History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v3.c33.s4.38

v3.c33.s4.38

We now come to the crowning event in the idol-breaking and plundering career of Mahmud, the expedition to Somnath. Somnath was famous then as a great Śiva shrine described in detail in the Skanda Purāṇa of the 9th century A. D. and also mentioned by Al-Beruni both as a sacred place and a resort of pirates. Mahmud certainly would think of attacking Somnath and plundering it of its fabulous riches. Unfortunately we have no mention of this expedition, the highest achievement of Mahmud, in the work of Utbi though he lived up to 420 H (1029 A. D.) as stated before, i. e. four years after this event. Nor does Rashiduddin who wrote more than two centuries later mention the Somnath expedition, or Hamidulla Mustafi who followed him twenty years later (E. II p. 430-431). The first description is found in Ibn Asir and later writers have only embellished his account (ditto p. 468). And there is no mention whatever of this great calamity which overtook Gujarat in the palmy days of the Solankhi rulers whose account is fully given by many Gujarat Jain and Hindu chroniclers from the time of the founder Mûlarāja who came to the throne of Anhilwad, as will be shown later on, in 961, sixteen years before Sabuktagin. We do not also find the slightest hint about this calamity in any inscription found upto this time. Under these circumstances one is disposed to doubt whether this expedition was actually undertaken by Mahmud in distant Gujarat where he must have arrived after traversing a wide desert. Yet considering that Hindu writers would be loth to mention this disaster to one of their greatest gods and kings and that writers though writing centuries after the event had certain Moslem accounts before them and are not likely to invent a wholly imaginary story, we give the account given by Ibn Asir from the extract from his work given in Elliot II (p. 469).