158 A CONQUEST OF PASTSbetween the Hindu subjects and the Muslim rulers was put starkly by
Dow: Firishta^1 s history provides^11 us with a striking picture of the
deplorable condition of a people subjected to arbitrary sway; and of the
instability of empire itself, when it is founded neither upon la\vs, nor
upon the opinions and attachments of mankind.^1114 Dow identifies a
clear distinction between the Muslims and Hindus. The latter, he
writes,^11 give themselves up to tyranny after tyranny/ offering no
resistance.
In his second edition, produced in 1772, Dow added a^11 Dissertation
concerning the Origin and Nature of Despotism in Hindostan.^11 In this
edition Dow rearranges Firishta to chronologically place the Muslim
arrival in Sind at the forefront of Islam^1 s origins in India. In his effort
to explain the figure of the Oriental Despot, Dow places the Mughal
rule in the tradition of an Islam which is uniquely suited to conquest,
for it is in the very nature of its believers to conquer and to kill:^11 The
faith of Mahomed is peculiarly calculated for despotism" and when en-
shrined in a state "leaves ample room for the cruelty."^15 This cruelty
was faced by the Hindu Brahmins who were^11 mild, humane, obedient,
and most industrious, they are of all nations on earth the most easily
conquered and governed.^1116
The East India Company, looking to produce an empire in India,
was an ideal audience for such an assertion of difference between
Hindus and Muslims. Dow^1 s Hisrory-bec'ame one of Europe1s most cel-
ebrated'and widely circulated volumes on the Muslim history of India,
with French and German editions published in 1769.and 1773. This
story of Islam^1 s despotism over the Hindus became the theoretical
framework for how the Indian past was written in the nineteenth
century. James Mill1s 1817 History of British India drew upon Dow to
argue for a tripartite division of Indian pasts and established the arrival
of Islam as a fundamental rupture in that history. Mill posited a golden
age of ancient Hindu India, which was interrupted and arrested by the
dark age of medieval Muslim rule and followed by the enlightened, civ-
ilized, liberated rule of the British. This conception of the origins of
Islam in India became foundational for the East India Company^1 s poli-
cies for knowledge gathering and territorial acquisition.