History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v3.c33.s4.9

v3.c33.s4.9

We may pause here a little and see how the small kingdom of Ghazni had become an extensive empire by this time. It is sometimes urged that Mahmud merely undertook plundering expeditions without the object of annexing territories and solidifying a powerful state. This appears to be wrong from what we have seen of the expansion of Mahmud's kingdom upto this time. He achieved a conscious expansion of his territory and solidified his state by forcible conversion In this he was actuated by religious zeal as well as by a correct appreciation of the essentials of a strong state. He first secured Khorasan and other provinces immediately to the west of his kingdom over which even in the days of Samani supremacy Sabuktagin had ruled. He next turned his attention to the east. The provinces of Jalalabad and Kabul (Lamghanat) were already annexed and forcibly converted to Mahomedanism. Mahmud first secured the Bannu district of the present N. W. Frontier province which was an ancient tract of the Hindus and was clearly in possession of the Shahis of Kabul. There are extensive mounds near Bannu which show that this district said to be settled first by Bharata, brother of Rāma (vide Rāmāyaṇa Uttarakāṇḍa), was in the possession of the Kabul Shahis "In these mounds coins are found plentifully not only of Azij and Vāsudeva of Indo-Bactrian period but also of the last Brahmin kingly line of Kabul"; but they contain no coins of any Mahomedan kings showing that the city was destroyed by Mahmud. The old road to Hindustan from Ghazni was via modern Bannu and the Kurrum and it fell into disuse when the Khyber pass was opened (Bannu Gazetteer). This district was, it seems, seized by Mahmud first and the people forcibly converted in order to enable him to pass over to India easily. Mahmud annexed the Peshawar District next, capturing Wahind after the signal defeat of Jaipal in the plain of Peshawar. Wahind was the capital of the Kabul kingdom and was also on the then second route to India, being a little above the junction of the Kabul river with the Indus. The basins of the two rivers Kramu and Kubhā (Kurrum and Kabul) well-known even in the Rigveda and situate in the first home of the Vedic Aryans, were thus in the hands of Mahmud and were now Mahomedan lands. Mahmud hereafter extended his kingdom westward by reducing the more distant provinces of the Samani empire and also eastward by first acquiring Multan which was already a Mahomedan state as also by annexing the kingdom of Bhatia which, as shown before, lay to the southwest of Multan and between the Indus and the Jhelum. Finally he annexed the Panjab the remaining province of the Kabul Shahis. He did not, for reasons which we will explain later on, apply to this province the process of forcible conversion though probably even here he appears to have converted many people. Thus the extension of the empire upto this point was by the gradual absorption of neighbouring provinces just in the same manner as the British empire gradually extended from Calcutta, Bombay and Madras by the gradual absorption of neighbouring provinces. We see Bengal first acquired by the British, then Bihar, then the U. P. and finally the Panjab by defeating the Sikhs. The process was here as with Mahmud the same, viz. first subjection with retention of previous powers as payers of tribute and then total absorption. Having thus extended his rule over the Panjab, Mahmud next turned his attention to the conquest and the plundering of the provinces further east. And the first kingdom which naturally he would attack was the kingdom of Thanesar which was immediately to the southeast of the Panjab.