiety.

Babar, the “Lion,” as they called him, was buried at Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, and was succeeded by Humayon, the son for whom he gave his life.  The latter, on Sunday, Dec. 14, 1517, the day that Martin Luther delivered his great speech against the pope and caused the new word “Protestant”—­one who protests—­to be coined, drove Sikandar, the last of the Afghan dynasty, from India.  When they found the body of that strenuous person upon the battle field, the historians say, “five or six thousand of the enemy were lying dead in heaps within a small space around him;” as if he had killed them all.  The wives and slaves of Sikandar were captured.  Humayon behaved generously to them, considering the fashion of those times, but took the liberty to detain their luggage, which included their jewels and other negotiable assets.  In one of their jewel boxes was found a diamond which Sikandar had acquired from the sultan Alaeddin, one of his ancestors, and local historians, writing of it at the time, declared that “it is so valuable that a judge of diamonds valued it at half the daily expenses of the entire world.”  This was the first public appearance in good society of the famous Kohinoor, which, as everybody knows, is now the chief ornament in the crown of Edward VII., King of Great Britain and Ireland and Emperor of India.  It is valued at L880,000, or $4,400,000 in our money.  Queen Victoria never wore it.  She had it taken from the crown and replaced by a paste substitute.  This jewel thus became one of the heirlooms of the Moguls, who lived in such splendor as has never been seen since or elsewhere and could not be duplicated in modern times.