Chapter Ten
Let
the Mute Witnesses Speak
Sita Ram Goel
The cradle of Hindu
culture1 on the eve of its Islamic invasion included what are at present
the Sinkiang
province of China,
the Transoxiana region of Russia, the Seistan province of Iran and the
sovereign states
of Afghanistan,
Pakistan, India, Nepal and Bangladesh. The Islamic invasion commenced around
650 A.D.,
when a Muslim army
secured a foothold in Seistan, and continued till the end of the eighteenth
century,
when the last Islamic
crusader, Tipu Sultan, was overthrown by the British. Hordes of Arabs,
Persians,
Turks, and Afghans
who had been successively inspired by the Theology of Islam poured in, in wave
after
wave, carrying fire
and sword to every nook and corner of this vast area. In the process, Sinkiang,
Transoxiana region,
Seistan and Afghanistan became transformed intodarul-IslÃm
where all vestiges of
the earlier culture
were wiped out. The same spell has engulfed the areas which were parts of India
till
1947 and have since
become Pakistan and Bangladesh.
Important Note and Disclaimer: - This content is extracted and
presented as it is from the book "HINDU TEMPLES WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM? VOLUMES
1 AND 2"
A Preliminary Survey by
ARUN SHOURIE,HARSH NARAIN,JAY DUBASHI,RAM SWARUP,SITA RAM GOEL
Direct download link provided at the end of the page.
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We learn from
literary and epigraphic sources, accounts of foreign travellers in medieval
times, and modern
archaeological
explorations that, on the eve of the Islamic invasion, the cradle of Hindu
culture was
honeycombed with
temples and monasteries, in many shapes and sizes. The same sources inform us
that
many more temples and
monasteries continued to come up in places where the Islamic invasion had yet
to
reach or from where
it was forced to retire for some time by the rallying of Hindu resistance.
Hindus were
great temple builders
because their pantheon was prolific in Gods and Goddesses and their society
rich in
schools and sects,
each with its own way of worship.
But by the time we
come to the end of the invasion,
we find that almost
all these Hindu places of worship had either disappeared or were left in
different stages
of ruination. Most of
the sacred sites had come to be occupied by a variety of Muslim
monuments-masjids
and îdgãhs (mosques),
dargãhs and ziãrats (shrines), mazãrs and maqbaras (tombs), madrasas and
maktabs
(seminaries), takiyãs
and qabristãns (graveyards). Quite a few of the new edifices had been built
from the
materials of those
that had been deliberately demolished in order to satisfy the demands of
Islamic
Theology. The same
materials had been used frequently in some secular structures as well-walls and
gates
of forts and cities,
river and tank embankments, caravanserais and stepwells, palaces and pavilions.
Some apologists of
Islam have tried to lay the blame at the door of the White Huns or Epthalites
who had
overrun parts of the
Hindu cradle in the second half of the fifth century A.D.
But they count
without the witness of Hiuen Tsang, the famous Chinese pilgrim and Buddhist
savant, who travelled all over this area from 630 A.D. to 644. Starting from
Karashahr in Northern Sinkiang, he passed through Transoxiana,Northern Afghanistan,
North-West Frontier Province, Kashmir, Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh,
North-Eastern
Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Nepal, Bengal, Assam, Orissa, Mahakosal and
Andhra
Pradesh till he
reached Tamil Nadu. On his return journey he travelled through Karnataka,
Maharashtra,
Gujarat, Madhya
Bharat, Sindh, Southern Afghanistan and Southern Sinkiang. In most of these
provinces
he found in a
flourishing state many Buddhist establishments consisting
of vihãras (monasteries),chaityas
(temples) and stûpas (topes), besides what he described as heretical
(Jain)
and deva
(Brahmanical) temples. The wealth of architecture and sculptures he saw
everywhere confirms
what we learn from
Hindu literary sources. Some of this wealth has been recovered in recent times
from
under mounds of
ruins.
During the course of
his pilgrimage, Hiuen Tsang stayed at as many as 95 Buddhist centres among
which
the more famous ones
were at Kuchi, Aqsu, Tirmiz, Uch Turfan, Kashagar and Khotan in Sinkiang;
Balkh,
Ghazni, Bamiyan,
Kapisi, Lamghan, Nagarahar and Bannu in Afghanistan; Pushkalavati, Bolar and
Takshasila in the
North-West Frontier Province; Srinagar, Rajaori and Punch in Kashmir; Sialkot,
Jalandhar and Sirhind
in the Punjab; Thanesar, Pehowa and Sugh in Haryana; Bairat and Bhinmal in
Rajasthan, Mathura,
Mahoba, Ahichchhatra, Sankisa, Kanauj, Ayodhya, Prayag, Kausambi, Sravasti,
Kapilvastu,
Kusinagar, Varanasi, Sarnath and Ghazipur in Uttar Pradesh; Vaishali,
Pataliputra, Rajgir,
Nalanda, Bodhgaya,
Monghyr and Bhagalpur in Bihar; Pundravardhana, Tamralipti, Jessore and
Karnasuvarna in
Bengal; Puri and Jajnagar in Orissa; Nagarjunikonda and Amaravati in Andhra
Pradesh;
Kanchipuram in Tamil
Nadu; Badami and Kalyani in Karnataka; Paithan and Devagiri in Maharashtra;
Bharuch, Junagarh and
Valabhi in Gujarat; Ujjain in Malwa; Mirpur Khas and Multan in Sindh.
The number of
Buddhist monasteries at the bigger ones of these centres ranged from 50 to 500
and the number
of monks in residence
from 1,000 to 10,000. It was only in some parts of Eastern Afghanistan and the
North-West Frontier
Province that monasteries were in a bad shape, which can perhaps be explained
by the
invasion of White
Huns. But so were they in Kusinagar and Kapilavastu where the White Huns are
not
known to have reached.
On the other hand, the same invaders had ranged over Punjab, Haryana,
Rajasthan,
Madhya Pradesh and
most of Uttar Pradesh where Hiuen Tsang found the monasteries in a splendid
state.
They had even
established their rule over Kashmir where Hiuen Tsang saw 500 monasteries
housing 5,000
monks. It is,
therefore, difficult to hold them responsible for the disappearance of Buddhist
centres in areas
where Hiuen Tsang had
found them flourishing. An explanation has to be found elsewhere. In any case,
the
upheaval they caused
was over by the middle of the sixth century. Moreover, the temples and
monasteries
which Hiuen Tsang saw
were only a few out of many.
He had not gone into
the interior of any province, having confined himself to the more famous
Buddhist centres.
What was it that
really happened to thousands upon thousands of temples and monasteries? Why did
they
disappear and/or give
place to another type of monuments? How come that their architectural and
sculptural fragments
got built into the foundations and floors and walls and domes of the edifices
which
replaced them? These
are crucial questions which should have been asked by students of medieval
Indian
history. But no
historian worth his name has raised these questions squarely, not to speak of
finding
adequate answers to
them. No systematic study of the subject has been made so far. All that we have
are
stray references to
the demolition of a few Hindu temples, made by the more daring Hindu historians
while
discussing the
religious policy of this or that sultan. Sir Jadunath Sarkar2 and
Professor Sri Ram
Sharma3 have
given more attention to the Islamic policy of demolishing Hindu temples and
pointed an
accusing finger at
the theological tenets which dictated that policy. But their treatment of the
subject is
brief and their
enumeration of temples destroyed by Aurangzeb and the other Mughal emperors
touches
only the fringe of a
vast holocaust caused by the Theology of Islam, all over the cradle of Hindu
culture,
and throughout more
than thirteen hundred years, taking into account what happened in the native
Muslim
states carved out
after the British take-over and the formation of Pakistan after partition in
1947.
Muslim historians, in
India and abroad, have written hundreds of accounts in which the progress of
Islamic
armies across the
cradle of Hindu culture is narrated, stage by stage and period by period. A
pronounced
feature of these
Muslim histories is a description-in smaller or greater detail but always with
considerable
pride-of how the
Hindus were slaughtered en masse or converted by force, how hundreds of
thousands of
Hindu men and women
and children were captured as booty and sold into slavery, how Hindu temples
and
monasteries were
razed to the ground or burnt down, and how images of Hindu Gods and Goddesses
were
destroyed or
desecrated. Commandments of Allah (Quran) and precedents set by the
Prophet (Sunnah) are
frequently cited by
the authors in support of what the swordsmen and demolition squads of Islam did
with
extraordinary zeal,
not only in the midst of war but also, and more thoroughly, after Islamic rule
had been
firmly established. A
reference to the Theology of Islam as perfected by the orthodox Imams, leaves
little
doubt that the
citations are seldom without foundation.
The men and women and
children who were killed or captured or converted by force cannot be recalled
for
standing witnesses to
what was done to them by the heroes of Islam. The apologists for Islam-the most
dogged among them are
some Hindu historians and politicians-have easily got away with the plea that
Muslim court
scribes had
succumbed to poetic exaggeration in order to please their pious patrons.
Their case is
weakened when they cite the same sources in support of their owns speculation
or when the
question is asked as
to why the patrons needed stories of bloodshed and wanton destruction for
feeding
their piety. But they
have taken in their stride these doubts and questions as well.
There are, however,
witnesses who are not beyond recall and who can confirm that the court
scribes
were not at all
foisting fables on their readers. These are the hundreds of thousands of
sculptural and
architectural
fragments which stand arrayed in museums and drawing rooms all over the world,
or which
are waiting to be
picked up by public and private collectors, or which stare at us from numerous
Muslim
monuments. These are
the thousands of Hindu temples and monasteries which either stand on the
surface in
a state of ruination
or lie buried under the earth waiting for being brought to light by the
archaeologists
spade. These are the
thousands of Muslim edifices, sacred as well as secular, which occupy the sites
of
Hindu temples and
monasteries and/or which have been constructed from materials of those
monuments.
All these witnesses
carry unimpeachable evidence of the violence that was done to them,
deliberately and
by human hands.
So far no one has
cared to make these witnesses speak and relate the story of how they got
ruined,
demolished,
dislocated, dismembered, defaced, mutilated and burnt. Recent writers on Hindu
architecture
and sculpture-their
tribe is multiplying fast, mostly for commercial reasons-ignore the ghastly
wounds
which these witnesses
show on the very first sight, and dwell on the beauties of the limbs that have
survived or escaped
injury. Many a time they have to resort to their imagination for supplying what
should
have been there but
is missing. All they seem to care for is building their own reputations as
historians of
Hindu art. If one
draws their attention to the mutilations and disfigurements suffered by the
subjects under
study, one is met
with a stunned silence or denounced downright as a Hindu chauvinist out to
raise
demons
from the past4with the deliberate intention of causing communal
strife.
We, therefore,
propose to present a few of these witnesses in order to show in what shape they
are and what
they have to say.
Tordi
(Rajasthan)
At
Tordi there are two fine and massively built stone baolis or step wells
known as the Chaur and Khari
Baoris. They appear
to be old Hindu structures repaired or rebuilt by Muhammadans, probably in the
early
or middle part of the
15th century In
the construction of the (Khari) Baori Hindu images have been built
in, noticeable
amongst them being an image of Kuber on the right flanking wall of the large
flight of
steps5
Naraina
(Rajasthan)
At
Naraina is
an old pillared mosque, nine bays long and four bays deep, constructed out of
old Hindu
temples and standing
on the east of the Gauri Shankar tank The mosque appears to have been built when
Mujahid Khan, son of
Shams Khan, took possession of Naraina in 840 A.H. or 1436 A.D To the
immediate north of
the mosque is the three-arched gateway called Tripolia which is also
constructed with
materials from old
Hindu temples
Chatsu
(Rajasthan)
At
Chatsu there is a Muhammadan tomb erected on the eastern embankment of the
Golerava tank. The
tomb which is known
as Gurg Ali Shahs chhatri is built out of the spoils of Hindu buildings On the
inside of the
twelve-sided frieze of the chhatri is a long Persian inscription in
verse, but worn out in several
places. The
inscription does not mention the name of any important personage known to
history and all that
can be made out with
certainty is that the saint Gurg Ali (wolf of Ali) died a martyr on the first
of Ramzan
in 979 A.H.
corresponding to Thursday, the 17th January, 1572 A.D.
SaheTh-MaheTh
(Uttar Pradesh)
The
ruined Jain temple situated in the western portion of MaheTh derives the name Sobhnãth
from Sambhavanãtha,
the third TîrthaMkara, who is believed to have been born at rãvastî
Let
us now turn our attention to the western-most part of Sobhnãth ruins. It is
crowned by a domed
edifice, apparently a
Muslim tomb of the Pathãn period
These
remains are raised on a platform, 30 square, built mostly of broken bricks
including carved ones This platform, no doubt, represents the plinth of the last Jain
temple which was
destroyed by the
Muhammadan conquerors It
will be seen from the plan that the enclosure of the tomb
overlaps this square
platform. The tomb proper stands on a mass of debris which is probably
the remains of
the ruined shrine
3.
Sculpture of
buff standstone, partly destroyed, representing a TîrthaMkara seated
cross-legged in
the attitude of
meditation on a throne supported by two lions couchant, placed on both sides of
a wheel
4.
Sculpture of
buff sandstone, partly defaced, representing a TîrthaMkara seated
cross-legged (as
above)
8.
Sculpture of
buff sandstone, defaced, representing a TîrthaMkara standing between two
miniature
figures of which that
to his right is seated.
9.
Sculpture of
buff standstone, defaced, representing a TîrthaMkara, standing under a
parasol
12.
Sculpture of
buff standstone, much defaced, representing a male and a female figure
seated side
by side under a palm
tree.
13.
Sculpture of
buff standstone, broken in four pieces, and carved with five figurines
of
TîrthaMkaras seated cross-legged in the attitude of meditation. The central
figure has a Nãga hood. The
sculpture evidently
was the top portion of a large image slab.11
Coming to the ruins
of a Buddhist monastery in the same complex, the archaeologist proceeds:
In
the 23rd cell, which I identify with the store-room, I found half-buried in the
floor a big earthen jar
This must have been
used for storage of corn
This
cell is connected with a find which is certainly the most notable discovery of
the season. I refer to
an inscribed
copper-plate of Govindachandra of Kanauj The charter was issued from Vãrãnasî on
Monday, the full moon
day of ÃshãDha Sam. 1186, which corresponds
to the 23rd of June, 1130. The
inscription records
the grant of six villages to the Community
of Buddhist friars of whom
Buddhabhattãraka is
the chief and foremost, residing in the great convent of the holy Jetavana, and is of
a paramount
importance, in as much as it conclusively settles the identification of MaheTh
with the city of
rãvastî12
He describes as
follows some of the sculptures unearthed at SrAvastI:
S.1.
Statuette in grey stone of
Buddha seated cross-legged in the teaching attitude on a conventional
lotus. The head,
breast and fore-arms as well as the sides of the sculpture are broken.
S.2.
Lower portion of a
blue schist image of Avalokitevara in the sportive
attitude (lîlãsana) on a
lotus seat.
S. 3.
Image of
Avalokitevara seated in ardhaparyanka attitude on a conventional lotus The head
and
left arms of the main figure are missing.13
Sarnath
(Uttar Pradesh)
The report of
excavations undertaken in 1904-05 says that the
inscriptions found there extending to the
twelfth century A.D.
show that the connection of Sarnath with Buddhism was still remembered at that
date. It continues that the condition of the
excavated ruins leaves little doubt that a violent catastrophe
accompanied by
willful destruction and plunder overtook the place.14 Read
this report with the Muslim
account that Muhammad
GhurI destroyed a thousand idol-temples when he reached Varanasi after
defeating Mahãrãjã
Jayachandra of Kanauj in 1193 A.D. The fragments that are listed below speak
for
themselves. The
number given in each case is the one adopted in the report of the excavation.
a 42. Upper part of
sculptured slab
E.8. Architectural
fragment, with Buddha (?) seated cross-legged on lotus
a.22. Defaced
standing Buddha, hands missing.
a.17. Buddha head
with halo.
a. 8. Head and right
arm of image.
E.22. Upper part of
image.
E.14. Broken seated
figure holding object in left hand.
a.11. Fragment of
larger sculpture; bust, part of head, and right overarm of female
chauri-bearer.
E.25. Upper part of
female figure with big ear-ring.
E.6. Fragment of
sculpture, from top of throne (?) on left side.
n.19. Seated figure
of Buddha in bhûmisparamudrã,
much defaced.
n.221. Torso, with
arms of Buddha in dharmachakramudrã.
n.91. Lower part of
Buddha seated cross-legged on throne. Defaced.
n.142. Figure of
Avalokitevara in relief. Legs from knees downwards wanting.
n.1. Relief partly,
defaced and upper part missing. Buddha descending from the TrãyastriMã
Heaven
Head and left hand
missing.
i.50. Lower half of
statue. Buddha in bhûmisparamudrã
seated on lotus.
i.17. Buddha in
attitude of meditation on lotus. Head missing.
i.46. Head of Buddha
with short curls.
i.44. Head of
Avalokitevara, with Amitãbha Buddha in headdress.
n.10. Fragment of
three-headed figure (? Mãrîchî) of green stone.
i.49. Standing figure
of attendant from upper right of image. Half of face, feet and left hand
missing.
i.1. Torso of male
figure, ornamented.
i.4. Female figure,
with lavishly ornamented head. The legs from knees, right arm and left forearm
are
missing. Much
defaced.
i.105. Hand holding
Lotus.
n.172. Torso of
Buddha.
n.18. Head of Buddha,
slightly defaced.
n.16. Female figure,
feet missing.
n.97. Lower part of
female figure. Feet missing.
n.163. Buddha,
seated. Much defaced.
K.4. Fragment of
seated Buddha in blue Gayã stone.
K.5. Fragment of
large statue, showing small Buddha seated inbhûmisparamudrã
K.18. Fragment of
statue in best Gupta style.
J.S.18. 27 and 28.
Three Buddha heads of Gupta style.
J.S.7. Figure of Kubera
in niche, with halo behind head. Partly defaced.
r.67. Upper part of
male figure, lavishly adorned.
r.72. a and b. Pieces
of pedestal with three Buddhas in dhyãnamudrã.
r.28. Part of arm,
adorned with armlet and inscription in characters of 10th century, containing
Buddhist
creed.
B.22. Fragment of
Bodhi scene (?); two women standing on conventional rock. Head and right arm of
left
hand figure broken.
B.33. Defaced sitting
Buddha in dhyãnamudrã.
B.75. Lower part of
Buddha in bhûmisparamudrã
seated cross-legged on lotus.
B.40. Feet of Buddha
sitting cross-legged on lotus on throne.
B.38. Headless
defaced Buddha seated cross-legged on lotus indharmachakramudrã.
Y.24. Headless Buddha
stated cross-legged on throne indharmachakramudrã.
B.52. Bust of Buddha
in dharmachakramudrã. Head missing.
B.16. Standing Buddha
in varadamudrã; hands and feet broken.
Y.34. Upper part of
Buddha in varadamudrã.
B.24. Bust of
standing Buddha in abhayamudrã; left hand and head missing.
B.31. Defaced
standing Buddha in abhayamudrã. Head and feet missing.
B.48. Feet of
standing Buddha with red paint.
B.15. Lower part of
AvalokiteSvara seated on lotus in lîlãsana.
Y.23. Bust of figure
seated in lîlãsana with trace of halo.
B.59. Legs of figure
sitting cross-legged on lotus.
B.7. Female bust with
ornaments and high headdress. Left arm and right forearm missing.15
Vaishali
(Bihar)
In
the southern section of the city the fort of Rãjã Bisãl is by far the most
important ruin South-west
of
it stands an old
brick Stûpa, now converted into a Dargãh The name of the saint who is supposed to have
been buried there was
given to me as Mîrãn-Jî16
Gaur
and Pandua (Bengal)
In
order to erect mosques and tombs the Muhammadans pulled down all Hindu temples
they could lay
their hands upon for
the sake of the building materials
The
oldest and the best known building at Gaur and Pandua is the Ãdîna Masjid at
Pandua built by
Sikandar Shãh, the
son of Ilyãs Shãh. The date of its inscription may be read as either 776 or
770, which
corresponds with 1374
or 1369 A.D The
materials employed consisted largely of the spoils of Hindu
temples and many of
the carvings from the temples have been used as facings of doors, arches and
pillars17
Devikot
(Bengal)
The
ancient city of Kotivarsha, which was the seat of a district (vishaya)
under Pundra-vardhana
province (bhukti)
at the time of the Guptas is
now represented by extensive mounds of Bangarh or Ban
Rajar Garh The older site was in continuous occupation till the invasion of
the Muhammadans in the
thirteenth century to
whom it was known as Devkot or Devikot. It possesses Muhammadan records ranging
from the thirteenth
to the sixteenth century18
The
Rajbari mound at the South-east corner is one of the highest mounds at Bangarh
and. must contain
some important
remains. The Dargah of Sultan Pir is a Muhammadan shrine built on the site of
an old
Hindu temple of which
four granite pillars are
still standing in the centre of the enclosure, the door jambs
having been used in
the construction of the gateway.
The
Dargah of Shah Ata on the north bank of the Dhal-dighi tank is another building
built on the ruins of
an older Hindu or
Buddhist structure The
female figure on the lintels of the doorway now, fixed in the
east wall of the
Dargah appears to be Tara, from which it would appear that the temple destroyed
was
Buddhist19
Tribeni
(Bengal)
The
principal object of interest at Tribeni is the Dargãh of Zafar Khãn Ghãzî. The
chronology of this
ruler may be deduced
from the two inscriptions of which one has been fitted into the plinth of his
tomb,
while the other is
inside the small mosque to the west of the tomb. Both refer to him and the
first tells us
that he built the
mosque close to the Dargãh, which dates from A.D. 1298; while the second
records the
erection by him of a
Madrasah or college in the time of Shamsuddîn Fîroz Shãh and bears a date
corresponding to the
28th April, 1313 A.D. It was he who conquered the Hindu Rãjã of Panduah, and
introduced Islam into
this part of Lower Bengal The
tomb is built out of the spoils taken from Hindu
temples20
The
eastern portion of the tomb was formerly a maNDapa of an earlier Krishna
temple which stood on
the same spot and
sculptures on the inner walls represent scenes from the RãmãyaNa and the
Mahãbhãrata,
with descriptive
titles inscribed in proto-Bengali characters The other frieze shows
Vishnu with
Lakshmî and Sarasvatî
in the centre, with two attendents, and five avatãras of VishNu on both
flanks Further clearance work has been executed during the year 1932-33
and among the sculptures
discovered in that
year are twelve figures of the Sun God, again in the 12th century style and
evidently
reused by the masons
when the Hindu temple was converted into a Muslim structure21
Mandu
(Madhya Pradesh)
MãNDû
became the capital of the Muhammadan Sultãns of Mãlvã who set about buildings
themselves
palaces and mosques,
first with material pilfered from Hindu temples (already for the most part
desecrated
and ruined by the
iconoclastic fury of their earlier co-religionists), and afterwards with their
own quarried
material. Thus nearly
all the traces of the splendid shrines of the ParamAras of MAlvA have
disappeared
save what we find
utilized in the ruined mosques and tombs22
The
date of the construction of the Hindola Mahall cannot be fixed with exactitude There can,
however, be no doubt
that it is one of the earliest of the Muhammadan buildings in MãNDû. From its
outward appearance
there is no sign of Hindu workmanship but the repairs, that have been going on
for the
past one year, have
brought to light a very large number of stones used in the structure, which
appear, to
have been taken from
some pre-existing Hindu temple. The facing stones, which have been most
accurately
and smoothly cut on
their outer surfaces, bear in very many cases on their inner sides the under
faced
images of Hindu gods,
or patterns of purely Hindu design, while pieces of Hindu carving and broken
parts
of images are found
indiscriminately mixed with the rubble, of which the core of the walls is made.23
Dhar
(Madhya Pradesh)
The
mosque itself appears from local tradition and from the numerous indications
and inscriptions
found within it to
have been built on the site of, and to a large extent out of materials taken
from, a Hindu
Temple, known to the
inhabitants as Rãjã Bhojas school. The inference was derived sometime back from
the existence of a
Sanskrit alphabet and some Sanskrit grammatical forms inscribed in serpentine
diagrams
on two of the pillar
bases in the large prayer chamber and from certain Sanskrit inscriptions on the
black
stone slabs imbedded
in the floor of the prayer chamber, and on the reverse face of the side walls
of the
mihrãb.24
The
Lãt Masjid built in A.D. 1405, by Dilãwar Khãn, the founder of the Muhammadan
kingdom of
Mãlvã is of considerable interest not only on account of the Iron Lãt
which lies outside it but
also
because it is a good
specimen of the use made by the Muhammadan conquerors of the materials of the
Hindu temples which
they destroyed25
Vijayanagar
(Karnataka)
During
the construction of the new road-some mounds which evidently marked the remains
of destroyed
buildings, were dug
into, and in one of them were disclosed the foundations of a rectangular
building with
elaborately carved
base. Among the debris were lumps of charcoal and calcined iron, probably the
remains
of the materials used
by the Muhammadans in the destruction of the building. The stones bear
extensive
signs of having been
exposed to the action of fire. That the chief buildings were destroyed by fire,
historical
evidence shows, and
many buildings, notably the ViThalaswAmin temple, still bear signs, in their
cracked
and fractured stone
work, of the catastrophe which overtook them26
The
most important temple at Vijayanagar from an architectural point of view, is
the ViThalaswãmin
temple. It stands in
the eastern limits of the ruins, near the bank of the TuNgabhadra river, and
shows in its
later structures the
extreme limit in floral magnificence to which the Dravidian style advanced This
building had
evidently attracted the special attention of the Muhammadan invaders in their
efforts to
destroy the buildings
of the city, of which this was no doubt one of the most important, for though
many of
the other temples
show traces of the action of fire, in none of them are the effects so marked as
in this. Its
massive construction,
however, resisted all the efforts that were made to bring it down and the only
visible
results of their
iconoclastic fury are the cracked beams and pillars, some of the later being so
flaked as to
make one marvel that
they are yet able to bear the immense weight of the stone entablature and roof
above27
Bijapur
(Karnataka)
No
ancient Hindu or Jain buildings have survived at Bijapur and the only evidence
of their former
existence is supplied
by two or three mosques, viz., Mosque No. 294, situated in the compound of the
Collectors
bungalow, Krimud-d-din Mosque and a third and smaller mosque on the way to the
Mangoli
Gate, which are all
adaptations or re-erections of materials obtained from temples. These mosques
are the
earliest Muhammadan
structures and one of them, i.e., the one constructed by Karimud-d-din, must
according to a
Persian and Nagari inscription engraved upon its pillars, have been erected in
the year 1402
Saka=A.D. 1324, soon
after Malik Kafurs conquest of the. Deccan.28
Badami
(Karnataka)
Three
stone lintels bearing bas-reliefs were discovered in, course of the clearance
at the second gateway
of the Hill Fort to
the north of the Bhûtnãth tank at Badami These originally belonged to a temple which
is now in ruins and
were re-used at a later period in the construction of the plinth of guardroom
on the fort.
The
bas-reliefs represent scenes from the early life of KRISHNA and may be compared
with similar
ones in the BADAMI
CAVES29
The
Pattern of Destruction
The Theology of Islam
divides human history into two periods-the Jãhiliyya or the age of ignorance
which
preceded Allahs
first revelation to Prophet Muhammad, and the age of enlightenment which
succeeded
that event. It
follows that every human creation which existed in the age
of ignorance has
to be
converted to its
Islamic version or destroyed. The logic applies to pre-Islamic buildings as much
as to pre-
Islamic ways of
worship, mores and manners, dress and decor, personal and place names. This is
too large
a subject to be dealt
with at present. What concerns us here is the fate of temples and monasteries
that
existed on the eve of
the Islamic invasion and that came up in the course of its advance.
What happened to many
abodes of the infidels is best described by a historian of Vijayanagar in the
wake of Islamic
victory in 1565 A.D. at the battle of Talikota. The
third day, he
writes, saw the
beginning of the end.
The victorious Mussulmans had halted on the field of battle for rest and
refreshment,
but now they had
reached the capital, and from that time forward for a space of five months
Vijayanagar
knew no rest. The
enemy had come to destroy, and they carried out their object relentlessly. They
slaughtered the
people without mercy; broke down the temples and palaces, and wreaked such
savage
vengeance on the
abode of the kings, that, with the exception of a few great stone-built temples
and walls,
nothing now remains
but a heap of ruins to mark the spot where once stately buildings stood. They
demolished the
statues and even succeeded in breaking the limbs of the huge Narsimha monolith.
Nothing
seemed to escape
them. They broke up the pavilions standing on the huge platform from which the
kings
used to watch
festivals, and overthrew all the carved work. They lit huge fires in the
magnificently
decorated buildings
forming the temple of Vitthalswamin near the river, and smashed its exquisite
stone
sculptures. With fire
and sword, with crowbars and axes, they carried on day after day their work of
destruction. Never
perhaps in the history of the world has such havoc been wrought, and wrought so
suddenly, on so
splendid a city: teeming with a wealthy and industrious population in the full
plenitude of
prosperity one day,
and on the next seized, pillaged, and reduced to ruins, amid scenes of savage
massacre
and horrors beggaring
description30
The Muslim victors
did not get time to raise their own structures from the ruins of Vijayanagar,
partly
because the Hindu
Raja succeeded in regrouping his forces and re-occupying his capital and partly
because
they did not have the
requisite Muslim population to settle in that large city; another invader, the
Portuguese, had taken
control of the Arabian Sea and blocked the flow of fresh recruits from Muslim
countries in the
Middle East. What would have happened otherwise is described by Alexander
Cunningham
in his report on
Mahoba. As Mahoba was, he
writes, for some time the headquarters of the early
Muhammadan Governors,
we could hardly expect to find that any Hindu buildings had escaped their
furious bigotry, or
their equally destructive cupidity. When the destruction of a Hindu temple
furnished the
destroyer with the
ready means of building a house for himself on earth, as well as in heaven, it
is perhaps
wonderful that so
many temples should still be standing in different parts of the country. It
must be
admitted, however,
that, in none of the cities which the early Muhammadans occupied permanently,
have
they left a single
temple standing, save this solitary temple at Mahoba, which doubtless owed its
preservation solely
to its secure position amid the deep waters of the Madan-Sagar. In Delhi, and
Mathura,
in Banaras and
Jonpur, in Narwar and Ajmer, every single temple was destroyed by their
bigotry, but
thanks to their
cupidity, most of the beautiful Hindu pillars were preserved, and many of them,
perhaps, on
their original
positions, to form new colonnades for the masjids and tombs of the conquerors.
In Mahoba
all the other temples
were utterly destroyed and the only Hindu building now standing is part of the
palace
of Parmal, or
Paramarddi Deva, on the hill-fort, which has been converted into a masjid. In
1843, I found
an inscription of
Paramarddi Deva built upside down in the wall of the fort just outside this
masjid. It is
dated in S. 1240, or
A.D. 1183, only one year before the capture of Mahoba by Prithvi-Raj Chohan of
Delhi. In the Dargah
of Pir Mubarak Shah, and the adjacent Musalman burial-ground, I counted 310
Hindu
pillars of granite. I
found a black stone bull lying beside the road, and the argha of a lingam
fixed as a
water-spout in the
terrace of the Dargah. These last must have belonged to a temple of Siva, which
was
probably built in the
reign of Kirtti Varmma, between 1065 and 1085 A.D., as I discovered an
inscription
of that prince built
into the wall of one of the tombs.31
Many other ancient
cities and towns suffered the same tragic transformation. Bukhara, Samarkand,
Balkh,
Kabul, Ghazni,
Srinagar, Peshawar, Lahore, Multan, Patan, Ajmer, Delhi, Agra Dhar, Mandu,
Budaun,
Kanauj, Biharsharif,
Patna, Lakhnauti, Ellichpur, Daulatabad, Gulbarga, Bidar, Bijapur, Golconda-to
mention only a few of
the more famous Hindu capitals-lost their native character and became nests of
a
closed creed waging
incessant war on a catholic culture. Some of these places lost even their
ancient names
which had great and
glorious associations. It is on record that the Islamic invaders coined and
imposed this
or that quranic
concoction on every place they conquered. Unfortunately for them, most of these
impositions failed to
stick, going the way they came. But quite a few succeeded and have endured till
our
own times. Reviving
the ancient names wherever they have got eclipsed is one of the debts which
Hindu
society owes to its
illustrious ancestors.
On the other hand, a
large number of cities, towns and centres of Hindu civilization disappeared
from the
scene and their ruins
have been identified only in recent times, as in the case of Kãpiî,
Lampaka,
Nagarahãra,
Pushkalãvatî, UdbhãNDapura, Takshilã,
Ãlor, Brãhmanãbãd, Debal, Nandana, Agrohã
Virãtanagara,
Ahichchhatra, rãvastî, Sãrnãth, Vaiãlî,
Vikramîla, Nãlandã, KarNasuvarNa,
PuNDravardhana,
Somapura, Jãjanagar, DhãnyakaTaka, Vijayapurî, Vijayanagara, Dvãrasamudra. What
has been found on top
of the ruins in most cases is a mosque or a dargãh or a tomb or some other
Muslim
monument, testifying
to Allahs triumph over Hindu Gods. Many more mounds are still to be
explored
and identified. A
survey of archaeological sites in the Frontier Circle alone and as far back as
1920, listed
255dheris32 or
mounds which, as preliminary explorations indicated, hid ruins of ancient
dwellings and/or
places of worship.
Some dheris, which had been excavated and were not included in this
count, showed
every sign of
deliberate destruction. By that time, many more mounds of a similar character
had been
located in other
parts of the cradle of Hindu culture. A very large number has been added to the
total count
in subsequent years.
Whichever of them is excavated tells the same story, most of the time. It is a
different
matter that since the
dawn of independence, Indian archaeologists functioning under the spell or from
fear
of Secularism, record
or report only the ethnographical stratifications and cultural sequences.33
Muslim historians
credit all their heroes with many expeditions each of which laid
waste this
or that
province or region or
city or countryside. The foremost heroes of the imperial line at Delhi and Agra
such
as Qutbud-Dîn
Aibak (1192-1210 A.D.), Shamsud-Dîn Iltutmish (1210-36
A.D.), Ghiyãsud-Dîn
Balban (1246-66 A
D.), Alãud-Dîn Khaljî (1296-1316 A.D.), Muhammad bin Tughlaq (1325-51
A.D.),
Fîruz Shãh Tughlaq
(135188 A.D.) Sikandar Lodî (1489-1519 A.D.), Bãbar (1519-26 A.D.) and Aurangzeb
(1658-1707 A.D.) have
been specially hailed for hunting the peasantry like
wild beasts, or for seeing
to it that no
lamp is lighted for hundreds of miles, or
for destroying the dens of idolatry and Godpluralism
wherever their writ ran. The sultans of the provincial Muslim
dynasties-Malwa, Gujarat, Sindh,
Deccan, Jaunpur,
Bengal-were not far behind, if not ahead, of what the imperial pioneers had
done or were
doing; quite often
their performance put the imperial pioneers to shame. No study has yet been
made of
how much the human
population declined due to repeated genocides committed by the swordsmen of
Islam. But the count
of cities and towns and villages which simply disappeared during the Muslim
rule
leaves little doubt
that the loss of life suffered by the cradle of Hindu culture was colossal.
Putting together all
available evidence-literary and archaeological-from Hindu, Muslim and other
sources,
and following the
trail of Islamic invasion, we get the pattern of how the invaders proceeded
vis-a-vis
Hindu places of
worship after occupying a city or town and its suburbs. It should be kept in
mind in this
context that Muslim
rule never became more than a chain of garrison cities and towns, not even in
its
heyday from Akbar to
Aurangzeb, except in areas where wholesale or substantial conversions had taken
place. Elsewhere the
invaders were rarely in full control of the countryside; they had to mount
repeated
expeditions for
destroying places of worship, collecting booty including male and female
slaves, and for
terrorising the
peasantry, through slaughter and rapine, so that the latter may become a
submissive source
of revenue. The
peasantry took no time to rise in revolt whenever and wherever Muslim power
weakened
or its terror had to
be relaxed for reasons beyond its control.
1. Places taken by assault: If a
place was taken by assault-which was mostly the case because it was
seldom that the
Hindus surrendered-it was thoroughly sacked, its surviving population
slaughtered or
enslaved and all its
buildings pulled down. In the next phase, the conquerors raised their own
edifices for
which slave labour
was employed on a large scale in order to produce quick results. Cows and, many
a
time, Brahmanas were
killed and their blood sprinkled on the sacred sites in order to render them
unclean
for the Hindus for
all time to come. The places of worship which the Muslims built for themselves
fell into
several categories.
The pride of place went to the Jãmi Masjid which was invariably built on the site and
with the materials of
the most prominent Hindu temple; if the materials of that temple were found
insufficient for the
purpose, they could be supplemented with materials of other temples which had
been
demolished
simultaneously. Some other mosques were built in a similar manner according to
need or the
fancy of those who
mattered. Temple sites and materials were also used for building the tombs of
those
eminent Muslims who
had fallen in the fight; they were honoured as martyrs and their tombs became
mazãrs and rauzas in
course of time. As we have already pointed out, Hindus being great temple
builders,
temple materials
could be spared for secular structures also, at least in the bigger
settlements. It can thus be
inferred that all
masjids and mazãrs, particularly the Jãmi Masjids which date from the first Muslim
occupation of a
place, stand on the site of Hindu temples; the structures we see at present may
not carry
evidence of temple
materials used because of subsequent restorations or attempts to erase the
evidence.
There are very few
Jãmi Masjids
in the country which do not stand on temple sites.
2. Places surrendered: Once
in a while a place was surrendered by the Hindus in terms of an agreement
that they would be
treated as zimmis and their lives as well as places of worship spared.
In such cases, it
took some time to
eradicate the emblems of infidelity. Theologians of Islam were always in
disagreement whether
Hindus could pass muster aszimmis; they were not People of the Book. It
depended
upon prevailing power
equations for the final decision to go in their favour or against them. Most of
the
time, Hindus lost the
case in which they were never allowed to have any say. What followed was what
had
happened in places
taken by assault, at least in respect of the Hindu places of worship. Thezimmi
status
accorded to the
Hindus seldom went beyond exaction of jizyaand imposition of
disabilities prescribed by
Umar, the second
rightly-guided Caliph (634-44 A.D.).
3. Places reoccupied by Hindus: It
also happened quite frequently, particularly in the early phase of an
Islamic invasion,
that Hindus retook a place which had been under Muslim occupation for some
time. In
that case, they
rebuilt their temples on new sites. Muslim historians are on record that Hindus
spared the
mosques and mazãrs
which the invaders had raised in the interregnum. When the Muslims came back,
which they did in
most cases, they re-enacted the standard scene vis-a-vis Hindu places of
worship.
4. Places in the
countryside: The invaders started sending out expeditions into the
countryside as soon as
their stranglehold on
major cities and towns in a region had been secured. Hindu places of worship
were
always the first
targets of these expeditions. It is a different matter that sometimes the local
Hindus raised
their temples again
after an expedition had been forced to retreat. For more expeditions came and
in due
course Hindu places
of worship tended to disappear from the countryside as well. At the same time,
masjids
and mazãrs sprang up
everywhere, on the sites of demolished temples.
5. Missionaries of Islam: Expeditions
into the countryside were accompanied or followed by the
missionaries of Islam
who flaunted pretentious names and functioned in many guises. It is on record
that
the missionaries took
active part in attacking the temples. They loved to live on the sites of
demolished
temples and often
used temple materials for building their own dwellings, which also went under
various
high-sounding names.
There were instances when they got killed in the battle or after they settled
down in a
place which they had
helped in pillaging. In all such cases, they were pronounced shahîds (martyrs)
and
suitable monuments
were raised in their memory as soon as it was possible. Thus a large number
of gumbads (domes)
and ganjs (plains) commemorating the martyrs arose all over the cradle
of Hindu
culture and myths
about them grew apace. In India, we have a large literature on the subject in
which
Sayyid Sãlãr Masûd,
who got killed at Bahraich while attacking the local Sun Temple, takes pride of
place. His mazAr now
stands on the site of the same temple which was demolished in a subsequent
invasion. Those
Muslim saints who survived and settled down have also left a large number of
masjids and
dargAhs in the
countryside. Almost all of them stand on temple sites.
6. The role of sufis: The
saints of Islam who became martyrs or settled down were of several types which
can be noted by a
survey of theirziãrats and mazãrs that we find in abundance in all
lands conquered by the
armies of Islam. But
in the second half of the twelfth century A.D., we find a new type of Muslim
saint
appearing on the
scene and dominating it in subsequent centuries. That was the sufi joined to a silsila.
This
is not the place to
discuss the character of some outstanding sufis like Mansûr al-Hallãj, Bãyazîd
Bistãmî,
Rûmî and Attãr.
Suffice it to say that some of their ancestral spiritual heritage had survived
in their
consciousness even
though their Islamic environment had tended to poison it a good deal. The
common
name which is used
for these early sufis as well as for the teeming breed belonging to the
latter-day silsilas,
has caused no end of
confusion. So far as India is concerned, it is difficult to find a sufi whose
consciousness
harboured even a trace of any spirituality. By and large, the sufis that
functioned in this
country were the most
fanatic and fundamentalist activists of Islamic imperialism, the same as the
latterday
Christian
missionaries in the context of Spanish and Portuguese imperialism.
Small wonder that we
find them flocking everywhere ahead or with or in the wake of Islamic armies.
Sufis
of the Chishtîyya silsila
in particular excelled in going ahead of these armies and acting as eyes
and ears of
the Islamic
establishment. The Hindus in places where these sufis settled, particularly in
the South, failed to
understand the true
character of these saints till it was too late. The invasions of South India by
the armies
of Alãud-Dîn
Khaljî and Muhammad bin Tughlaq can be placed in their proper perspective only
when
we survey the sufi
network in the South. Many sufis were sent in all directions by Nizãmud-Dîn
Awliyã,
the Chistîyya
luminary of Delhi; all of them actively participated in jihãdsagainst
the local
population. Nizãmud-Dîns
leading disciple, Nasîrud-Dîn Chirãg-i-Dihlî, exhorted the sufis to serve
the Islamic state. The
essence of sufism, he
versified, is not an external garment. Gird up your loins
to serve the Sultãn
and be a sufi.34Nasîrud-Dîns leading disciple, Syed Muhammad Husainî Banda
Nawãz Gesûdarãz
(1321-1422 A.D.), went to Gulbarga for helping the contemporary Bahmani sultan
in
consolidating Islamic
power in the Deccan. Shykh Nizãmud-Dîn
Awliyãs dargãh in Delhi continued to
be and remains till
today the most important centre of Islamic fundamentalism in India.
An estimate of what
the sufis did wherever and whenever they could, can be formed from the account
of a
pilgrimage which a
pious Muslim Nawwãb undertook in 1823 to the holy places of Islam in the
Chingleput,
South Acort,
Thanjavur, Tiruchirapalli and North Arcot districts of Tamil Nadu. This region
had
experienced renewed
Islamic invasion after the breakdown of the Vijayanagar Empire in 1565 A.D.
Many
sufis had flocked in
for destroying Hindu temples and converting the Hindu population, particularly
the
Qãdirîyyas who had
been fanning out all over South India after establishing their stronghold at
Bidar in the
fifteenth century.
They did not achieve any notable success in terms of conversions, but the havoc
they
wrought with Hindu
temples can be inferred from a large number of ruins, loose sculptures
scattered all
over the area,
inscriptions mentioning many temples which cannot be traced, and the proliferation
of
mosques, dargãhs,
mazãrs and maqbaras.
The pilgrim visited
many places and could not go to some he wanted to cover. All these places were
small
except
Tiruchirapalli, Arcot and Vellore. His court scribe, who kept an account of the
pilgrimage, mentions
many masjids and
mazãrs visited by his patron. Many masjids and mazãrs could not be visited
because they
were in deserted
places covered by forest. There were several graveyards, housing many tombs;
one of
them was so big that thousands,
even a hundred thousand graves
could be there. Other notable places
were takiyãs of
faqirs, sarãis, dargãhs, and several houses of holy relics in one of which a
hair of the
Holy Prophet is
enshrined. The
account does not mention the Hindu population except as harsh
kafirs
and marauders. But stray references reveal that the Muslim population in all
these places was sparse. For
instance, Kanchipuram
had only 50 Muslim houses but 9 masjids and 1 mazãr.
The court scribe pays
fulsome homage to the sufis who planted
firmly the Faith of Islam in
this region.
The pride of place
goes to Hazrat Natthar WalI who took over by force the main temple at
Tiruchirapalli
and converted it into
his khãnqãh. Referring to the destruction of the Sivalinga in the temple, he
observes: The
monster was slain and sent to the house of perdition. His image namely butling
worshipped by the
unbelievers was cut and the head separated from the body. A portion of the body
went into the ground.
Over that spot is the tomb of WalI shedding rediance till this day.35 Another
sufi,
Qãyim Shãh, who came
to the same place at a later stage, was
the cause of the destruction of twelve
temples.36 At
Vellore, Hazrat Nûr Muhammad Qãdirî, the
most unique man regarded as the invaluable
person of his age, was the cause of the ruin of temples which he laid waste. He
chose to be
buried in
the vicinity of the temple which
he had replaced with his khãnqãh.37
It is, therefore, not
an accident that the masjids and khAnqAhs built by or for the sufis who reached
a place
in the first phase of
Islamic invasion occupy the sites of Hindu temples and, quite often, contain
temple
materials in their
structures. Lahore, Multan, Uch, Ajmer, Delhi, Badaun, Kanauj, Kalpi,
Biharsharif,
Maner, Lakhnauti,
Patan, Patna, Burhanpur, Daulatabad, Gulbarga, Bidar, Bijapur, Golconda, Arcot,
Vellor
and Tiruchirapalli-to
count only a few leading sufi center-shave many dargãhs which display evidence
of
iconoclasm. Many
masjids and dargãhs in interior places testify to the same fact, namely, that
the sufis
were, above
everything else, dedicated soldiers of Allah who tolerates no other deity and
no other way of
worship except that
which he revealed to Prophet Muhammad.
7. Particularly pious sultans: Lastly,
we have to examine very closely the monuments built during the
reigns of the
particularly pious sultans who undertook to
cleanse the land from the vices of infidelity and
God-pluralism that had cropped up earlier, either because Islamic terror had
weakened under pressure of
circumstances or
because the proceeding ruler (s) had wandered
away from the path of rectitude. Fîruz
Shãh Tughlaq,
Sikandar Lodî and Aurangzeb of the Delhi-Agra imperial line belonged to this
category.
They had several
prototypes in the provincial Muslim dynasties at Ahmadabad, Mandu, Jaunpur,
Lakhnauti, Gulbarga,
Bidar, Ahmadnagar, Bijapur and Golconda. There is little doubt that all masjids
and
mazãrs erected under
the direct or indirect patronage of these sultans, particularly in places where
Hindu
population predominates, stand on the
sites of Hindu temples.
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