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INDIA from 501 to 1200
Pirate raids by Indians against Muslim shipping on the Indian Ocean were followed by a reprisal invasion of the Sind - near the Indus River delta. No Indian force drove the Muslims out of the Sind. The first Muslim state in India was founded there in 711. The conquered area was not rich enough in agricultural potential to induce the Arabs to establish themselves there permanently, and the Muslims left on their own accord.
In the 800s, Hindu intellectuals were aware of Muslim criticism of their faith. Led by a philosopher named Shankara (788-850), a few Hindu thinkers set out to defend Hinduism, especially against the Muslim charge that Hinduism was idolatrous. Shankara systematized the intellectual tradition of the Upanishads. Defenders of Hinduism claimed that, properly understood, Hindu rites helped simple folk along the path to a pure and transcendent belief in one God and to an absolute truth beyond sensory experience. Shankara gave a new impetus to orthodox Brahminism. He traveled about India, founding many religious schools, and he became a most revered Hindu leader. He imagined a unified reality and described Hinduism as about the realization of a single god in all things. He claimed that salvation came through philosophical speculation and meditation leading to the realization that Dow and one's self were the same.
However much Shankara brought unity to Hindu ideology, politically India remained disunited and therefore militarily weak. Without an army capable of defending against a Muslim army out of Afghanistan. In the late 900s, from an independent kingdom centered at Ghazni, through the Khyber Pass, Muslim Turks on horseback began raiding temple towns in northwest India. These Muslims terrorized Hindus and carried back as much booty as they could, much of it from temples. The raiding stopped around 1010 after the Hindus agreed to pay tribute to the ruler of Ghazni --- Mahmud. Here was the traditional act of submission, the Indians sending to Ghazni annual trains of elephants laden with gifts.
The agreement between the Muslims and the Indians broke down and raiding resumed, the Muslims believing they were wielding the sword of Muhammad. They smashed more Hindu temples. They slaughtered or enslaved thousands, leaving survivors shocked and disappointed that they were not being protected from harm by their god Shiva.
Mahmud broke the power of the local rulers in the areas that he raided. He shattered the economy of northeastern India. The precious metals taken from India's temples went into circulation. And much as Alexander's conquests had freed the gold of Darius III and had stimulated the economy in Alexander's time, the riches taken from India's temples gave rise to economic activity in Mahmud's empire. Mahmud erected buildings and magnificent mosques in Ghazni. He turned Ghazni into a world center of Islamic culture, and he financed more military campaigns in Central Asia.
Mahmud was the greatest of rulers of the Ghaznavid Dynasty, ruling from 999 CE to the year 1030. Eventually his empire collapsed. Civil war left Ghazni in ruins by 1151. In Afghanistan a new Turkish dynasty arose: the Ghurids. With the Hindu reputation for weakness, a Ghurid army invaded India and fought its way to Delhi, reaching that city in 1193, overwhelming fierce Hindu opposition along the way. And by 1202 the Ghurids had conquered the larger kingdoms along the Ganges River.
The Ghurid invaders were Muslims and unimpressed by Indic civilization. They did not adopt culturally as had invaders prior to Islam. Coming across Buddhism, they saw it as debased idol worship and tried to destroy it. They sacked Buddhism's major centers, slaughtering many, destroying Buddhism in northern India and sending Buddhists fleeing to Nepal and Tibet, where Buddhism was to flourish.
The Ghurids despised Hinduism, but their slaughter and enslavement of Hindus and the ruination of Hindu holy places was ineffective in diminishing that faith. The Hindus were too numerous for them. Only on the fringe of Hindu society were people attracted to Islam.
Muslim rulers in northern India refused to allow Hindu temples to be rebuilt, and, without temples, Hindu ceremonies became more public and plebeian. Ceremonies were often performed in a town's public square, with amassed worshipers passing along the town's streets. Without temple ritual, communion with God through ecstasy increased, and Sanskrit remained a language of a learned few -- the language of the Brahmins
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Copyright © 2009 by Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.