Muslim Slave System in Medieval India c10.19

c10.19

It would appear that after the major and minor massacres of the type of Ikhtiyaruddins, there were no pandits or monks left to read the Ashokan Brahmi script for centuries; suppression of Hindu learning by demolition of schools and temples of the infidels, continued with most Muslim rulers right up to the time of Aurangzeb. Ashokan Edicts were lying scattered throughout the country but these could not be read as the experience of Firoz Tughlaq shows. It was left to the archaeologist and Mint Master James Prinsep to decipher the script in the nineteenth century and reveal to the world the glorious deeds of the great emperor Ashoka. Muslim rulers in general and Firoz Tughalq and Sikandar Lodi in particular considered the Brahmans as the very keys of the chamber of idolatry in whom the Hindus reposed their trust.²² Therefore they treated them with great severity. Brahmans, as leaders of Hindu society, were the real obstacles in the Islamization of India. If they could be suppressed, the task of proselytization would become easy.