A Forgotten Empire (Vijayanagar): A Contribution to the History of India c10.68

c10.68

A man of these seemingly opposite qualities, charity, generosity, and religious fervour linked to unbridled lust for blood and an apparently overmastering desire to take life, possesses a character so *bizarre*, so totally opposed to Hindu ideals, that he would almost of necessity be accounted as something superhuman, monstrous, a saint with the heart of a devil, or a fiend with the soul of a saint. Hence Muhammad in the course of years gathered round his memory, centuries after his death, all the quaint tales and curious legends which an Oriental imagination could devise; and whenever his name is mentioned by the old chroniclers it is always with some extraordinary story attached to it.