ty-seven millions of the total of
two hundred and eighty-eight millions in India.

The armies of Islam had carried the crescent throughout Asia west of the
Hindu Kush, and through Africa and Southern Europe, to distant Spain and
France, before they obtained a foothold in the Punjab.

The brilliant attempt in 711 to found a lasting Mahometan dynasty in
Sind failed. Three centuries later, the utmost efforts of a series of
Mussulman invaders from the northwest only succeeded in annexing a small
portion of the frontier Punjab provinces.

The popular notion that India fell an easy prey to the Mussulmans is
opposed to the historical facts. Mahometan rule in India consists of a
series of invasions and partial conquests, during eleven centuries from
Othman's raid, about A.D. 647, to Ahmad Shah's tempest of devastation in
1761.

At no time was Islam triumphant throughout all India. Hindu dynasties
always ruled over a large area.

The first collision between Hinduism and Islam on the Punjab frontier
was the act of the Hindus. In 977 Jaipal, the Hindu chief of Lahore,
annoyed by Afghan raids, led his troops through the mountains against
the Mahometan kingdom of Ghazni, in Afghanistan. Subuktigin, the
Ghaznivide prince, after severe fighting, took advantage of a hurricane
to cut off the retreat of the Hindus through the pass. He allowed them,
however, to return to India, on the surrender of fifty elephants and the
promise of one million _dirhams_ [about $125,000].

In 997 Subuktigin died, and was succeeded by his son, Mahmud of Ghazni,
aged sixteen. This valiant monarch, surnamed "the Great," reigned for
thirty-three years, and extended his father's little Afghan kingdom into
a great Mahometan sovereignty, stretching from Persia on the west to far
within the Punjab on the east.)

Mahmud was born about the year 357 of the Hegira--or 350, according to
some authorities--and, as astrologers say, with many happy omens
expressed in the horoscope of his life. Subuktigin, being asleep at the
time of his birth, dreamed that he beheld a green tree springing forth
from his chimney, which threw its shadow over the face of the earth and
screened from the storms of heaven the whole animal creation. This
indeed was verified by the justice of Mahmud; for, if we can believe the
poet, in his reign the wolf and the sheep drank together at the same
brook.

When Mahmud had settled his dispute with his brother Ismail, he hastened
to Balik, f