South India and her Muhammadan Invaders c11.9.5

c11.9.5

They offered to join the Muhammadans, and in spite of their being half-Hindus Malik Kafur spared their lives, ‘as they could repeat the Kalima (the declaration of faith of the Muhammadans).’ Malik Kafur then set forward after returning to ‘Bir Dhul’ in search of the Raja to Kandur, to which place apparently he had returned. He was there informed that the Raja had fled to a place which Amir Khusru calls ‘Jalkota’ an old city of the ancestors of Bir. Pursuing him closely there, Malik Kafur found that he had again escaped to the jungles, and the Malik had therefore to return to Kandur, where he searched for more elephants and perhaps even treasure. ‘Here he heard that in Brahmastpuri there was a golden idol, round which many elephants were stabled.’ Malik Kafur started on a night expedition against this place and in the morning seized no less than 250 elephants. He then determined on razing the beautiful temple to the ground—‘you might say that it was the Paradise of Shaddad, which, after being lost, those “hellites” had found, and that it was the golden Lanka of Ram’—‘in short, it was the holy place of the Hindus, which the Malik dug up from its foundations with the greatest care,’ and the heads of the Brahmans and idolaters danced from their necks and fell to the ground at their feet, and blood flowed in torrents.