The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c7.s10.11

c7.s10.11

The Hindu period of Indian history closes neither with Harṣavardhana (647 A.C.) nor with the subjugation by Mussalmans of certain Gurjara-Pratīhāra (Rajput) states in North-Western India in the tenth and eleventh centuries. For, in the first place, a large number of politically sovereign states continued for a long time to be possessed by the Hindus. And secondly, the social expansion, religious assimilation, commercial progress and Imperial achievements such as we are wont to associate with the brightest eras of previous Hindu history were going on in Eastern and Southern India, politically unhampered as of yore by Islamic states, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The natural lines of progressive Hindu evolution were not disturbed in these regions while the buffer-princes of Kabul; Lahore, Delhi, Ajmer, Kanauj, Malwa and Gujarat were performing their heroic duties as by geographical position the gate-keepers of India against the inroads of aggressive Islam. Altogether, we do not experience in India under these conditions anything essentially different from the situations in Europe during the epochs of domination by the Saracens, the Mongols or Tartars, and the Ottoman Turks.