History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v3.c33.s4.21

v3.c33.s4.21

Such is the account, painful to a Hindu, of the sack of Mathura by Mahmud in the declining days of the Imperial Pratihāra kings of Kanauj. Wealth always has passed from the weak to the strong and one is reminded here of the sack of Rome by Alaric in the declining days of the Roman Empire so graphically described by Gibbon "Eleven hundred and sixty years after the foundation of the Imperial city which had subdued and civilized a considerable part of mankind, it was delivered to the licentious fury of the tribes of Germany and Scythia. The recently converted Goth spared the Vatican and many Christians found asylum there; but a cruel slaughter was made of the Romans; gold and jewels were removed and the palaces of Rome were stripped of their splendid furniture. Many a statue was melted for its precious material and many a vase was shivered into fragments by the stroke of a battle-axe. It is not easy to compute the multitude who from a honourable position and prosperous fortune were suddenly reduced to the miserable position of captives. Fugitives from Rome filled the povinces and this awful catastrophe of Rome filled the astonished empire with grief and terror."