The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c31.s5.54

c31.s5.54

Inscriptions record the genealogy of a long line of Rājpūt kings belonging to the Chauhān (Chāhumāna) clan who governed the principality of Sāmbhar (Sākambharī) in Rājputāna, to which Ajmēr was attached. Only two of these chiefs demand notice. Vigraha-rāja, in the middle of the twelfth century, extended his ancestral dominions considerably, and is erroneously alleged to have conquered Delhi from a chief of the Tomara clan. That chief was a descendant of Ānangapāla, who, a century earlier, had built the Red Fort, where the Kutb mosque now stands, and thus given permanence to the city, which had been founded in A. D. 993-4.¹ Europeans are so accustomed to associate the name of Delhi with the sovereignty of India that they do not easily realize the fact that Delhi is among the most modern of the great Indian cities. Vague legends, it is true, irradiate the lands along the bank of the Jumna near the village of Indarpat with the traditional glories of the prehistoric Indraprastha, and these stories may or may not have some substantial basis. But, as an historical city, Delhi dates only from the time of Ānangapāla in the middle of the eleventh century. The celebrated iron pillar, on which the eulogy of a powerful king named Chandra, who lived in the fourth century, is incised, was removed by the Tomara chief from its original position, probably at Mathurā, and set up in A. D. 1052 as an adjunct to a group of temples, from the materials of which the Muhammadans afterwards constructed the great mosque.²