History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v3.c33.s4.24

v3.c33.s4.24

Grief and terror must have seized the Emperor of Northern India and Râjyapâla, like Honorarius the emperor of Rome, fled and was neither in Mathura nor in Kanauj but was already in Bari beyond the Ganges, a place not yet identified. Mahmud must have heard all this through his informers. He, however, took care to take an augury on the Koran and pursued Râjyapâla beyond the Ganges with a small force that he may be tempted to come to a fight. Utbi rightly describes him as the chief of the kings of India and says that all kings bent their necks to him and acknowledged his power and dignity. The name of this king, we now know, was Râjyapâla a word which might be read in Persian as Raja Jaipal or Haipal and Elliot in the absence of the epigraphic evidence we now possess, it is no wonder, identified him with Jaipal, king of Lahore who was already dead and who perhaps, he thought, was acknowledged king even in Mid-India. Later Mahomedan historians call him by various other names which are all absurd guesses and some have called him Kunvarpâla i. e. heir apparent of Jaipal. On the 8th of Shaban (January 1019, Elliot II p. 457) "Mahmud reached Kanauj where a mountain rose before him and his army passed the Ganges to pursue the fugitive emperor. As the Sultan did not probably come at him, he (returned and) reduced the seven fortresses of Kanauj placed on the margin of the water of the Ganges" (Utbi p. 457). "Nearly 10,000 temples were built in these castles and the lying idolators declared that the fabrics were two or three hundred thousand years old". Kanauj is an ancient town supposed to be ruled by the Vedic king Kuśika father of Viśvâmitra and its sacredness was as great as that of Mathura. It was a flourishing city at this time and its grandeur had begun in the days of Harsha four hundred years before. It was already a vast city in his days as recorded by Hiuen Tsang whose description of it we have quoted in Vol. I (p. 28). The greater number of the people had left the place and the Sultan took the forts in one day and plundered them. Kanauj appears, however, to have been not as grand as Mathura. The glowing description given by Mahmud is sometimes wrongly transferred to Kanauj but from Utbi it is clear that it belongs in reality to Mathura. Mahmud is not clearly stated to have destroyed the temples here as at Mathura.