The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c31.s5.36

c31.s5.36

In those days a large kingdom comprising the upper valley of the Indus and most of the Panjāb to the north of Sind, extending westward to the mountains and eastward to the Hakrā river, was governed by a Rāja named Jaipāl, whose capital was at Bathindah (Bhatinda), the Tabarhind of Muhammadan histories, now in the Patiālā State, and for many centuries an important fortress on the military road connecting Mūltān with India proper.³ Sabuktigīn, the Amīr of Ghaznī, made his first raid into Indian territory in A. D. 986–7 (A. H. 376). Two years later Jaipāl retaliated by an invasion of the Amīr's territory, but, being defeated, was compelled to accept a treaty binding him to pay a large sum in cash, and to surrender a number of elephants and four fortresses to the west of the Indus. Jaipāl having broken the compact, Sabuktigīn punished him by the devastation of the frontier and the annexation of Lamghān (Jalālābād). Soon afterwards (*c.* A. D. 991) Jaipāl made a final effort to save his country by organizing a great confederacy of Hindu princes, including Ganda, the Chandēl king, Rājyapāla, then the king of Kanauj, and others. The vast host thus collected was disastrously defeated in or near the Kurram (Kurmah) valley, and Peshāwar was occupied by the Muhammadans. Jaipāl, who was again defeated in November, 1001, by Sultan Mahmūd, committed suicide, and was succeeded by his son, Anandpāl,¹ who, like his father, joined a confederacy of the Hindu powers under the supreme command of Vīsaladeva, the Chauhān Rājā of Ajmēr. In spite of assistance from the powerful Khokhar tribe of the Panjāb, the Hindus again sustained a heavy defeat.