James M. Campbell

“ In the morning Mahmúd seeing the empty plates used to give thanks: ‘Oh Allah,’ he said, ‘hadst thou not given this unworthy slave rule over Gujarát, who could have filled his stomach.’ His virile powers were as unusual as his appetite. The only woman who could bear his embraces unharmed was a powerful Abyssinian girl who was his great favourite. ”

“ Of the surprising size and fantastic arrangements of Ghiás-ud-dín’s pleasure city, the true Mándu Shádiábád or Abode of Joy, curious details have been preserved. This Abode of Pleasure was a city not a palace. It contained 15,000 inhabitants, all of them women, none either old or plain-featured, and each trained to some profession or craft. Among them were the whole officers of a court, besides courtiers, teachers, musicians, dancers, prayer-readers, embroiderers, and followers of all crafts and callings. Whenever the king heard of a beautiful girl he never rested till he obtained her. ”

“ In a recess in the west wall, surmounted with a stone carved in the chaitya or horse-shoe pattern, is the Trident or Trisula of Suṇḍa Máta the only object of worship.
From the hill-top the mound of Bhinmál hardly seems to stand out of the general level. The mound seems hidden in trees. Only in the south gleam the white pillars of the Sun Temple and to the north rise the high mound of the old offices, and still further north the spires of the four temples of Párasnáth. Beyond the town to the south and west spread green gardens fenced with dry thorn hedges. ”

“ Perhaps no part of India so abounds with tigers as the neighbourhood of the once famous city of Mándu. The capital now deserted by man is overgrown by forest and from being the seat of luxury, elegance, and wealth, it has become the abode of wild beasts and is resorted to by the few Europeans in that quarter for the pleasure of destroying them. ”

“ So great and so strange an evil as the complete drying of a river must be the result of some one’s will, of some one’s temper. The Dragon is angry he wants a sacrifice. Again the river ponds into a lake, the lake tops the earth bank and rushes in a flood wasting as only a dragon can waste. For generations after so awful a proof of power all doubts regarding dragons are dead. (Compare Drew’s Cashmere and Jummoo, 414–421.) In India the Chinese dragon turns into a cobra. ”

“ It was not until after the establishment of Musalmán power in Gujarát that any portion of the peninsula came to bear the name of the tribe of Káthis. Even as late as the middle of the eighteenth century, the name Káthiáváḍa was applied only to one of the sub-divisions of the peninsula. In the disorders which prevailed during the latter part of the eighteenth century, the Káthis made themselves conspicuous. As it was from the hardy horsemen of this tribe that the tribute-exacting Maráthás met with the fiercest resistance, they came to speak of the whole peninsula as the land of the Káthis. ”

“ Sultán Áhmed is still a name of power among Gujarát Musalmáns. He is not more honoured for his bravery, skill, and success as a war leader than for his piety and his justice. His piety showed itself in his respect for three great religious teachers Sheikh Rukn-ud-dín the representative of Sheikh Moín-ud-dín the great Khwájah of Ajmír, Sheikh Áhmed Khattu who is buried at Sarkhej five miles west of Áhmedábád, and the Bukháran Sheikh Burhán-ud-dín known as Kutbi Álam the father of the more famous Sháh Álam. ”

“ Al Kazwíni (a.d. 1230) dwells at length on the wonders of Somnáth and its temple. He calls it a celebrated city of India situated on the shore of the sea and washed by its waves. Among its wonders is Somnáth, an idol hung in space resting on nothing. In Somnáth he says Hindus assemble by the ten thousand at lunar eclipses, believing that the souls of men meet there after separation from the body and that at the will of the idol they are re-born into other animals. The two centuries since its destruction by the idol-breaker of Ghaznah had restored Somnáth to its ancient prosperity. ”

“ Every native regiment was in a state of mutiny and a large proportion of the civil population was ripe for revolt. If only one honest man had been found who could have secured the confidence and support of his fellow-countrymen, the fertile province of Gujarát would have been at his mercy; but amongst natives conflicting interests and mutual distrust make combination most difficult. In India a conspirator’s first impulse is to betray his associates lest they should anticipate him. ”

“ To the south, the west, and the north the plain is smooth and bare passing westwards into sand. From the level of the plain stand out a few isolated blocks of hill, 500 to 800 feet high, of which one peak, about a mile west of the city, is crowned by the shrine of Chámuṇḍa the Śrí or Luck of Bhinmál. From a distance the present Bhinmál shows few traces of being the site of an ancient capital. Its 1500 houses cover the gentle slope of an artificial mound, the level of their roofs broken by the spires of four Jain temples and by the ruined state office at the south end of the mound. ”

“ The hill cannot be invested. The easiest access is from the north by the Dehli Gate. The south road with an entrance by the Tárápúr Gate is so steep that cavalry can with difficulty be led up. Like Abul Fazl Farishtah notices that, except during the rains, water constantly oozes from between the chinks in the masonry of the dome of Sultán Hoshang’s tomb. He says the natives of India attribute this dropping to universal veneration for Sultán Hoshang, for whose death, they say, the very stones shed tears. ”

“ The gold which are of various types are inferior in workmanship to his father’s coins. The silver and copper coins are of two varieties, eastern and western. Both varieties have on the obverse the royal bust in the Kshatrapa style of dress. In the western pieces the bust is a copy of the moustached Kshatrapa face with a corrupted version of the corrupt Greek legend used by the Kshatrapas. The only difference between the obverses of the Western Gupta and the Kshatrapa coins is that the date is in the Gupta instead of in the Kshatrapa era. ”

“ It is worthy of remark that about the beginning of this century the resistance to the collection of tribute was stronger towards the west than in the east and south of the province. In the Mahi Kántha the lawlessness of the Koli chiefs, who had established themselves in the ravines and on the hills, necessitated the employment of a military force for collections. In the neighbourhood of Bijápur and Kadi, the chiefs would not pay tribute except under the compulsion of a siege or raid, but the mulakgiri system only reached its full development west of Dholka. ”

“ In 1626 the English traveller Herbert (Travels, 66) writes: Two miles nearer Áhmedábád than Sirkhej are the curious gardens and palace of Khán Khánán where he defeated the last of the Cambay kings and in memory built a stately house and spacious gardens the view whereof worthily attracts the traveller. Mandelslo writing in 1638 is still louder in praise of Tschietbág the Garden of Victory. It is the largest and most beautiful garden in all India because of its splendid buildings and abundance of fine fruits. ”

“ Mubárak Sháh of Khándesh, considering this a good opportunity, preferred a claim to the crown and marched to the frontier. An army led by the chief Gujarát nobles and accompanied by the young king met the invaders at the village of Ránpur Kotriá in Broach, the Gujarát army encamping on the north bank and the Khándesh army on the south bank of the Narbada. Násir-ul-Mulk, one of the Gujarát nobles, taking certain of his friends into his confidence, determined to remain neutral till the battle was over and then to fall on the exhausted troops and possess himself of both kingdoms. ”

“ On the occasion of the pilgrimage to Somanátha the king offered Hemáchárya a palanquin, and, as he would not accept the offer but kept on walking, the king blamed him calling him a learned fool with no worldly wisdom. Again on one occasion while returning from Málwa Siddharája encamped at a place called Śrínagara, where the people had decorated their temples with banners in honour of the king. Finding a banner floating over a Jain temple the king asked in anger who had placed it there, as he had forbidden the use of banners on Jain shrines and temples in Gujarát. ”

“ That no people in India have known enough of navigation to send a fleet fit to make a conquest. As regards the length of the voyage it is to be remembered that though Sumatra is more favourably placed for being colonised from Bengal Orissa and the mouths of the Godávari and Kṛishṇa, in the case either of Java or of Cambodia the distance from the Sindh and Káthiáváḍa ports is not much greater and the navigation is in some respects both safer and simpler than from the coasts of Orissa and Bengal. ”

“ Once this system is established, the celebration of ancestors follows, and when circumstances are favourable to the perpetuation of the hereditary position, the genealogy of the chief is a matter of the highest importance, and the person entrusted with the record of this is vested with peculiar sanctity. It is the genealogist’s duty to enter in the record, not only the direct line but the names of the more distant relations of the chief by whom he is retained, and also to be the continual chanter of the glorious deeds of their common ancestors. ”

“ The association of the Mânas with the Mihiras or Maitrakas suggests that Mâna is Mauna a Puráṇic name for the White Húṇas.21 That the Multán sun idol of the sixth and seventh centuries was a Húṇa idol and Multán the capital of a Húṇa dynasty seems in agreement with the paramount position of the Rais of Alor or Rori in the sixth century. Though their defeat by Yesodharmman of Málwa about a.d. 540 at the battle of Karur, sixty miles east of Multán, may have ended Húṇa supremacy in north and north-west India it does not follow that authority at once forsook the Húṇas. ”

“ In China the cobra is unknown: in India than the cobra no power is more dreaded. How can the mighty unwieldy dragon be the little silent cobra. How not? Can the dragon be worshipful if he is unable to change his shape. To the spirit not to the form is worship due. Again the worshipped dragon becomes the guardian. The great earth Bodhisattva transforms himself into a Nágarája and dwells in lake Anavatapta whose flow of cool water enriches the world (Buddhist Records, II. 11) . In a fane in Swát Buddha takes the form of a dragon and the people live on him (125) . A pestilence wasted Swát. ”

“ The king of Jurz maintained a large force: his cavalry was the best in India. He was unfriendly to the Arabs. His territories were very rich and abounded in horses and camels. In his realms exchanges were carried on in silver and gold dust of which metals mines were said to be worked.
The king of Jurz was at war with the Balháras as well as with the neighbouring kingdom of Táfak or the Panjáb. The details given under Bhínmál page 468 show that Sulaimán’s tongue of land, by which he apparently meant either Káthiáváḍ or Gujarát was an imperfect idea of the extent of Gurjjara rule. ”

“ Momín Khán, after making firm promises to the Peshwa never to depart from the terms of the treaty he had made with the Maráthás, left Poona and came to Bombay, where he was courteously entertained by the Governor, and despatched by boat to Surat. From Surat he passed to Cambay by land through Broach. Sayáji Gáikwár had returned to Áhmedábád from Sorath in bad health, and his uncle Khanderáv Gáikwár, who had been vainly endeavouring to subdue the Kolis of Lúhára, came to Áhmedábád and took Sayáji Gáikwár to Naḍiád. ”

“ Gujarát history dates from the rule of the Mauryan dynasty, the only early Indian dynasty the record of whose rule has been preserved in the writings of the Bráhmans, the Buddhists, and the Jains. This fulness of reference to the Mauryas admits of easy explanation. The Mauryas were a very powerful dynasty whose territory extended over the greater part of India. Again under Mauryan rule Buddhism was so actively propagated that the rulers made it their state religion, waging bloody wars, even revolutionizing many parts of the empire to secure its spread. ”

“ The king’s spirit of peace steeped the land, which, like its ruler, after thirty years of fighting yearned for rest. For fourteen years neither inward malcontent nor foreign foe broke the quiet. In a.d. 1482 Bahlol Lodi advanced from Dehli to subdue Málwa. The talk of Mándu was Bahlol’s approach, but no whisper of it passed into the charmed City of Women. At last the son-minister forced his way into the king’s presence. At the news of pressing danger his soldier-spirit awoke in Ghiás-ud-dín. ”

“ One of the chief times of peril in Lavaṇaprasáda’s reign was the joint attack of the Devagiri Yádava Singhaṇa or Sinhaṇa from the south and of four Márwár chiefs from the north. Lavaṇaprasáda and his son Víradhavala in joint command marched south to meet Singhaṇa at Broach. While at Broach the Vághelás’ position was made still more critical by the desertion of the Godhraha or Godhrá chief to Málwa and of the Láṭa or south Gujarát chief to Singhaṇa. ”