CHAPTER I Flat like a map, Eastern Bengal lies spread out vast and limitless, a land of river and plain. The plough of the gods, runs the legend, wielded in swift anger, had in days gone by torn down this way from the Himalayas to the sea, furrowing hill and valley, mountain and plain, to […]

CHAPTER II Encircled in a network of rivers where Ganges and Buriganga, Meghna, Ishamutti and Brahmaputra meet, lies the ancient kingdom of Vikrampur. At the very centre of the great watercourses of Eastern Bengal, it occupied a position unrivalled in the days when roads were few and jungle covered the land. On every side stretched […]

CHAPTER III It is hard to realize that this was once the capital of kings. At first glance, with its trim rice-fields and patches of jungle growth, it might have been in the beginning as it is now, peaceful, thriving, and content, undisturbed by the noise and clamor of passing events in the world beyond. […]

CHAPTER IV ‘He had grown up with me from youth and was one year my junior,’ wrote the Emperor Jehangir of Islam Khan. ‘He was a brave man, of most excellent disposition, and in every respect distinguished above his tribe and family. Up to this day he has never tasted any stimulants, and his fidelity […]

CHAPTER V No other name in Muslim annals, not even the name of Islam Khan, its founder, is so closely connected with Dacca as that of Shaista Khan. At a time when Eastern Bengal, on the outskirts of the empire, had become the sport of princes, a stepping-stone to greater things, and all was change, […]

CHAPTER VI For the moment the English profited little by the departure of Shaista Khan. Aurungzeb, intent upon his wars in the south, had just now turned aside for a moment to wreak vengeance upon the men who had harassed his fleets, fortified Madras and Bombay in spite of prohibitions, and finally entered into an […]

CHAPTER VII The great Aurungzeb lay dying. Before the walls of the city of Ahmednugger, whence twenty years before he had set forth with all the pomp of war to the conquest of the south, the end had come. Worn out with his long campaigns, the old Emperor realised at last that his days were […]

CHAPTER VIII A new day was dawning for the city that had seen so many vicissitudes. The old scenes of lawlessness and disorder, of treachery and intrigue, of murder, rapine, and licence, that had stained her annals, were things of the past. The old typical Eastern unrestraint, and the unchecked play of passions, slowly began […]

CHAPTER IX Today Dacca stands at the parting of the ways. Behind it lies the past, with its three centuries of memories that crowd close around its crumbling mosques and palaces. Before it, at the beginning of the twentieth century, there has suddenly dawned a new future, fraught with great possibilities to the capital of […]