Gazetteer of the Bombay Presidency, Vol. I, Part I: History of Gujarat c19.58

c19.58

or Janáwal (Chanwál or Jháláwar) with Asáwal (Ahmedábád) between Bárúh and Nahrwára. He represents all three of these towns to be centres of a considerable trade, and among their products mentions the bamboo and the cocoanut. From Bárúh to Sandábúr (that is Goa), a commercial town with fine houses and rich bazárs situated on a great gulf where ships cast anchor, the distance along the coast given by Al Idrisi is four days. Al Kazwíni¹ writing about the middle of the thirteenth century A.D. 1263-1275, but mainly from information of the tenth century notes Saimúr (Cheul) "a city of Hind near the confines of Sindh" with its handsome people of Turkish extraction worshippers of fire having their own fire-temples. Al Kazwíni (A.D. 1230) dwells at length on the wonders of Somnáth and its temple. He calls it a celebrated city of India situated on the shore of the sea and washed by its waves. Among its wonders is Somnáth, an idol hung in space resting on nothing. In Somnáth he says Hindus assemble by the ten thousand at lunar eclipses, believing that the souls of men meet there after separation from the body and that at the will of the idol they are re-born into other animals. The two centuries since its destruction by the idol-breaker of Ghaznah had restored Somnáth to its ancient prosperity. He concludes his account of Somnáth by telling how Mahmúd ascertained that the chief idol was of iron and its canopy a loadstone and how by removing one of the walls the idol fell to the ground.