Indian Antiquary Vol 42

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarkar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 198

186
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[JULY, 1913.
The trustworthiness of Minaj's account, which Prof. Bhattabali upholds, remains as much doubtful as it had been before he subscribed to it. The cont:mporary historians whom Minhaj takes as his authorities, with the singular exception of the anthor of Taj al-Másir, do not refer to Muhammad bin Bakhtyar's raids in BangalA". Minhaj visited Bengal about forty years aft:r the raids and collected his account of them from two old soldiers, Sambain al-Din, and his brother, Nizûm al-Din, who were said to have been in the raiding hordes. 2
Their account was sure to be an exaggeration if not anything else, and little reliable on the ground that they even did not understand the language of the country, as is to be expected of the pioneer soldiers of a foreign raiding horde ; their mistaking a vihdra for a fort and the Buddhist Sramaņas for Hindu Brahmanags would perhaps be sufficient for us to determine how far their story could be relied on.
In order to magnify their own achievements, they fabricated the story which Minhâj records as true. It was eren alleged that when Lakshmanasena was still in his mother's womb, his mother was hnng legs upwards, in order to prevent the birth of the child at an inauspicious moment. When the proper time arrived, she was released and gave birth to the child, the future Lakhmaniya, but the mother did not survive. Such treatment of a lady has not been heard of in the country during the last two thousand years. Moreover, bad the mother been treated in the way which Minhaj relates, the survival of the child wonld have been a physical impossibility. The source from which such stories originated cannot have much value with regard to veracity. Tie fanatic superstition and zeal of the raiders stood in their way of getting at a clear understanding of the circamstances which presented themselves at the time, and rendered them quite incapable of making a sympathetic study of the manners and customs of the nation, which, owing to internal dissen. sions fell an easy prey to the invading hordes of foreign barbarians, who were neither more brave nor more civilised. The rude vandals of the frontier border-lands, whose civilisation was all to come, pulled down a superb edifice of refinement and culture by one sweep of their fanaticism. They had neither the time nor the capacity to understand the real canae of their success. They were blinded by their magnificient achievements in a country, which to them appeared to be the promised land--the land flowing with milk and honey. The treatment, which, according to Minhâj,' was doled out to the mother of Lakshmanasena is unprecedented in India, and is only possible in a country where women are being regarded as mere commodities of trade and subject to the waqf of morables.
The next source of information, which the learned Professor makes much of, is the Laghubharata, The traditions, as recorded in this work, might have been the prevailing traditions of the time, but with regard to their genuineness from an historical point of view, they should find acceptance with a heavy amount of discount. The work itself is a composition of the sixteenth century. The distance of time sufficiently warrants scepticism with regard to the historical nature of the traditione, on which Prof. Bhattaśali builds up his arguments.
The demise of the queen, the reported death of Vallala, and the necessary installation of the new-born infant, Lakslimana, are events too sad to be commemorated by the institution of a new era. Such commemoration is without any parallel in the world's history. The Nirvana era, which is supposed to commemorate the death of Buddha, has a different interpretation with the pessimistic Buddhist. To him it typifies the total cessation of pains, an utter dissolution of the entity, "a consummation devoutly to be wished ". In the case of the Hijira, we might say that Muhammad's flight from Mecca to al-Madinab was the beginning of his success, and, hence, he had good reason to regard the date of his flight as auspicious and to perpetuate it in the memories of men by the inanguration of a new era: 31:nhaj: Tabagat-i-Vaşirl: Raverty's Trans., p. 552.
3 Ibid, Raverty's Trans., p. 552. • Ibid, Raverty's Trans., p. 555.
.