Episode 11: Palas, Prathiharas and early Islamic invasions

the Brown Pondids Brown Cast. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Brown Pondids Brown Cast. This is the 11th episode in our series of podcasts on the history of the Indian subcontinent. My name is Manish Tanaja and in today's episode, we'll cover North India for the period 700 AD to about 1200 AD. Joining me as speakers on this episode are Dr. Omarali and Jaya Varadhan Singh. Welcome to the episode gentlemen. And Gaurav as well. Yes, we'll have Gaurav. I just realized Gaurav is also trying to. Thank you. I wouldn't be as respect but yes, sir. Yeah, please feel free to chip in with your thoughts and ideas. So let me start with you Jay. Jay, when we read about this period in North India, what is the source of our information? How do we know of this age from 700 AD to about 1200 AD in North India? So mainly when we are talking about sources. So in historical terminology, this period from 700 onwards to 1200 AD or 1300 AD, that date is not exact but this period is called Arlimidevil period in Arlimidevil Indian history. So here the main sources, particularly when we are talking about Indian rulers and their dates and all that. For this, the main sources are the land grants which these rulers gave to different Brahmanas and also to their other officials. So these land grants provide us the main information about most of these different dynasties and rulers of these dynasties who rule this part. So basically we have in most of these land grants, there are multiple copper plates in which sometimes genealogies of kings are written and then we have something about the king who granted a particular land. So this is the main source for us when we are talking about this period. Apart from this, this period is also the period when we see another John Ryan Sanskrit literature that became popular. So in the earlier episode, we had discussed Bana's Harsh Charithra. So after Bana's Harsh Charithra, we see that multiple works which are royal biographies, Charithra. So these works were composed by different court poets. So some of the important ones are Gaudavahu. Gaudavahu is composed by a court poet called Vakhpati. And interestingly, this is a procret work which is unique because most of the time the works which were composed during this period were in Sanskrit. Then we see what some of these court poets used to do is like there is this text called Ram Charithra. So this text tells the story of Palak in Rampan and also the similitaneously, we see that the story of Lord Ram is also being told. Then there is this text called Kumar Pal Charithra. So this is about a Gujarati King, Kumar Pal. And on one side, we have the story of Kumar Pal. And on the other side, the author, him, Chenth teaches us the illustrates the rules of Sanskrit grammar. So this is quite unique. And one important text which I think would become important since there is this movie coming out about Prithviraj. So this is Prithviraj Vijay. And the interesting thing about this text is although it is relatively not well known. But it is the only contemporary Sanskrit text which we have off Prithviraj Chohans period. And this is not a complete text. The end of the text is missing. And most scholars believe that this title Prithviraj Vijay. So this victory of the Prithviraj was composed when Prithviraj Chohan achieved the first victory over Muhammad Gauri in the first battle of Tharaiam. And even the authorship of this text is debriaked. And then we have multiple Arab sources because during this period, you know, the interaction between these two cultures really started. So Arab sources and finally we have Albaruni's account. And if you are looking at Kashmir, we have the famous Raj Tharangani of Kalhar. Right. And these are, you know, the Arab sources which are really actually mostly now Persian or Persianate kind of sources for the later for the Delhi Sultanate and stuff are quite extensive. But recently you have also had a number of people trying to suggest that they are just exaggerated fictions and not reliable history. And I'm quite sure they are very exaggerated, but at the same time, I don't think that this is a good faith criticism. There seems to be a sort of some of the things they relate are now considered un, you know, ungood, not something that we want to teach our children. And so that their credibility is being undermined. But I think their credibility is not that low. They do relate history in detail, but they of course exaggerate the kings that they are praising that that is definitely the case. Oh, some can you give us an example of one of these Persian accounts that you've been just talking of, especially anything that was. I think the most famous and Jay probably knows more than I do, but the most famous is Jyavdine Barani's Barani's history written in the Delhi Sultanate. He was a contemporary of Muhammad bin Tohlaq. He was actually his, who was something and he wrote a detailed history of the Delhi Sultanate. And it's written clearly with a, with a kind of a, you know, ideal Islamic angle to it, meaning that he's always trying to judge if this Sultan was doing things in the proper Islamic way or not. He's very critical of those who were not and, and so he's also tends to give, you know, very proudly relate the good sultans in his view are the sultans who destroyed temples and killed Hindus and whatever, because that's what a good Muslim ruler in those days was supposed to do. But that's why people now feel that he's not a good source because he gives extensive, you know, like the numbers he gives are clearly exaggerated, I think. But the facts are probably not wrong, we're just exaggerated. But that's for the Delhi Sultanate period. Jay, for about this period 700 ED to about 1200 ED to what are the prominent Arab and Persian sources from which we know what was happening in the subcontinent. Arab sources one more I wanted to add would be that for the Arab sources, there is a history, the Arabs wrote several histories, it was a sort of a genre for them, which were histories of the conquest right the Arab empire is an empire obviously and very op at in their own mind. There was nothing wrong with being an empire so they were very proud of it and of their imperial conquest and their imperial actions so they wrote a number of histories and the one that has the most or the one that has reference to the Arab conquest of sin is mostly Albaladuri his history. And mentioned say you know I have several pages on the conquest of sin the other sources have like Tabri and the other famous Arab historians only have like a page or two don't give a lot of detail about the conquest of sin. The other big source that people used to use or still use is the Chachnama is a source is a Persian book written in which in sin in the 12th 13th century sometimes. Which is supposedly a translation of an earlier Arabic work that's how the book is framed there's a Pakistani American historian Manan Ahmed who has written a book called a book of conquest in which he has tried to argue that the Chachnama is probably fake that the there is no Arab original which was being translated that the people in which she wanted to write a history and invented sort of the Arab background to it. But that I think is still disputed because I read his book I wasn't convinced that he has any strong argument for why it's a fake but but maybe it is that's an ongoing debate right now about how fake it is part of it is probably is fake but how fake it is is is the issue. Right one important point about the guznav its particularly Mahmoud guzni's conquest there is this text called tariqe behad and this is the primary text when we talk about the man guznavid empire so this is the most important text and the. Even other later Persian sources like when in Dukkan there's this Persian historian, I forgot his name, he's the most important historian, but he wrote in I think in 17th century. So he also uses these sources and tells the story but mainly Tariqe Behake and Minhazus Seraj, Tariqe, Fero Shahi, these are the important works, Persian works that deals with these early period. They are particularly concerned with the establishment of Islam in this part of the world. Right, so we know about this era from land grants which you could argue were the earliest land records or at least land grants, then we know through biographies commissioned by various rulers of this era, primarily written in Sanskrit but also some in Prakrit and then we have Arab and Persian sources of what was happening in this part of the world in this era. Right, so now moving on to let's go through the political map of the north India in this era starting with what is present day of Afghanistan and then we move all the way east to Bengal. Jay, would you like to start there? Who are the rulers in what is now of Afghanistan and west Pakistan and then we move from there? So we are starting around 700 AD. Yes, we start with 700 AD. So this period in Afghanistan most likely we can say that the later Qiderites or Huns who had invaded India, they were controlling this region and although most of our sources like Huynh Sang is the main source when we talk about this region and from his writing they were Buddhist and they controlled this region off of Afghanistan and when we move to Kashmir for example in Kashmir in Kalhans Raj Terangani the the history of this period particularly is kind of not that great because for example in Kalhans we have this the whole Gupta period we are told that a king of Gondana dynasty ruled for 300 years. So Kalhans does not provide us a good information about Kashmir also but what we can say is that around 700 AD Kashmir was also under the influence of the Hunas or Qiderites and it was only around the mid of its century when the carcoded dynasty established by Durla Vardhan that we see you know Kalhans really starts to make much more sense and when we move to the region of Punjab and Haryana there is a debate among scholars of Arlemi Diwal period because there is this view, earlier view which was that after the death of Harsha what we see is that there was this a period of anarchy of 15, 50 years or so but most scholars nowadays believe that the Harsha's empire was not not that great so most of the time this whole region first of all we don't have enough information about what happened after the death of Harsha so this from 650 onwards to 700, 750, period there is not much information but what we see is that around 714 or so in Karnaj there is this person who gets the throne of Karnaj whose name is Yashoverman and Yashoverman conquers this region of Punjab, Haryana and the region of Bihar and Bengal. We know this because there is this I have already mentioned the text called Gaudavahu so in Gaudavahu we have information about this but Gaudavahu talks about the slaying of the Gauda king so Gauda king is the king of Bengal so we but about the region of Punjab we know that Yashoverman controlled the region of Punjab and Haryana because first there are some coins of Yashoverman that are found from this region and then there is a later text which tells us that the court poet which wrote Gaudavahu whose name was Wak Pati also wrote a text called Madhra Mahi Vijay so Madhra was the region of Punjab so the fact that this court poet wrote this poem which is now lost suggests that the region of Punjab and Haryana was also under the control of Yashoverman so Yashoverman is now controlling from Punjab to roughly we can say the Bengal region and in the region of Gujarat the Rashtkutas had control over this region and what he sees that you know when around 724 AD in Kashmir another Karkota ruler whose name is Lalitadik becomes the new king and Lalitadik goes on a dig Vijay and he conquers this is Rajat Arangini Rajarangini says that he first conquered some region in Central Asia and Afghanistan northwest frontier province of Pakistan and Weston Punjab Punjab Kannoj was conquered Bengal was conquered Dukkan was conquered Kunkern and whole Rajputana and finally he returned to Kashmir so this is what Rajarangini talks about the dig Vijay of Lalitadik so this is the period of 8th century mid of 8th century and after 8th century onwards 9th century starting from 9th century we have this famous struggle between three great powers of India so in Bengal we have the Palas in Rajputana and this region of Madhadesh around Kannoj we have the Patihara and in Dukkan western Dukkan particularly we have the Rashtkutas so this struggle with the Rashtkutas and Palas and Patihara which we call which in historical terminology is called the Tripotite struggle so this Tripotite struggle begins around 900 9th century and it goes to this continues to around 200 years and after this we have you know a fragmented polity in which Chohanas are ruling the region of Rajasthan some parts of Delhi and Haryana and in the Genetic Plains the region of present day UP was controlled by the Gahadwal's so this is a rough overview I have just provided and so I would add to that that if you are starting around 700 AD this is the time of the first kind of Islamicate invasion of India is 777 AD, Muhammad bin Kasim's invasion of sin and as you know the Arab empire had started the Omaead empire had conquered a very large territory by that time and it was a very consciously sort of expensive empire the aim in theory was to conquer the whole world right and it was a normal thing if you read the histories of that period for the the Caliph and his governors were 24/7 worrying about where to attack next so one of the obvious things after you conquer Iran is to start thinking about Macron and sin there were Arab incursions into Macron very early in the 636 40s or so AD which didn't get very far they definitely did not get to sin but they got to some part of Macron and that became an Arab province also and then there were several wars within the Arab Caliphate so the there were Shia rebels who had sort of taken refuge in that area and some of them ended up in sin also so some people think that pursuing these rebels was why they faced that way but I think you don't really need a complicated explanation they were thinking of invading wherever they went so once they were in Iran they were bound to think a little further so at some point has just been used as the powerful governor of sort of the eastern half of the empire decided to send expeditions to conquer sin there's a very fancy story about how some women being some Muslim women coming back from Sri Lanka were taken by pirates and their you know their screams were heard by Hajaj and he sent Mohammad bin Qasim to rescue them which is kind of fake because even if there was such an episode the original Arabic sources put that episode much earlier. It wasn't Mohammed bin Qasim's invasion. It was the earlier efforts that were triggered by such a hostage taking at some point. But anyway, the Mohammed bin Qasim's invasion was the second-third time that he tried. And this time, they made serious preparations. And again, the sources are very clear about how these things were handled. The Caliph gave permission. The governor sanction funds. They sanctioned something like 60,000 dirhams to fund the army. 6,000 people were recruited. This and that. And the governor had sort of given a told the Caliph that he's going to bring back more money than is being spent on this expedition. And of course, eventually, he did. And that justified the conquest. So Mohammed bin Qasim's invasion of sin, which was ruled by this Brahman dynasty and Raja Dahir, he was defeated. Sin was conquered up to Muthan and a little beyond that. Muthan was, of course, a big prize because there was this huge sun temple in Muthan, which they took over. And after, according to the Chajna, I think, after killing a cow there and sort of proving that they were in Chajna, they actually let the temple continue to function because they collected money from it. But that was the first sort of contact with India for the Arabs. After that, there was some Arab attempt to extend this further after Mohammed bin Qasim's death. And the Junaid, I think the governor tried again to extend further towards Rajasthan. But was stopped by a Rajput Confederacy or by someone, Jay will know the name. I don't remember the Indian name, that one. But there was a confederation that managed to stop them. I don't think it was a big event. But these were relatively small armies. But the Arab conquest did not extend beyond Sindh at that time. And so that's where the contact remained until the next invasion, which is Mahmoud Paznuris invasions, which we'll get to later. So, Mr. Farhar, listen, who are the rulers of Sindh? You mentioned Abraham in dynasty. Who are the rulers of Sindh? And I remember reading a dynasty called Shahi's who were ruling Afghanistan at that time. Can you throw some light on who were the rulers of Afghanistan and this part of Sindh when Mohammed bin Qasim attacked? Yeah. Again, I'll ask Jay to give us the names. I don't want to miss but also give wrong information. But the rulers of Sindh, the Indian side of things is not that well documented. So there's always this question. There are some controversies about all these things. But the church, the dynasty that was ruling Sindh had taken over relatively recently and were supposedly a Brahman origin dynasty. But prior to that, there were other rulers. And again, I'm sorry, Jay will have to update us on who the earlier dynasty was. And Daya Raja Daya was ruling over Sindh at that time. So it's a relatively small state. But that state was-- And then in the north, the Hindu Shais around this time or a little later would be ruling in the northwest. Right, Jay? That would be the-- this would be the time in Punjab and that region, the rulers would be Hindu Shais. No, they came a little later because-- They came a little later. And this was the period when Kashmir controlled this area. Right, right. And then-- Then the Hindu Shais came. Right. And the Hindu Shais themselves, there's some argument about what they were. But I think probably a Kashatria or Kaya's dynasty or whatever, who had taken over that region. Right. So what we've figured out so far is that this between 700 till about 1080, there were three large kingdoms once there was some political stability after the death of Ashwaddin, which were primarily Paala, Pratiharas, and Rastgutas. Jay, would that be a fair submission? Yes, but I would just add something to which Umar Sahib has just said. I think this period when Junad becomes the next commander of Sain, leads the armies into Al-Hind proper as the Arab sources would say. I think the Arab sources does not really talk about these invasions or raids. But when you read inscriptions of Indian inscriptions, it is, I believe that they made significant attempts to conquer the two invaded India proper. Because from the north, we find that during the reign of Yashobarman, a attempt was made to conquer Kannoj. And even when we move to Gujarat, there were multiple attempts to conquer Gujarat region. And there are inscriptions that describe the Tajika. So in Sanskrit inscriptions, the Arabs are called Tajika. So Tajika is a Pahlavi term, which is derived from a Pahlavi term, which is Tajik. And some scholars believe that this Pahlavi term Tajik was originally derived from a Arab tribe, TIE. So this term Tajika is used in Indian sources. And there is an invasion that happened during this 724 to 750 period. And this raid or invasion, whichever we want to call it, the Arab army went as deep as Ujjan. So in central India proper. And here we are told that this army was defeated by Nagvath, he has a inscription in Gwalior. And this inscription talks about that he defeated Amalic Chakim. So I believe these, they made some serious attempts to conquer this India. But that didn't happen. And we find that after the next commander is Tami, Tami, I think. So Tami did not really make the attempts like Junat. So ultimately it was stopped. And then the small statelet that, meanwhile, the Abbasid caliphate itself started to fall apart. So that united caliphal armies were no longer a threat. But the small sort of Arab statelet in Sin survived. And in fact, was later taken, broken up into a northern statelet which was controlled by Smiley's center around Multan. And a southern one controlled by Sunnis, which was named Al Mansoora. And the Mansoora statelet has a sort of echo in Pakistan now because the Jammate Islami looks back at that statelet as the sort of the first Pakistan, the first Muslim state in India. And so they have named their headquarter Al Mansoora. So if you go to Lahore and go to the Jammate Islami's headquarter, it's located in Al Mansoora. Another point which was I will talk about this. Interestingly, what we find is that Sin was conquered first. And it took around-- it was only around the end of its century or the start of nine century when these two kingdoms of Afghanistan, Zabul and Kabul, where you were finally completely conquered. Before this period, what we find that they used to make rates and they used to depose these kingdoms of-- these rulers of Kabul and Zabul. And when the army-- when the Arab army would return, these rulers would again overthrow the garrisons of Arabs. So it is interesting that Sin was conquered before Afghanistan was conquered. And in fact, in Afghanistan, in Zabulistan, there was an Arab army that was completely annihilated on one of those expeditions, something like 15,000, 20,000 people were killed. There's an Arab name for it, the Doomed army or something. So they had setbacks in Afghanistan much longer than they did in Sin. So Afghanistan has a history of a tough place to conquer. It usually does. It does. But it is physically a difficult place to go through. So obviously-- Right. Right. Right. So now, one thing we can maybe add to that position is that the early Islamic invaders were centered from Arab lands, whereas the later ones were from Central Asia. So that's when Afghanistan started becoming the March lands, so to speak. Right. Right. Right. So Jay, let's talk about the Palas. Tell us what is their origin, what is their backstory, what was the spread of their kingdom, and how did they go about ruling? About the Palas, the story is quite interesting about their founder, whose name is Gopal. And from inscription, we learned that he was elected. So by election-- this was not a normal election in modern sense, Thank you. Some scholars believe that they were not of Shatriya origin and the origin is a matter of debate. But still from the main ruler which you know, which expanded the Paala power was Dharmpal. And Dharmpal ruled from around the end of 8th century. So around 798, his rule start from this. And Paala had their base in the Gaud region. So Gaud region is the present day West Bengal region. So from there they expanded east. Sorry West and during the reign of Dharmpal, Dharmpal managed to put a puppet king on the throne of, on the throne of Kannaj. I think this puppet king was called Krishna Yudh and, and this act of Dharmpal, you know, which began this whole tripe tight struggle. So, so this is about Paala, you know, Paala Dinesd. And just for our listeners, what is the time period we are talking more? So Dharmpal time period is around 798 to 815. So this is Dharmpal. Right. So the Paala kingdom spreads from what is now present day West Bengal to Kannaj, which is Western UP. Yes. And little beyond Kannaj. Right. Right. What about Pratiharas? What is their backstory and where do they do? So about Pratiharas and this is a controversial topic in the sense that the, the name Guruja Pratiharas. So, there are two views in this matter. So, one side believes that this name Guruja Pratiharas was given to the Rajput ruler who ruled the Guruja Desh. So, Guruja Desh was the region of Gujarat and some parts of Rajasthan and, so this was the region of Guruja, Guruja Ra and those Rajput rulers who ruled this were called Guruja Pratiharas. Now, this is one side then another, some scholars argue that these Guruja Pratiharas were, were they were, you know, earlier a nomadic tribe and the gurjars of modern, modern subcontinent. They were, these gurjars were descendants of Guruja Pratiharas. One branch of the gurjaras went on to form a imperial dynasty called the Guruja Pratiharas. This is the, this is a like very heated debate that is going on in historical circles. But Guruja Pratiharas, then the Nagh Bhatt first, who I have mentioned previously. So, he was considered, there were multiple centers of Guruja power. So, he was the one person who established the main dynasty, some scholars called the imperial Pratiharas. And after Nagh Bhatt first, so one of the main rulers was the fourth ruler of this dynasty whose name was Bhatt Saraj. So, during the reign of Bhatt Saraj, we see that this struggle of, with the Palas starts. So, Bhatt Saraj, what Bhatt Saraj does is, he overthrows a defeat Dharampal. And so, this is about the gurjars Pratiharas. And what's the spread of their kingdom like? So, they basically control the region of some parts of Gujarat, complete Rajputana. And if you include Kannaj, so they basically up to the middle Ganga valley. So, one question there, Jay, what about the legends or not legends, first say, what about the historical view that these Guruja Pratiharas were formed after consolidation of the later Hunas, with the land-owning or Chattria elites of sorts. So, I think the recent genetic work is quite extensive to go against that theory, that the newly formed Rajputs were somehow descendants of the Huns. But why does this theory come up? What's the origin of that? I think one of the major historians, R.C. Mojumdar, had this view, it's not, I'm not wrong. And even today, I think I'm not familiar with the genetic, this study. But in the historical documents, which historical articles, which we, which as I as a history student read. So, we still have this, this debate of the Gurjars Pratiharas and the origin of the Rajputs being of a Hunnic extraction. This is still persistent, I frankly, I don't have any answer to this, why does. Yeah, like that's the case, like some of some of the theories on the face of it, they appear very ridiculous and we don't like as a student of history per se. We don't really know so when you go on investigating, where did it start? There seems to be no solid base for that. Just someone speculation gets mainstream in the next generation and that becomes an interesting observation. But yeah. What's up, what have you read about this period, your thoughts? I have actually read almost nothing other than the Wikipedia page about the Indian side of the sort of the Hindu side of things in this era. And that's it used to be just like a black hole, there's nothing we knew nothing about it in school, we had no idea what those general. Dynasties are and where they're ruled and what they did. So from school textbooks and so on, obviously we were taught a lot about Muhammad bin Kaseyman, my mood doesn't agree in this part. I don't know what I want to know about my own interest also, I've been sort of reading about those topics for a while. So I can comment more about those people and their invasions, but much less about the people they were invading. I actually know very little about that. So this trip, I tried struggle last 200 years as we discussed, who prevails. So we are talking now 950 AD or 950 AD, who is the dominant player in North India, present in North India and parts of Sindhan, Pakistan, Pakistan, who's the dominant political player? And is somewhat of a defeat of all the three sides, because what we see is that if you have to view it as a conquest. I think no one would deny that the rast kutas were at the top and second were the, and in the second were the Gurjya Patiyaras. And the last, last position was for the palace, because you know the Gurjya Patiyaras had their base in Malik hit or Malik hit as we call it present day. This is in northern Karmatak and from this region, they invaded three times in North. And in two times they defeated the, so in the first invasion, which happened just, you know, so this was the rural of the, the, the, the, the, to our last kutas was a person called Thu. What he did was like the Pala ruler was defeated by the Guruja Kuthyara ruler. And now the Pala ruler was again trying to build his army and counter the Guruja Kuthyara. So this Dhruv Dhrrashtra Kutaking, what he decides is he times his expedition so perfectly that the major army of the Pratiharas and the Pala's are somewhere around the Eastern UP region. And Kannauj is just lying undrusted. So what Dhruv does is he first conquers the Malawar region. And when this Pratihara ruler Watsraj learns that the army of the Rashkutas is close to conquering Kannauj, he rushes a small detachment of troops which Dhruv easily defeats. And after defeating the Pratiharas, he Dhruv goes and defeats the Pala's. So this was the first expedition which Rashkutas accomplished. Although Kannauj was not conquered, then the second time the same thing happened. They defeat the Pratiharas and they did not fight any battle with the Pala's because Pala's. surrendered and the third time eventually during the reign of Indrathri, I think Indrathri, yes, during the reign of Indrathri which is around 914 to 927. Kannaj was conquered and since you know the Rashputas had their base in the Deccan, they could not maintain this hold for a long time. So they eventually returned. So Kannaj was left for the Pratyaras but what happened was that both of these three dynasties or powers eventually they you know collapsed because of this intense struggle that went on for 200 years. Right so who's the which is a succeeding state? So we know Rashputas exerted some influence till as North has Western UP. So once their power sort of resolves in this part of the world, who's the succeeding state? Or is it a fragmented polity like it was at the end of Herschwerd and Rul and we have smaller players in this part of the world? Yes because you know when the Gulje Pratyaras eventually declined, the small the new kingdoms of Rajputs, Rajput kingdoms emerged. For example we have the Chauhanas or Chauhanas as they were later called. Although the first inscriptions are quite early. So most of these these rulers were under what the few dataries of the Gulje Pratyaras and when the Gulje Pratyaras declined, they eventually they established their own rule. So in the region of Ajmeer and Ajmeer region we have the Chauhanas and the region of Kujrat we have the Chaulukas or Solankas. So there is always this confusion between Chaulukas and Chaulukas. So Chaulukas are the Solanky Rajputs. So this is just a small you know trivia and the region of since we are going to discuss Khadurahu. So Khadurahu was built by the Chandelas and Chandelas were the feudal trees of the Rajputas. So we see that in the region of Bundelkhand and this region the Chandelas established their own and Palas interestingly the Palas declined happened because of there are multiple theories but some believe that the expedition of Rajain Ruchod that happened around the start of 11th century. This was the main reason that that saw the decline of the Palas and after the Palas we have the Senas. So Senas ruled up to I think 13th century when Islam entered Bangalore. Right so one thing there so like there has been this view that the Rastroputas were very rich compared to the Pratyahara because of the like the trade linkages they had because of the large post line they controlled and what about the like what the Pratyahara's because the trade may have trade outside India we talked about it in the previous episode that is how the trade outside India might have been restricted after the around the time of Marcha etc. So was the Pratyahara in the relatively less economically like dominant than the Rastroputas so as not be able to exert their control. Yes I think there is this theory that the Rajputas were able to exert their influence up to northern India was mainly because of the amount of the benefits they enjoyed because of the Arab trade and in the Arab sources interestingly the Pratyahara's are called the enemies of the Islam or enemies of the Arabs and whereas the Rastroputas were quite friendly terms with the Arabs and we find that there was this description of the Rastroputas in which we are told that is a Mandal of Samyan so Mandal is roughly a district or more area so this whole district was governed by a person called Madhumati so this Madhumati was a Tajikar and most scholars believe that Madhumati was the sanskritized version of Muhammad so the Rastroputas had given a district to govern to a Arab and there were different there were multiple localities that were established in the Konkan region and in Gujarat also that there were also some Arabs and apart from Arabs there were also some Jews and also some Persians so there was you know the Rastroputas did enjoy a great deal because of their trade Pratyahara's on the other hand were land locked so they could not really benefit much. So Umar Sahib as the polity in this part of the world is fragmenting how is the Islamic influence and the Islamic invasion how is that phenomena getting played out. So within the you know the Islamic empire started with the Umayyat caliphate and then that was overthrown by the abysides so there's a second Arab dynasty ruling the empire which the abysides ruled from you know the Morocco all the way to Central Asia it's a huge empire but by the ninth century it had started to weaken and by the 10th century it was falling apart they did not have a great model for how to sort of what how to handle their soldiers they got soldiers from Turkish slaves that they had taken in Central Asia but as these soldiers realized soon enough they were the ones with the arms so they got to bully the Sultan's and caliphs so the caliph just became sort of puppets in the hands of these soldiers and different governors started to create their own independent kingdoms. So one of those early independent kingdoms is the Samani kingdom in North in Central Asia which was a Persianized state right they these people were sort of brought back the pre-Islamic Persian culture a lot and adopted a new Persian as their language and so this was a transition from being an Arab empire to becoming this part of the Islamic world becoming a kind of a various Persianate empires. In the Afghan region the one Turkic warlord actually Turkic slave descendant of a Turkic slave Subhaktagin became the ruler around Ghazni and his son Mehmoud became the first person probably to use the title of Sultan which just means powerful so the idea was to differentiate he's not the caliph but at the same time he's no longer just a governor or a feudal you know a feudatory of the caliph he's an independent ruler so this in between term of Sultan was invented to for him and and then of course taken up by a lot of other people so Mehmoud Ghazni we became a very powerful ruler militarily he clearly had some talent but he fought with everyone so he fought with the other Turks around him he fought with his own brother to become the king actually and then of course while doing all this fighting you run out of money and the nearest place with a lot of money was India so then his his economic policy was to invade India every year and collect a lot of booty and this system of invasions started around 1080 and continued until his death and of course the famous figure is 17 invasions now some historians will try to argue that these are exaggerations by the British and we shouldn't call them invasions maybe they were raids maybe they were not even 17 or some people will turn it around and say that every year he had to go to India to sort of collect funds you know something benign like that but anyway he made all these invasions and so he is the one who established a kind of a Muslim presence in northwest India by conquering Lahore and incorporating it into his kingdom his time also was the time when al-Beruni came to India and you know Abu Rehan al-Beruni is one of the most famous of the scientists produced in the Islamicate world and one of the great scientists of world history actually a very very talented man very very brilliant man he was captured by Mahmoud in one of his expeditions northwards and then brought as a sort of a hostage really to his kingdom to his capital where Mahmoud liked to collect all these people he collected every you know famous poet and intellectual he could find although he didn't treat them very well they were all unhappy with him in their private thoughts Ferdossi of course being the most famous or the most famous Persian poet of the age who wrote the Shanama and then did not get enough of a reward from Mahmoud then had to run away then he objected but anyway this Mahmoud Ghaznavi's invasions were very destructive terrible affairs but at the same time he did bring Baruni to al-Beruni to India and al-Beruni wrote one of the early sort of we were talking about Arab sources and so on. One of the sources is Parikh Kall Hind written by Al Baruni, where he describes whatever he knows about the history of India, but also unlike the other Arab chroniclers who are really just interested in the conquest and what happened who the conquerors were and whose only mention of Hindus is really to say we killed so many of them. But Al Baruni was different. He really wanted to learn what knowledge was in India and he collected information about their philosophy, their mathematics, their astronomy, even about medicine, although more interested in astronomy and mathematics and traveled to various places in India. He was not kept, like he was kept on sort of a tight leash by Mahmoud, he sort of complained in his book that he wished he had more freedom to go where he wanted and do what he wanted, but of course working for a sultan, you have to do what the sultan tells you, but he did learn Sanskrit and he wrote an excellent book about India and about what was going on and he's a conservative Muslim, he's not like some sort of liberal or anything and proud of the Islamic invasion or conquest, but at the same time he tries to be fair and he tries to give you a good sort of objective description of the India that he found and their philosophy and their mathematics and astronomy definitely he regards them very highly and passed on that knowledge into the Arab world. Why were talking about that? I think one of the things we can mention also is that there's this, you know, where is the knowledge of India or the interaction with India that the Islamicate world sort of had, there were two or three phases in that. The first is when they were conquered in and around that time a little bit of Indian knowledge was transferred to the caliphate and there were a few Indian books that were translated, mostly medicine, astronomy, they were always interested in astrology, right? That was the big thing and a little bit of mathematics, but then the second interaction is when Mahmud Rasnavi came and Al-Baroni wrote his book and around that time much more is getting translated and a lot of there is a transfer of knowledge. Also that we should mention the Barmakis, the Barmakis were the ministers of Mahmun and Harun Rashid the most powerful of the Abyside Caliphs and they were people from Central Asia who had been picked up by Mahmun while he was sort of stationed there in Central Asia and this family is of probably some has an Indian connection because the word Barmakis from Pramukh they were probably Buddhists who in the intellectual elite of Central Asia. They officially converted to Islam although I think that I really remember reading that even that their contemporaries were had their doubts about how genuine the conversion was but they were very powerful people and they brought Indian knowledge to Baghdad, they brought they set up a hospital there which you will hear about a lot because the Islamic world you know the world's first hospital or the world's first medical school everything becomes the world's first but that was set up by the Barmakis and was probably staffed by Indian physicians. So that was a that was a period of when the Barmakis there was an extensive transfer of Indian knowledge including the Panchantara the stories you know Calila and the menah the stories of Indian origin became very popular in the Arab lands they translated also a life of the Buddha and maybe even Vedanta some Sufi thought also probably had its origin or took something from the Indian side and then there's Albaruni and his interaction during the Mambulhwaz Navis invitations. So before I come to God of Umar Sahib what's the timeline for Kuznavi's let's use the word invasion what are the timelines that we are talking about? So Kuznavi became the Sultan somewhere in the 970s or 980s I think and then started his invasions of India around 1000 and 1,000 and 280 somewhere around there and then basically pretty much invaded every year. I just picked a new target every year he went and looted Mathura he looted you know Tanesh, he looted Swamnath which of course has became a very famous raid and form from the Islamic chronicles it was regarded as a very big event but again there is some pushback now from the Aminand historians in India that maybe the reality of the raid was not as described. But that was in 1025. Right God of you were saying something. Yeah so one like couple of questions to Umar Sahib. So one about like when did so when you just inform the listener about when did the central India central East, West by Islam took place and how far from the first of you already had to do someone who were Buddhist and who converted to Islam. So so like so there has been a rivet in the school even in that history that what we understand as Islam was not required the Islam of the Umayyat or even if even of the rashis on the telephoto but that was when the Abbasid revolution sort of consolidated the power. So by that time like is it fair to say that the people who were the central Asian turn who got converted to Islam but not like how how Muslim were they like how was that dynamic sort of going on. But yeah just to finish up so we know like for India the central Asian horsemen and the Central Asian invaders have been like for before this time also in 1000 years or so they had shaped the history of India. So only thing to change at this instant was their conversion to Islam. So because we had the good feet talked about all of them in earlier episode. So maybe so this the central Asian conquest the conquest of central Asia by the qualified was quite early right as soon as the it was obviously a Sasanian province the Iranians used to rule central Asia this was all Persianate central Asia and the Turks were people beyond the Persian rule and were not really Islamized early on. The first part of central Asia that the Muslims conquered was what used to be the central Asian provinces of the Iranian empire and when these were conquered I think what was his name? Look above in Muslim or something I remember the name anyway one famous general who led the invasions in Hajj bin Yusuf's time so this is late 600 right late 7th century AD they conquered central Asia and the conquest of central Asia of the Trans-Soxiana was completed before the conquest of Afghanistan. So they had not yet taken all of Afghanistan but they had taken the western edge and they had moved on and taken most of central Asia. The people they had converted were not Turks early on they were Persianized central Asian people right sogdians and these people of Trans-Soxiana who were long term sort of civilized Persian people they were not Turkic tribes as such. The Turks they used to capture as slaves in raids they would interact with Turkic tribes on their edge and they would capture Turks from there. Turkish conversion happened a little later but Turkic slaves were being taken and these Turkic slaves had become Persianized in captivity so they're like Mahmood of Ghaznavi and his family Subokhtagin is that these were Subokhtagin was a Turkic slave of another Turkic slave I think Al-Abtagin who also had the slave is sort of you know brings to mind African American slaves in America being in chains and whips and whatever but these are this is a different kind of slavery it was slavery it was not totally benign but these are people who were captured in wars and then actually kept as slave soldiers and so they were they were paired they had they would get some of the loot they would get to rape people when they plundered a city they were not slave slaves in that way and they would get promoted they would become officers in the army and eventually even generals in the army and some of these generals then started their own kingdoms so that's when the Turkic kingdoms started right so Mahmood of Ghaznavi is one of the early ones and these Turkic kingdoms were culturally Persianized though there were not a lot of Turkic cultural influence at that point these are mostly Persianized states and they are the ones who started the invasions of India at that point and as you said the invasions of India from the Northwest is not something new many many different nomadic groups of sort of wild warriors had done that already and they could sometimes penetrate quite far but they did not have a cultural weapon in their armory sort of you know they were they would adopt the culture of the people the more civilized people they conquered actually so the earlier invaders the huns whatever the skittians they became to India and they eventually became Indian but the difference in this case once the central Asian Islamic invasion started in terms of lute and plunder and warrior caste and so on they were not much different from the earlier invasions they had the same policies and the same kind of aims and other things. objectives really. But the difference was that they did carry a very strong religious identity with them. And that made all the difference, right? That they were as warriors, they must have been hardy and capable because these adventurers, you know, you don't see Bengali adventurers conquering states in Central Asia. But you see people from all the way of Khilji's from Central Asia riding across clean across North India and conquering Bengal in 1216. These are not, and then holding it, not just conquering and looting is one thing, but holding it for the next 100 years. These are people who clearly had some military skill, whatever else they had or did not have. Right. And one more misconception, like just for his tenets. So in the popular history, like we had that series on Mughals recently on North Star or even Padmavatt. So these people are generally cast as Afghans or Pakistani-looking people, but they were most probably of the Mongolia facial description. Right. So they were, they were central relations. Although Turks are sort of, I think they're in between, right? They have more Eastern Mongolian kind of ancestry than obviously the Persianate Central Asians. But at the same time, it's a gradual shading. So they didn't look that different from the rest of the people of Central Asia, the Persianized people of Central Asia. But yeah, they would have been fairer looking, different, sort of Afghans Central Asian look would be different from what the typical Indian. Right. So Jay, I'll come back to you while this is going on on the western frontier. We know of two, let's talk about two, let me use the word "phenomenon". One about a king called Mehir Bhogh. And then the famous temples of Khajrahu. Could you throw light on first, let's take Mehir Bhogh, what's his background, which is the area he's ruling, what's his contribution, what's his legacy, and then we'll come to the Chandelas and the temples that they built in Khajrahu. Mehir Bhogh was one of the great rulers of the Imperial Khatiharas. And we can say that most of the northern India and up to the river Narmada was part of his kingdom. And interestingly, this city of Kannaj, you know, for the first time, although the Khatiharas did have claim over the Kannaj region and the Kannaj city itself. But as the capital of the Imperial Khatiharas, it was only during the reign of Mehir Bhogh that we see that this for the first time, you know, Kannaj became the capital of the Imperial Khatiharas. And he's also described by Arab traveler whose name is Suleiman. So he describes his, you know, the large army and the large cavalry that he had maintained. And the palas were, because earlier the pala rule had, they controlled the region of Bihar to Bihar. But during the reign of Mehir Bhogh, he was able to, you know, push back the palas up to their, up to their Gauda region. So Mehir Bhogh pretty much, you know, put an end to the pala supremacy over this region. And today, like, although we most of his buildings, which he constructed, most of it are in central India. But this Kannaj region was his main center, I think. And about a second rule, the whose name was it? No, so I'll just summarize. So we are talking Mehir Bhogh was a Pratihara king whose sort of his capital was Kannaj. And his, at his peak, would it be fair to say that the Pratihara rule peaked? Or was there any other prominent Pratihara king? Yes, yes. I think it would be right to say so. Right, right. Then we were talking of Chandleelas and their contribution, the temples in Khachraho. Can you tell us about the Chandleelas and something about these temples? So about the Khachuraho itself. So like, it is not only a Hindu temple, we see that, you know, there were also Jan and Shavari, Ten, Peshnav images like that of Pralyaan. So, so it is and interestingly, traditionally, it was believed that they were around 80 temples that were present in Khachraho. And right now, there are around 25 temples that has survived. So, although of these 25 temples, three temples, I think are most important for us to know. So the first is a temple called Chaucer Thiogini Temple. So Chaucer Thiogini Temple is a Yogini temple and an interesting aspect of the Yogini temple is that the central shrine is not that important compared to the perimeter. So these Chaucer Thioginis are, you know, are placed around the perimeter of the main shrine. And there were, there were small alcoves where these, these Yoginis were placed. And they were worshipped there. And Chaucer Thiogini Temple was, according to most art historians, was the, you know, initial phase of architecture in this region. And it dates back to around the 9th century. Because although there are no inscriptions there, but we can see that because most of the Khachraho temples were constructed from the sandstone, from sandstone. Whereas this temple was constructed using granite. And the Khachsmanship is also, they were roughly cut and it is a, it is simply, it is quite simple in its iconography. So that is why we say that this was a earlier construction. And then there is this temple called Lakshman Temple, which is the best preserved Khachraho temple. And there is this, we have an inscription of this and this dates back to around 954 AD. The largest is the Khandaryamahadev temple. And this is of 11th century period. And the most important point, sorry, before we talk about this, I think the Jan, also I've talked about the Jan images. So Jan images appear relatively at the end of the period. So around the 12th century onwards, we have some Jan Shrine there. And I think the Khachraho's are famous for their erotic iconography. And Indian historians are, you know, constantly we don't have any sources that suggest, you know, why these iconographies were made there. But there are multiple theories. So most of these images, so these iconographic images, erotic images are called Mython images in the sources. So Mython images, there are multiple theories why, you know, these images were constructed there. So one is, I think, is a theory of that this region was the center of a tantric cult. And these images are not really erotic figures. They are a coded language. So the tantric cult used this term called Sandhya Bhasha. So Sandhya Bhasha is literally a form of a coded language. So some scholars believe that, you know, since it was a place of tantric cult, so they use these erotic figures to, you know, to give a coded message. So this is the one view. And the second is quite simple. So some scholars argue that these images were for, you know, against protection against the evil eye. And the third interpretation is most of the British scholars who studied these temples. So these early scholars, they thought that, you know, this was the great example of the decadence of the Oriental, Oriental Society. So for them, there was nothing much beyond it. And presently, some scholars have viewed this that, we should view this images as a symbolism of Moksha. So we have one, you know, the puru, this is these images present, the present study reunion of Purusha and Praktri. So the symbol of Moksha is presented through these erotic figures. So I think this is about Khajarao. What about Jansana? And Deilas, the dynasty, the kings who built these temples, what do we know about them? What would have been their motivation for building these kind of temples? Motivation, I just said. No, fine. So let's talk about Chandleas. What do we know about them? What part of Chandleas? Chandleas, the earlier ruler was a ruler called Dhanga. And he gained his independence or he achieved a separate kingdom around the end of 9th century. So during this period, Chandleas were most likely the feudal trees of the Raskutas. And when the Raskutas began to decline, Chandleas established themselves. And the Chandleas were ruling this region of western, eastern Malwa, Bundelkhand region. And so this was their territory which they controlled. And the Chandleas, Chandleas, who lasted around the Mahamudh, Gznavi, one of the Chandleas rulers, whose name I think I have forgotten. So he did try to attempt to block an invasion of Mahamudh, Gzni. With the Adhar, I think it was his name. I forgot the complete name. So Chandleas, I think this is only what I know about the Chandleas. I studied that people of the Chandleas. But why you mentioned Kashmir was ruled by the Karkutas, especially their king Lalitha Ditt. Any thoughts on that? Can you throw some light on that kingdom and the geography they ruled and what was their influence? Yes, I think the Kashmir is an interesting period during this period. Is an interesting kingdom during this period because first of all, the Karkutas are also called the Nagas. So in some sources, we have this name. And the first ruler of the Karkutas, what a person called Durla Bharatham. And during this period, so this was the period around 626-662 AD. And in the previous episode, we had discussed how Harsh Vratham wanted a relic of Pudhav to worship. So this Durla Bharatham had to give this relic to Harsh Vratham. So the territory which Durla Bharatham controlled was the region of Taksushila, which is the ancient Gandhar region, Hazara district. And the salt ring is which are in Pakistan right now. And this, mainly the western Punjab, nor western frontier province and Kashmir. So this was the territory which the Durla Bharatham controlled. And when Lalitaditya became the ruler. So initially, there are some scholars who believe that the Tang dynasty, Lalitaditya was some sort of a vessel of the Tang dynasty. But we can look at it through another angle like for the Tangs. Lalitaditya was important because he, along with Jesho Verma, tried to put and stop to Tibetan invasion into India. And in order to keep the Tibetan busy, because the Chinese were engaged with the Arabs in Central Asia. So for them, Lalitaditya was a great person. So because he can be deployed against the Tibetans. So that is what we see. And the first phase of Lalitaditya's conquest, most of the present day of Afghanistan and some parts of Central Asia and Punjab was conquered by Lalitaditya. And these conquests, some scholars believe was mainly because the Chinese introduced or landed Lalitaditya. Some new technologies, particularly we find that the use of heavy cavalry and a new type of armor were introduced because of the Chinese influence. And mainly because of this, that Lalitaditya was able to extend his influence. And his dig with the Vijay, I have already talked about. So most of these territories, which in Lalitaditya controlled. So basically we are talking about most of the north, north India and Afghanistan, all north, Pakistan completely, Tareem Basin also. And his end, which happened around 747, we are told that he was fighting somewhere in Tareem Basin and he lost a battle. So what he did was he along with his generals, they all emulated themselves. So that is how Lalitaditya, Lalitaditya lives came to an end. And after Lalitaditya, we see that most of these territories which were controlled by Lalitaditya, they were all lost. And Kashmir was again reduced to its original size. And this we are going to talk about architecture. I think the Kashmir architecture is an important part and we will talk about this later. Sure, you want to talk about that? Yes, we can talk about this because I think the architecture of Kashmir is important because first of all, Lalitaditya has completed his dig with Vijay. So he has conquered most of the northern India and some parts of that time. And when he finally reaches Kashmir, he first builds a new capital which is called Parihaspur. So Parihaspur, the name itself is quite interesting. Parihas means smile or laughter. So the city of laughter. So Parihaspur, he established and they are he built some two three temples. Although most of us know about Markandre temple, but Markandre temple was not the biggest temple which he built. It is popular because most of the temple, the structure of the temple is still intact. And in this temple, so before we talk about the structure of Markandre temple and its features, the sun temple during this period, there were only two sun temples. So the first was in Multan and the second was the Markandre temple. The later two temples like the Konark and the temple in Gujarat, Modera, these sun temples came later. So earlier, we had the major, the most important temple was the sun temple was in Multan. And then Lalitaditya built this sun temple in Kashmir. This was the second sun temple which we know according to our sources. So the Markandre temple is important and interesting because it has influence of Gupta and Gandhar which is which is obvious. But apart from this, there is also the Syrian Byzantine influence which we can see. For example, if you look at the structure of this temple, we see that there are Arches, and the kind of pillars which are most likely of, you know, was influenced by the Byzantine architecture. So most of these Byzantine influence according to scholars, there is this scholar called Andriving. So he believes that when the Arabs conquered the region of Syria, Palestine and Egypt. So the Syrian, the Byzantine architects had no place to go. And most of these new buildings were, you know, the Arabs were not interested in building new buildings. So most of these, some of these architects went to Kashmir and they provided some influence and they helped building this Markandre temple. So this is, I think, an important aspect of Kashmir architecture particular. Right. And about Kashmir, one other thing you would want to say is that it shows you the importance of sort of geography, supposedly not a very warlike people, but it was physically very difficult to conquer Kashmir. They had the guardians of the passes and very few people. In fact, even other Indians were not easily allowed into Kashmir. It was only, I think I saw in Al-Baroni's book that only a few Jews were outsiders who had been there and some, you know, learned Hindus would be allowed to go there. But otherwise they would not allow anyone to cross the passes and go into Kashmir. And I think when Mahmoud Ghaznabi defeated Anandpal, didn't he take refuge in Kashmir for a while? Yes, yes. They were treated very kindly by the Shahis were treated very kindly by the rulers of Kashmir. And they had some relations with the Kashmir rulers. So now I think we can move to the next invading family, which is the Wories. Before that, how much time I just need to pick your minds on? was fundamentally changing in the way war was fought that suddenly these invasions from central Asia were able to reach further. I mean we just mentioned one of the Sumnat's pretty far away from Afghanistan or central Asia. Do you have any thoughts on what was fundamentally changing in war strategies or the way wars were being fought that these invasions were the invaders were able to come as far as they could? Yeah, I don't know if there was a change in technology so much or organization as much as sort of the cultural change, right? The arrival of Islam and the organization of these tribes which previously might have fought as individual tribes would now fight under the larger banner of Islam so it could get more people together and of course had a very war like and very strong us versus them kind of religion that probably made a difference. Otherwise these were cavalry armies, right? These were large cavalry armies for lots of horses. Horses don't do well in India itself so Indians always had a shortage of horses. Horses would not breed here as well as they do in central Asia and so there was this continuous strain of importing horses from central Asia throughout Indian history right? You have this thing going on and these people were obviously people who had horses who were used to them and rode them from very early childhood and were very good cavalry fighters and the Indian, it wasn't completely one sided though. I mean if you look at all the battles, very small Indian kingdoms defeated some of these people. It's not like a walkover or anything like that. Battles or battles are sometimes one side wins and so on but the other but there was something cultural going on for sure that made them more persistent and raiders than they used to be in the past. Right? What have you heard? Let's start on that. Yeah, so one thing just I mean we know that Belinda also had been in there. He had invaded Patli Pithra so he was also a battalion. So the western Shattrapas were doing ads, south ads, the place where I did like almost Mara Shattrapas. So we had invaders coming deep into the subcontinent before. So right, like I have had the opinion that the legacy of these darts who invaded for more because of the cultural thing. They did not have had any distinctive military advantage compared to the earlier rulers. So all earlier rulers mostly at some times invaded and subcontinent of Korean India. Does that we don't like look back at them that much as we do as the Islamic invaders be? Right. So some cases there was a technology edge like in the invasion of Muhammad bin Qasim's invasion of Sindh. He had brought large catapults with him which supposedly were an advance or were more advanced than anything the the Sindhis had and also had superior bows and archers. They had the kind of I think by that time the composite bow which was not yet standard in Indian archers. There was some minor technical sort of advantage. But the one who had come in the Bittashatas and the Buna's, they also had the mumpel. Right. One thing I will add to what Umar Savan and Gaurav Ji had just said, I think one thing which is also important when we talk about the Indian rulers. The fact that the Indian rulers had managed to stop the Arab invasions. I think mainly because of the fact that there was in the north there was a central power that controlled the northern India. But by the time of Muhammad Ghazni we see that there was no central power that could defeat or that could challenge Muhammad Ghazni. There were multiple powers and sometimes there are some instances where we can see that even there are the differences between the two Indian powers. And the Mahmud Ghazni took advantage of this and he allied with a single power and then you know was able to attack this. The second important aspect is that from the reign of from the period of Harsha or Harsha, there are some scholars who had studied Indian military traditions. They argue that the size of the Gupta's had revolution. They had brought a revolution in terms of military because during the Gupta period the military was much more mobile and that is how Samudrgupta was able to campaign in the south. But by the time of Harsha there are you know descriptions of in Bana's Harsha that the army was you know so massive and it took so much time to move to one place to another. Interestingly there is this text for the century text called Pravandachintamani. And here the famous Ghatavalking whose name is Jayachandr is called Pangu. Pangu means in Sanskrit lame. So he is called lame because we are told that his army is so massive that it stretched from Ganga to Yamuna. And because of this he could not walk easily to one place to another. So this immobility of the Indian armies was greatly exploited by the Turks. And Barney which was mentioned in the start. So Barney writes that Balban could easily the army of Balban which is around 6 to 7000 horses of horse archers of Balban's army could easily defeat a a a one-lack infantry of a Hindu raya rana. So and even in the case of the second battle of Tarayan the mobile mounted archers of the Turks they they were the main reasons why the army of Prithvirachahan was difficult. So cavalry and mounted cavalry particularly was one of the main reasons why the this defeat happened. And another point which I think there is this misconception which we have about the Turkish armies that most of the time days armies were mounted archers. Although they mounted archers were significant part of these armies but they were also some heavy cavalry. And according to some scholars the Turkish slaves were the were they constitute the heavy cavalry of the Turkish armies. And in Persian there is this world called Burgus Tama. This is the this is the term that is used for to describe the heavy cavalry. Sure. So now coming to the Muhammad Gauri what's the political landscape of North India like? Who are the rulers ruling the parts of North India when Muhammad Gauri attacks India for the first time. Jay would you like to start from there? Yes. So the region of what we say Punjab particularly the Pakistani Punjab. And some parts of Indian Punjab also was under the rule of Ghaznavis. And these are called later Ghaznavis. And interestingly so first Gauri conquered the region the territory of the later Ghaznavis. And interestingly if you there are some passages of Prthiraj Vijay that is translated. So in Prthiraj Vijay the later Ghaznavis ruler although he's not named he is called the Lord of the horses. So you can understand you know how important the horses were in the minds of the Indian sources. So first Gauri conquer so first Gauri conquered the region of Punjab. And their center was first the Ghazni region. And around 1186 we see that you know Lahore became their center. And in the in the Persian sources this was Lahore was considered the center of Islam in India. And the region so Sakhlaj was the boundary I think between the territories of the Gourith and the territory of the Chauhan. Now there are some scholars who believe that the Tomas who you who control the region of Delhi and Haryana. They since they had you know metrimonial alliance with the Chauhan's most likely the Chauhan's also controlled the Tomal territory. So this whole Rajputana region and Haryana and Delhi was under the rule of the Thiraj Chauhan. Or the Chauhan's. And if you move eastwards so most of the present day, present day UP and some parts of the Hary was under the rule of the Gauravals. Now interestingly we have this we believe that Jachand was most of the time is presented as the ruler of Kannaj. But interestingly Kannaj because of the raids of Mahamud-Ghazni, it did not recovered from these destruction. And for the Ghatawals, their center was the city of Varanasi. So Varanasi was their center. So the Ghatawals were ruling in the UP region. From UP to the region of Bihar. So this region is, you know, there are not enough sources about this region. So we are not sure, you know, which dynasty controlled this region. But there are some view that the Senas who now controlled the Bengal region, they had some indirect control over this region. Now in the Malawa, we have the Chandelas who ruled. So and in Gujarat, Gujarat were ruled by the Solanki Rajputswar Chaluk, as we call it, you know, we call in the sources called this dynasty. Right. Pumasa, what do we know about Mahamud-Ghuri? So this, as Jay mentioned, you know, these are again a tribe that had taken over from the disintegrating Ghaznavi Empire. They are, there's some dispute, I think about their origin, whether they are Turkic or Tajik Persian kind of origin. But in any case, they were Persian speaking and Persianate in culture. And they set up an empire that was basically took over the remains of the Ghaznavi Empire and then started to expand further. The ruler, Mahamud-Ghuri had no children of his own, had no sons of his own. So he was, and he relied heavily on his Turkic slave generals. And so these were, his Turkic slaves were like core commanders or governors in his armies, all the important positions were held by these Turkic slaves. And when he died, so his battle with the Prithviraj Chohan, of course, very famous first battle of the land, then he lost, but then he came back. And I think in Muslim sources, at least there is this whole thing about how after he lost, he wouldn't cut his hair, he wouldn't take a bath until he was going to take his revenge on Prithviraj and he planned for the whole year and came back. But during this time, the Chohans apparently were not really prepared, were not anticipating that he would be back so soon. I don't know if this is really true or not, but this is what I've sort of vaguely read in some histories from the Persian side at least. So anyway, they defeated Prithviraj Chohan and they conquered Delhi. And Kutubuddin Abok was his general who conquered Delhi and started the Kutub Minar there as the victory, victory tower, celebrating their victory. And because they happened to conquer Delhi and Abok made it one of the sort of centers of his power there, that is the time from which Delhi became the Delhi Sultanate and so on. The these, the Gauris were just like Mahmoud Ghaznavi and so on, the main aim first of all was plunder. But even Mahmoud, you know, he would make deals with people, he would have, he had Hindus in his army and sometimes people make people who want to change the sort of the impression of Mahmoud will try to highlight the fact that especially his elephant core, since elephants were unknown in Afanistan's armies, they were taken from India and the people who managed these elephants and who rode them into battle for all Indians. And presumably they were Hindus because the quarter where they were kept was called the area of the Hindu one in Ghazni. So there was, there were Hindus serving in his army. There was even a couple of I think times when a general or a minor governor or someone that he appointed in his Indian territories was a Hindu. So these are, these are rulers, they make, you know, they make deals, they make compromises. But at the same time their main aim was plunder and they were very clear in their own mind about their, you know, being at very different culture and religion and and being Mujahids and, you know, Jihadis in their own mind that too cannot be denied and it's sort of silly now that some historians are trying to turn that around. So after he had set up his base in this area, so basically Punjab, Haryana, area around Delhi, all of this became part of the Ghorid empire. And when Muhammad Ghorid died, his, he since he had no sons, his slave generals divided up the empire between them. And actually there were three of them in the Indian area. Like Abuk took over in the Delhi to Lahore area and in Multan Nasiruddin Kabacha became the ruler and his, his state let also lasted for a while. He actually fought the Mongols at some point. And then there was a third one who to Tahir Yildas who took over in Ghazni itself or in war in Afghanistan. So the empire sort of split up after that. And then the descendants of these Turkey governors became the sultan of Delhi and started the Delhi Sultanate. Of course Nasiruddin Kabacha would have wanted his own Sultanate to continue in Multan, but his empire or his kingdom did not last. So the one that lasted was the one in Delhi and the man who sort of made it last or set it up as a lasting enterprise was Ilthatmish, the father of Raja Sultanah, right? The next ruler after Abuk who was probably the most talented of the lot and who was also pragmatic. Sorry to interrupt Umar. But like so we skipped on to the Delhi Sultanate part maybe a bit prematurely here. So we were planning that for the next episode just one thing Jay and Umar so between Ghazni and Gauri. So something which we skipped over also now maybe it's also the case in the popular histories, but there is a good span of 150 years if I'm not mistaken right between Mahmoud of Ghazni and Muhammad Gauri and the Batal of Tharin. No, but the Ghazni we after Mahmoud Ghazni we died. His sons were not as capable. So Masood lost most of his empire, but there was still a ramp Ghazni we empire and Lahore continued to be under their control. So from the north west corner was in their control until somewhere around 1150 or so I think. Yeah. So what we understand as like what we today recognizes the territory of Pakistani Punjab that was the that was part of the core Ghazni we empire. That was the whole that's why Lahore began the earliest sort of Indian center of Muslim rule in this. So, so whom did the Ghazni which conquer Lahore and Punjab from? Ghazni which from Anand Paal right from the from the Hindu Shals. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Another important point which I think Gaurav Ji had talked about this this period between Ghazni and Gauri. I think there are three important instances which I think we should talk about because these are not these important incidents are not discussed. So around so just after the death of Mahmud Ghazni his nephew who is Syed Salar Masood Ghazi. So he tried to conquer the region of Awad and around the Bahraj area. He was you know his RV was annihilated and he was also killed and there is this Mazar of Salar Masood Ghazi there. And interestingly the Ghaziteers of the British Ghaziteers talk about that in the in Faza War region. We are told that in night people don't travel at on the roads because the headless troops of Salar Masood Ghazi's army roamed the roads of of Faza War. So so you can you know just perceive how how long lasting this memory of this defeat was because the Ghaziteers also talk about that most of these Muslim settlements in Awad claim that their descendants were from the soldiers of this army who had survived. And another important point that first time Varanasi or Banaras was rated was also during this period around 1033. So there is this commander who was the son of Mahud I think and also the governor of Punjab. His name was Ahmad Nail Teen, Nail Teen I think. So he conquered he rated Banaras and he was successful rating Banaras. And he got a lot of booty from Banaras. And the third battle I think a third major engagement between Muhammad Gauri particularly and the one Indian ruler who is not he she is a queen who is whose name is Nike Devi. So she fought Mahmoud Gauri and the battle is called the Battle of Gardarhar Ghatta. So this battle happened around 1173 around this period. And this battle happened around the Mahmoud Ghatta. So here we are told that the army of the, there are some fragments that are present in Prabandachintamani and other sources. So we are told that the army of Mahamudgore is not mentioned, but historians believe that since this was the period of Mahamudgore, he was most likely the ruler who was defeated by Queen Naikidevi. And so just wanted to write that. So, readers of pop fiction might be aware of a recent book published by the best-selling author in India, Amish Tripathi. So it's called something like the King who saved India. So it has an nationalism change to it. It's about the legend of Suhail Dev. So that book sort of makes that point of some ruler who defeated the later, like the ruler after Ghazni, Mahamudgogazni and how that followed one 50 years of no one from the West conquering India. I don't know how historically tenable that is, but yeah. Another important point about this is that we see that after this Suhail, although no Indian sources talk about this defeat of Salar Masud Gazi. We learn this from the Persian sources and this invasion of Banaras also happened just after this Mahamudgazni, sorry, Salar Masud Gazi's ill-fated invasion. And the later Ghaznavils also did, they did try to, you know, raid these Indian territories. And most of the time since the kind of, you know, military genius Mahamud Ghazni had, they did not have that kind of capacity. So most of the time, they, I think, they, this was the main reason, one of the main reasons also why they failed. And there is some scholars also argue that from the reign of, from the period of Mahamudgazni and to the period of Mahamudgory, the nature of the Turkish armies also changed. So earlier during the reign of Mahamudgazni, most of these are the main component of the army was constituted by the Turkish slaves and these were central Asian nomads. And by the time of Mahamudgory, some scholars argue that the numbers of Afghans and Afghani tribes had, you know, increased. And there were also a significant component of infantry that was also included in the armies of Mahamudgory. So the nature of these two armies was also quite significantly different from the, we can say about this series of invasions of the, the gauri started and the Sultanate that followed them that the first two invasions, the invasion of sin, then Mahamudgazni was invasions of India, included some non-istransfer, right? Al-Beruni in the case of, and in the case of the sin, the invasion, there were Arabs translated several Indian works and books, Aminian, and English people with them. But the gauris and these Delhi sultans who followed them seem to have been more sort of war like and less interested in this side of things. I can't think of any, even, you know, the famous, Amir Khusroh, they're not really translating a lot of Indian stuff anymore. The only, the next series of translations and knowledge transfer that happens is really under Akbar, until then there's sort of a black hole, or at least I don't know of much, maybe Jay knows something. No, I also don't know, I'm going to have, but I think one way which we can explain this is because Delhi became the refuge of most of these central Asian people who, you know, they were devastated by the Mongol raids. So most of the time, those who, you know, refugees who came to Delhi, they had no interest in knowing this region. So, because since only Delhi was, you know, secured from the Mongol menace and the whole Persian intellectual or intelligency, most of these poets and other important personalities since they migrated in Delhi. So they were busy in talking, even glorifying what they had left from the central Asia or Persian. That's an interesting year, Angaliya's. I think that makes sense. That probably played a role. Well, I think we have to end soon. So I'll just, I'll just take a few more minutes. This is very interesting conversation. And one of the things we've missed out we normally do is, are there any philosophical, mathematical, scientific developments, advancements that are happening? Or is the polity too much enough, Lux and there isn't anybody to really patronize this in this period? Any kind of legacy on that and that we know of, non-Islamic, we'll come to the Islamic legacy later. Any philosophers, any philosophers, any mathematicians, any scientists, whose work survives? I think one person which I, which we have missed since we did not discuss the religious angle. I think Shankaracharya, who most scholars believe, was from, you know, eight century onwards. Yeah, we've done a comprehensive, sorry, I interrupt you. We've done a comprehensive cover-dem in our episode South India from 500 to 1180. So for listeners who would like to sort of know more about that, that's a very comprehensive coverage there. I was talking more about North India. I mean, he was a, a great patron and also, I think, God of the, I have forgot. He wrote a text, I think, on mathematics or astronomy, if I'm not correct, very firm, I'm not wrong. Right. Umar Sahib, where have any thoughts on any philosophers or any non-political figure of this time whose legacy still survives? I have no idea. The only people I know from the other side is, of course, Al-Beruni and his work, but on the Indian side, I don't know. I don't think, on Al-Beruni's work, you know, one thing I just remembered, one of the things he mentions when he's talking about the Indian mathematicians and people he's following, he's a great fan of some of their work, but some of their work he dismisses as being too religious and fanciful. But I wonder if Jay, you have any idea about this that some of these mathematical works would be written in metric, you know, like poetry. And the references used or the, you know, the terms used would be religious terms, but there was a kind of a mathematical meaning under it. An entire theorem could be presented in a poem form like that. Do you know anything about this and how this tradition was in India and which may have been something that Al-Beruni, even though he tried to learn Sanskrit, had some difficulty translating or figuring out? Yes, of course, the poetry part is correct. I think Will Durant in his, in his multi-volume book of the story of civilisation talks about that, you know, the Hindus had this habit of mentioning everything in poetry. So from poem to a treaty on religion is, you know, is always on poetry. So I think this is the, this is an important aspect, although I don't and have any idea about, no particular aspect of any mathematical or astronomical. So one thing which, so Abhinav Gopth was one of the philosophers from Kashmir, a polymath personality. So he is from the 10th century. So on. So he is credited with some of the, some of the way Kashmirishivism evolved. So also we talked about Baratman is Natheshastra. So Abhinav Bharati is a commentary on Baratman is Natheshastra written by Abhinav Gopth. And in 9th century, 10th century, I think we touched about Kumari Lvatt and Shankara in the earlier episode with Mukunda and Sri Kanta. So a lot of like the Darshanas, six Darshanas of Indian Hindu philosophy, they were the Niyaya Darshanas, like the schools of logic, they were still in flux during this time. And we also talked about a lot of works of mathematics during the Gupta era and during the time of Harsha. So some of them are like the dating of these works is a bit shaky in some cases. So in some cases they may also like maybe not the original works, but some of the consequent works could have been during this period as well. 7th and 9th century. And just an interesting aside in Albert Rune's book, you know, when he's talking about the Indian astronomers and his admiring them, one of the things he criticizes, one of them, I forget which one it was, Brahman Gopth or someone, that when he describes how what an eclipse is, he said the Indians are well, are very clear about the fact that this is [BLANK_AUDIO] that there are these planets, they're going around the sun, that the eclipse happens because the Earth casts a shadow on the moon or the moon casts a shadow on the Earth. All of this was well known to their astronomers. But at the same time, there was a religious or sort of mythical story around it also, right? The Rahu or whatever the dragon eats the moon and then gives it back or whatever. And he was very unhappy. Al-Beruni is very unhappy that this great astronomer explained all of it in sort of scientific terms, but then could not resist adding that some people say that it's like this and then gave the Rahu story also. Right. Right. Right. Right. So before we wrap up the episode, any thoughts our speakers have on the two battles that the Prithvirah Jahan and Muhammad Gauri fought. First of all, what is the geographical location in the present day? The map of the subcontinent. Where are these battles fought? Bhatinda Bhatinda. Bhatinda. Bhatinda, which is in Punjab. It's contested. Bhatinda is the more popular thing, but some people have some other theories as well. Right. Indian Army still has a very large contumement in Bhatinda. So for whatever. If you look at geographically, it made much more sense because since Gauri is coming from the north and after the most the haasi, which was the center of the Chohanas, since he had to cross Sathludge. So this made much more sense to counter him from around Bhatinda because if they, the Chohans allowed them to penetrate deeper, they could easily just deflect or just go sideways because the Gauri Army was famous for its mobility. So in order to stop them from moving or deflecting their attack, mean attack. So the Chohanas basically, that is why they tried to pin him down in Bhatinda or Sarayan. Right. So, Umar Sahib, some final thoughts on the legacy of this period, how it would go into influence the next 700, 800 years of history of this subcontinent. Well I think we will leave that till the next episode because obviously the biggest thing is that this was the creation or the foundation of the Delhi Sultanate, which is the foundation of Muslim rule in North India. Right. As we mentioned from the time of Vasnevi's invasion, Lahore is already incorporated into the Khasnevi empire and since they had been taken 300 years earlier by the Arabs, but that's it. That's the only portions of Indian land that had been conquered until that point. But after the Delhi Sultanates, obviously within sort of mainland India. And that is going to have that conquest is playing out even till today or everything that has happened since then has a lot to do with it. And Pakistan, creation of Pakistan, all this India, Hindu Muslim thing. All these are gifts of those of that era and how we interpret it or how we look at it varies from one extreme to the other. But I think we'll discuss it in detail when we get to the Delhi Sultanate. Right. Then I'll ask you one last question. What is the state of the Sun, temper and Multan right now? Can you throw some light on? What is it like and one visit it? Is it what's its size and shape like? No, no. I think it was demolished or whatever and converted into whatever is left there is they built some Sufi shrine on it or something. There is no temple as far as I know. I think even that is not sure. Archaeologically, they have found it. It's gone. Yeah, so no idea. So what are we not sure of? Was there a temple there or there was a temple? There was a temple. There's a lot of Indian sources and there is the Arab source itself also mentioned that temple. So there was a large sun temple there and that was a center of sort of Suria. The worship is very, very well established. But what happened to that temple and where did it go? I'm not sure. I'm actually googling it right now as I talk to you because this is the age of Google. But where is it buried? I think even Google doesn't know. Sure, sure. So we leave it to. We leave it to that. Thank you. Thank you. Three of you. Yeah, just one comment to add before. So anyone who is interested in sort of the like a fictionalized version of this era should read a fantastic book by SL by Rappapakal Sarth. So it captures the this era around seventh eight century and it does so extremely well, I think the historicity may be contested here and there, but it gives the feel of what the subcontinent was around the time we are talking about. And a lot more things remaining from this time, but yeah, maybe in the next one, we can cover them. One point which I wanted to make is that among in the historical circles, there is this great debate about compartmentalization of Indian history. So this was the period like since Britishers wrote the first modern history of India. So this was the period with the establishment of Delhi, Sultana. Ancient history has finished, has come to an end. This was the period when the medieval history of the Indian subcontinent starts. So this although most present scholars don't like this term, that is why this early medieval period was used. So just wanted to end there. Sure. What are your point as to we could have covered a lot more ground. Possibly we'll do that in the next episode, which we do on Delhi, Sultana. Yeah, so we could. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So like some of the cultural things, for example, Jainism as we understand, especially in the North Indian part, that was patronized heavily during the Gurjarpati Harapirade. So a lot of Jain temples, we talked about, we didn't talk anything about that. Also, the way Hinduism changed, so maybe we'll cover that something. So this was the period, you know, from the main subcontinent Buddhism decline or disappeared. This is with this we can also talk about. Sure. Then what we'll do is maybe we'll do an episode on the socio cultural milieu. Do a small episode there. Right. That will be nice. Right. Right. So I would like to remind our listeners that are speakers as part of speakers note, notes will share all the sources and reference materials that they've used as part of their commentary in the subject. Next week for Brown. Yes. So thank you and we look forward to your company soon. Thank you.