A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c18.3

c18.3

The Muhammadan conquest in A. D. 712 of Sind, which at that time was regarded as distinct from India, did not seriously affect India proper, and the occupation of Kābul in A. D. 870 was equally without appreciable influence on Hindu polity, which continued its isolated course unchanged by external forces, developing on the political side the Rājpūt kingdoms, and on the aesthetic side the Brahmanical art described in Chapter VII. India did not feel the impact of Muslim ideas until the beginning of the eleventh century, when the repeated fierce raids of Mahmūd of Ghaznī compelled her to take notice of the new force which had arisen. Before his death in A. D. 1030 the Panjāb had become a province of the Muhammadan Sultanate of Ghaznī. But, until the closing years of the twelfth century, Islam made no further progress in India. No buildings of the early Arab conquerors in Sind have been described, nor are there tangible traces of the rule of the Ghaznivide rulers of the Panjāb.