History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v3.c33.s5.5.2

v3.c33.s5.5.2

Hindus too amongst whom idolatry was already prevalent to a certain extent and who became still more idolatrous through the example of Buddhism which they supplanted believed to such an extent in the miraculous powers and sanctity of certain idols that the Pratihāra emperors of Kanauj, though powerful enough to capture Multan, were always held back by the threat of the Mahomedan possessors of Multan that if the Hindus advanced they would break the famous sun-idol of Multan (see Vol. II p. 166). Even in the west the Romans and the Greeks who were in advance of other peoples in philosophy believed in the miraculous powers of certain idols. And Christianity in the beginning preached the formless God and often progressed among the pagans by actually proving to the world that no such miraculous powers existed. The frantic but unavailing prayers of the worshippers of Somnath to destroy the sacrilegious conqueror remind us of a similar spectacle at Alexandria about six hundred years before at the demolishing of the idol of Serapis by the order of the emperor Theodosius (389 A. D.), so graphically described by Gibbon. "Alexandria which claimed his peculiar protection gloried in the name of the city of Serapis. His temple which rivalled the pride and magnificence of the capitol was erected on the spacious summit of an artificial mound raised one hundred feet above the level of the city.