Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, or the Central and Western Rajput States of India v1.c20.t1.97

v1.c20.t1.97

Hume says, “ Poets, though they disfigure the most certain history by their fictions, and use strange liberties with truth, when they are the sole historians, as among the Britons, have commonly some foundation for their wildest exaggerations.” The remark is applicable here ; for the names which had been mouldering for nine centuries, far from the abode of man, are the same they had worked into their poetical legends. It was at this exact epoch that the arms of Islam, for the first time, crossed the Indus. In the ninety-fifth year of the Hegira,² Muhammad bin Kasim, the general of the Caliph Walid, conquered Sind, and penetrated (according to early Arabian authors) to the Ganges ; and although Elmacin mentions only Sind, yet other Hindu States were at this period convulsed from the same cause : witness the overthrow of Manikrae of Ajmer, in the middle of the eighth century, by a foe ‘ coming in ships,’ Anjar specified as the point where they landed. If any doubt existed that it was Kasim who advanced to Chitor ³ and was defeated by Bappa, it was set at rest by finding at this time in Chitor ‘ Dahir,⁴ the prince of Debil.’