The Ancient and Medieval Architecture of India: A Study of Indo-Aryan Civilisation c21.12

c21.12

In Northern India one city after another grew in architectural splendour with the rise of new dynasties and the creation of new kingdoms. Kanauj had been Harsha’s capital, and its fine gardens and public bathing-tanks attracted the notice of Hiuen Tsang. In the ninth and tenth centuries it became still grander as the capital of the Panchâla kingdom, and when Mahmûd of Ghaznî captured it in a.d. 1018, his iconoclastic fury vented itself upon the destruction of its temples, which were said to number ten thousand. In 1193 Shihâbu-d-Dîn, the first of the Ghûri line which succeeded Mahmûd's dynasty, completed its ruin, and only the mosque which he built with the masonry borrowed from its temples remains to witness its departed glory.