Page:A history of the military transactions of the British nation in Indostan, Volume 1.djvu/17

Rh SECTION-II

LONG before Tamerlane, mahomedan princes had entered, made conquests, and established themselves in India.

VALID, the 6th of the Kalifs named Ommiades, who ascended the throne in the year 708 of our Æra, and in the 90th of the Hegira, made conquests in India: so that the Alcoran was introduced very early into this country. MAHMOUD, son of Sebegtechin, prince of GAZNA, the capital of a province separated by mountains from the north-west parts of India, and situated near Kandahar, carried the Alcoran with the sword into Indostan in the year 1000 or 1002 of our Æra. He maintained himself in a vast extent of territory out of, and seems to have subdued as large a one in India, if it is true that he carried his conquests as far to the south as the present capital of the kingdom of Visiapore near Goa. He treated the Indians with all the rigor of a conqueror and all the fury of a converter, plundering treasures, demolishing temples, and murdering idolaters throughout his rout. His historians are quite extravagant in their descriptions of the wealth he found in Indostan. One of them says, no doubt allegorically, that he found a 'tree growing out of the earth to an enormous size, of which the substance was pure gold, and this the effect of nature. THE successors of this Mahmoud are called, from the capital of their dominions, the dynasty of the Gaznavides, and maintained themselves in a great part of the countries which he had conquered in India until the year 1155, or 1157, when KOSROU SCHAH, the 13th and last prince of Gazna, and of the Gaznavide race, was deposed by HUSSAIN GAURi, so called from the country in which he was born, Gaur, a province tying to the north of Gazna.