n: Fig. 73. Group of Chamba Temples.]

~Hindu and Buddhist Remains.~--The scholar who ended his study of Indian
history with the close of the first millennium of the Christian era
would expect to find a fruitful field for the study of ancient monuments
of the Hindu faith in the plains of the Panjab. He would look for a
great temple of the Sun God at Multan, and at places like Lahore and
Kangra, Thanesar and Pihowa, for shrines rich with graven work outside
and with treasures of gold and precious stones within. But he would look
in vain. The Muhammadan invaders of the five centuries which elapsed
between Mahmud of Ghazni and the Moghal Babar were above all things
idol-breakers, and their path was marked by the destruction and
spoliation of temples. Even those invaders who remained as conquerors
deemed it a pious work to build their mosques with the stones of ruined
fanes. The transformation, as in the case of the great Kuwwat ul Islam
mosque beside the Kutb Minar, did not always involve the complete
obliteration of idolatrous emblems. Kangra was not too remote to be
reached by invading armies, and the visitor to Nurpur on the road from
Pathankot to Dharmsala can realize how magnificent some of the old Hindu
buildings were, and how utterly they were destroyed. The smaller
buildings to be found in the remoter parts of the hills escaped, and
there are characteristic groups of stone temples at Chamba and still
older shrines dating from the eighth century at Barmaur and Chitradi in
the same state. The ruins of the great temple of the Sun, built by
Lalitaditya in the same period, at Martand[7] near Islamabad in the
Kashmir State are very striking. The smaller, but far better preserved,
temple at Payer is probably of much later date. Round the pool of Katas,
one of Siva's eyes, a great place of Hindu pilgrimage in the Salt
Range, there is little or nothing of antiquarian value, but there are
interesting remains at Malot in the same neighbourhood. It is possible
that when the mounds that mark the sites of ancient villages come to be
excavated valuable relics of the Hindu period will be brought to light.
The forces of nature or the violence of man have wiped out all traces of
the numerous Buddhist monasteries which the Chinese pilgrims found in
the Panjab. Inscriptions of Asoka? graven on rocks survive at
Shahbazgarhi and Mansehra in the North-West Frontier Province. Two
pillars with inscriptions of the Missionary Emperor stand at