After the establishment of the Muhammadan dominion in India almost
all the Hindoo cities, within the wide range of their conquest,
became deserted as the necessary consequence, as the military
establishments were all destroyed or disbanded, and the religions
establishments scattered, their lands confiscated, their idols
broken, and their temples either reduced to ruins in the first
ebullition of fanatical zeal, or left deserted and neglected to decay
from want of those revenues by which alone they had been, or could
be, supported.[8] The towns and cities of the Roman empire which owed
their origin to the same cause, the residence of governors and their
legions or other public establishments, resisted similar shocks with
more endurance, because they had most of them ceased to depend upon
the causes in which they originated, and began to rest upon other
bases. When destroyed by wave after wave of barbarian conquest, they
were restored for the most part by the residence of church
dignitaries and their establishments; and the military establishments
of the new order of things, instead of remaining as standing armies
about the courts of princes, dispersed after every campaign like
militia, to enjoy the fruits of the lands assigned for their
maintenance, when alone they could be enjoyed in the rude state to
which society had been reduced--upon the lands themselves.
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