History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v3.c33.s6.14

v3.c33.s6.14

Nor was there any real need for this union. The idea that Hindu kingdoms of this time were small is not correct. The Shahi kingdom of Kabul and the Panjab was far more extensive than the small kingdom of Ghazni which was ruled by Sabuktagin or in his early days by Mahmud himself. That kingdom should alone have been able to destroy Ghazni if it had been well prepared. The kingdom of Kanauj was more extensive and more powerful still. Indeed that kingdom, as Arab travellers relate, kept four armies constantly in the field which were so powerful that they could have taken even Multan and driven the Arabs out of Sind. The kingdom of the Chandel king Dhanga was not insignificant and though Rājyapāla of Kanauj had fallen from the example of his great ancestor Bhoja, Dhanga the king of Kalangar and Gwalior was powerful enough to be able himself alone to destroy Mahmud. It is generally not known that Mahmud's kingdom at this time was small and his army also was comparatively inconsiderable. It was also not drawn from one nation, the soldiers being Turks, Afghans, Kurds and Persians who were often at war with one another. Mahmud indeed did not come with an overpowering force of barbarians like Zangis or Timur who with Mogul horsemen of one race numbering seven or four lakhs swept like tornedoes over Asia from the Caspian to the Indus and wrought destruction in five years which five hundred years were unable to repair (Gibbon). Mahmud's army was undoubtedly small compared with the army of Jaipal, as even Mahomedan historians relate, in the first great battle and even in the second with Anadapāla. Nor was it more united than the Hindu army so as to oppose union to disunion. The contrast of north and south also did not exist for Ghazni was opposed to Kabul; and the soldiers of Jaipal of Kabul were unquestionably Afghans yet unconverted and unconverted Afghans could not have been less valiant than Moslem Afghans. Even a difference of race Turk and Aryan did not, in our view, make any difference in the fighting qualities of the two armies. It is indeed a common fallacy by which barbarians from the north, Turks and Afghans, are believed to be more hardy and valiant than the Aryans of the Panjab and Rajputana. This difference of race may have been one of the causes of the defeat of the Marathas at the battle of Panipat at the hands of the Afghans of Abdali, for as a matter of fact the inferiority of the Maratha compared with the Afghan in physique, ferocity and valour may be admitted. But no such difference existed or exists between the Turks and Afghans beyond the Indus and the Aryans of the Panjab and Rajputana so far as history or even present facts tell us. The Jats and Rajputs of the Panjab, whether Sikh, Mahomedan or Hindu are even now among the finest soldiers not only in India but in the whole world; and they were all Hindus in the days of Mahmud. Even now the Panjab is the chief recruiting ground for British Indian Army. The Amritsar Gazetteer states (p. 33) that the Sikh Jats of the Manjha territory can show men who in any country in the world could be deemed fine specimens of the human race. And as for the Rajputs of Rajputana, they have signalised themselves against Turks and Afghans and Moguls and Persians in many battles. The Rathods of Jaswantsing had even held Afghanistan under their sway for several years, in the days of Aurangjeb. We may believe, therefore, that so far as physical strength and valour were concerned the soldiers of Jaipal or Anandapala were not at all inferior to the Turks and Afghans of Mahmud.