Perry Anderson, LRB, August 2012:
“…Compared with the fate of Pakistan after the death of Jinnah, India was fortunate. If the state was not truly secular – within a couple of years it was rebuilding with much pomp the famous Hindu temple in Somnath, ravaged by Muslim invaders, and authorising the installation of Hindu idols in the mosque at Ayodhya – it wasn’t overtly confessional either…”
John Keay, ‘India: A History: Revised and Expanded Edition’, 2011:
“…From this campaign Mahmud returned with booty valued at twenty million dirhams, fifty-three thousand slaves and 350 elephants…
…Somnath’s fort looked more formidable. It seems, though, to have been defended not by troops but by its enormous complement of brahmans and hordes of devotees. Ill-armed, they placed their trust in blind aggression and the intercession of the temple’s celebrated lingam (the phallic icon of Lord Shiva). With ladders and ropes Mahmud’s disciplined professionals scaled the walls and went about their business. Such was the resultant carnage that even the Muslim chroniclers betray a hint of unease. What one of them calls ‘the dreadful slaughter’ outside the temple was yet worse.
Band after band of the defenders entered the temple of Somnath, and with their hands clasped round their necks, wept and passionately entreated him [the Shiva lingam]. Then again they issued forth until they were slain and but few were left alive … The number of the dead exceeded fifty thousand.
Additionally twenty million dirhams-worth of gold, silver and gems was looted from the temple. But what rankled even more than the loot and the appalling death-toll was the satisfaction which Mahmud took in destroying the great gilded lingam. After stripping it of its gold, he personally laid into it with his ‘sword’ – which must have been more like a sledgehammer. The bits were then sent back to Ghazni and incorporated into the steps of its new Jami Masjid (Friday Mosque), there to be humiliatingly trampled and perpetually defiled by the feet of the Muslim faithful….”
Richard Eaton has written a book 'India in the Persianate Age: 1000-1765'. The title is interesting and I intend to read it all.
But this post is about just one chapter in the book 'A TALE OF TWO RAIDS: 1022, 1025', 2019 where he compares raids of Rajendra I (r. 1014–44), maharaja of the Chola empire
(848–1279), on Orissa and Bengal and Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni (r. 997–1030) on India. Both armies had traveled approximately 1600 km.
It's a fairly longish chapter and worth reading but I was left very unsatisfied because he does not talk about three aspects of both the raids:
1. how were captured women - both ordinary citizens as well as royalty- treated?
2. were there religious conversions because of the raids?
3. How were the new slaves- created because of the campaigns- treated?
He however clearly states this:
"...Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni also ordered its Śiva image to be broken up and its pieces taken back to Ghazni, his capital, to be set in a floor and walked upon.
The southerners (led by Rajendra I) crowned their victory by carrying off a bronze image of the deity Śiva, which they seized from a royal temple that Mahipala had presumably patronized. In the course of this long campaign, the invaders also took from the Kalinga raja of Orissa images of Bhairava, Bhairavi and Kali. These, together with precious gems looted from the Pala king, were taken down to the Chola capital as war booty. Before leaving the delta, however, Chola officers directed an operation unusual for military campaigns: they arranged for water from the Ganges River to be collected in pots and carried on the army’s long march back to Tanjavur..."
Richard Eaton also writes: "... The silence of contemporary Hindu sources regarding Mahmud’s raid suggests that in Somnath itself it was either forgotten altogether or viewed as just another unfortunate attack by an outsider, and hence unremarkable...In fact, the demonization of Mahmud and the portrayal of his raid on Somnath as an assault on Indian religion by Muslim invaders dates only from the early 1840s..."
I don't think so because a lot of India's history has remained unrecorded for most of its history and what Mahmud of Ghazni did was not just connected to the religion but arguably it had large impact on its culture.
Therefore, I feel that that the raids were really not comparable.
courtesy: the cover artist and the writer
