Panjáb in seventh century A.D.—From various sources, one of the most valuable being the Memoirs of the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Hiuen Tsang, who travelled in India from 630 to 644 A.D., we know something of Northern India in the first half of the seventh century. Hiuen Tsang was at Kanauj as a guest of a powerful king named Harsha, whose first capital was at Thanesar, and who held a suzerainty over all the rájas from the Brahmaputra to the Biás. West of that river the king of Kashmír was also overlord of Táxila, Urasa, Parnotsa (Punch), Rájapurí (Rajaurí) and Sinhapura, which seems to have included the Salt Range. The Pesháwar valley was probably ruled by the Turkí Shahiya kings of Kábul. The rest of the Panjáb was divided between a kingdom called by Hiuen Tsang Tsekhia, whose capital was somewhere near Siálkot, and the important kingdom of Sindh, in which the Indus valley as far north as the Salt Range was included. Harsha died in 647 A.D. and his empire collapsed.
Kashmír under Hindu Kings.—For the next century China was at the height of its power. It established a suzerainty over Kashmír, Udyána (Swát), Yasín, and Chitrál. The first was at this period a powerful Hindu kingdom. Its annals, as recorded in Kalhana's Rájataranginí, bear henceforward a real relation to history. In 733 A.D. King Muktapida Lálitáditya received investiture from the Chinese Emperor. Seven years later he defeated the King of Kanauj on the Ganges. A ruler who carried his arms so far afield must have been very powerful in the Northern Panjáb. The remains of the wonderful Mártand temple, which he built in honour of the Sun God, are a standing memorial of his greatness. The history of Kashmír under its Hindu kings for the next 400 years is for the most part that of a wretched people ground down by cruel tyrants. A notable exception was Avantidharman—855-883 A.D.—whose minister, Suyya, carried out very useful drainage and irrigation works.
Fig. 58. Mártand Temple.
The Panjáb, 650-1000 A.D.—We know little of Panjáb history in the 340 years which elapsed between the death of Harsha and the beginning of the Indian raids of the Sultans of Ghazní in 986-7 A.D. The conquest of the kingdom of Sindh by the Arab general, Muhammad Kásim, occurred some centuries earlier, in 712 A.D. Multán, the city of the Sun-worshippers, was occupied, and part at least of the Indus valley submitted to the youthful conqueror. He and his successors in Sindh were tolerant rulers. No attempt was made to occupy the Central Panjáb, and when the Turkish Sultán, Sabaktagin, made his first raid into India in 986-7 A.D., his opponent was a powerful rája named Jaipál, who ruled over a wide territory extending from the Hakra to the frontier hills on the north-west. His capital was at Bhatinda. Just about the time when the rulers of Ghazní were laying the train which ended at Delhi and made it the seat of a great Muhammadan Empire, that town was being founded in 993-4 A.D. by the Tunwar Rájputs, who then held sway in that neighbourhood.
CHAPTER XVIII
HISTORY (continued). THE MUHAMMADAN PERIOD, 1000-1764 A.D.
The Ghaznevide Raids.—In the tenth century the Turks were the janissaries of the Abbaside Caliphs of Baghdád, and ambitious soldiers of that race began to carve out kingdoms. One Alptagin set up for himself at Ghazní, and was succeeded in 976 A.D. by his slave Sabaktagin, who began the long series of Indian raids which stained with blood the annals of the next half-century. His son, Mahmúd of Ghazní, a ruthless zealot and robber abroad, a patron of learning and literature at home, added the Panjáb to his dominions. In the first 26 years of the eleventh century he made seventeen marauding excursions into India. In the first his father's opponent, Jaipál, was beaten in a vain effort to save Pesháwar. Ten years later his successor, Anandpál, at the head of a great army, again met the Turks in the Khaibar. The valour of the Ghakkars had practically won the day, when Anandpál's elephant took fright, and this accident turned victory into rout. In one or other of the raids Multán and Lahore were occupied, and the temples of Kángra (Nagarkot) and Thanesar plundered. In 1018 the Turkish army marched as far east as Kanauj. The one permanent result of all these devastations was the occupation of the Panjáb. The Turks made Lahore the capital.