History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v2.c28.9

v2.c28.9

There is, however, one great difference between the Aryans of the west and the Aryans of the east. The Spaniards remained in a deadly grip of fight for a thousand years nearly with the Moors on the banks of the Tagus in Spain when suddenly the Moors lost in strength and were immediately overthrown by the Spaniards and driven out of Europe. In India the Arabs followed by the Turks remained similarly grappled in conflict for about five hundred years, near about the Indus, with the Rajputs, the Indo-Aryans. In this tug-of-war, however, the Rajputs eventually gave way and were overthrown by the Turks and the Afghans about the end of the third period of our history. Though the Rajputs preserved their independence and their honour, their religion and their valour in the sands and hills of Rajputana, India as a whole lay prostrate at the feet of the Mahomedan conquerers. The Mahomedans were not only not beaten back out of India as in Spain but they eventually engulfed the whole of this country. Why unlike their Aryan brethren of the West, the Rajputs of India failed is a question which the historian of Mediæval Hindu India has to answer and we shall try to do so in the volumes which are now before us.