invading army which was completely successful.  Attacking his adversaries suddenly and in the dark—­alarming them, moreover, with strange noises, and at the same time assaulting them with the utmost vigor—­he put to flight the entire Tatar army.  The Khan himself was killed; and the flying host was pursued to the banks of the Oxus.  The whole of the camp equipage fell into the hands of the victors; and Khatoun, the wife of the great Khan, was taken.  The plunder was of enormous value, and comprised the royal crown with its rich setting of pearls.  After this success, Varahran, to complete his victory, sent one of his generals across the Oxus at the head of a large force, and falling upon the Tatars in their own country defeated them a second time with great slaughter.  The enemy then prayed for peace, which was granted them by the victorious Varahran, who at the same time erected a column to mark the boundary of his empire in this quarter, and, appointing his brother Narses governor of Khorassan, ordered him to fix his residence at Balkh, and to prevent the Tatars from making incursions across the Oxus.  It appears that these precautions were successful, for we hear nothing of any further hostilities in this quarter during the remainder of Varahran’s reign.

The adventures of Varahran in India, and the enlargement of his dominions in that direction by the act of the Indian king, who is said so have voluntarily ceded to him Mekran and Scinde in return for his services against the Emperor of China, cannot be regarded as historical.  Scarcely more so is the story that Persia had no musicians in his day, for which reason he applied to the Indian monarch, and obtained from him twelve thousand performers, who became the ancestors of the Lurs.  After a reign which is variously estimated at nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, and twenty-three years, Varahran died by a death which would have been thought incredible, had not a repetition of the disaster, on the traditional site, been witnessed by an English traveller in comparatively recent times.  The Persian writers state that Varahran was engaged in the hunt of the wild ass, when his horse came suddenly upon a deep pool, or spring of water, and either plunged into it or threw his rider into it, with the result that Varahran sank and never reappeared.  The supposed scene of the incident is a valley between Ispahan and Shiraz.  Here, in 1810, an English soldier lost his life through bathing in the spring traditionally declared to be that which proved fatal to Varahran.  The coincidence has caused the general acceptance of a tale which would probably have been otherwise regarded as altogether romantic and mythical.