fatal to the development of
a robust body politic which can only be produced by the reasonable
intermingling and healthy fusion of the different classes of the
community. It was perhaps chief among the causes that left Hinduism with
so little force of organised political cohesion that the Hindu states of
ancient India, with their superior culture and civilisation, were sooner
or later swept away by the devastating flood of Mahomedan conquest,
whilst the social structure of Hinduism, just because it consisted of
such an infinity of water-tight compartments each vital and
self-sufficing, could be buffeted again and again and even almost
submerged by the waves without ever breaking up.

CHAPTER III

MAHOMEDAN DOMINATION

Of all the great religions that have shaped and are still shaping the
destinies of the human race, Islam alone was borne forth into the world
on a great wave of forceful conquest. Out of the sun-scorched deserts of
Arabia, with the Koran in the one hand and the sword in the other, the
followers of Mahomed swept eastward to the confines of China, northward
through Asia Minor into Eastern Europe, and westward through Africa into
Spain, and even into the heart of medieval France. But it was not till
the beginning of the eleventh century that the Mahomedan flood began to
roll down into India from the north with the overwhelming momentum of
fierce fanaticism and primitive cupidity behind it--at first mere short
but furious irruptions, like the seventeen raids of Mahmud of Ghazni
between 1001 and 1026, then a more settled tide of conquest, now and
again checked for a time by dissensions amongst the conquerors quite as
much as by some brilliant rally of Hindu religious and patriotic
fervour, but sweeping on again with a fresh impetus until the flood had
spread itself over the whole of the vast peninsula, except the extreme
south. For three centuries one wave of invasion followed another, one
dynasty of conquerors displaced another, but whether under Turki or
Afghan rulers, under Slave kings or under the house of Tughluk, there
was seldom a pause in the consolidation of Mahomedan power, seldom a
break in the long-drawn tale of plunder and carnage, cruelty and lust,
unfolded in the annals of the earlier Mahomedan dynasties that ruled at
Delhi. One notable victory Prithvi Raja, the forlorn hope of Hindu
chivalry, won at Thanesvar in 1192 over the Afghan hordes that had
already driven the last of the Ghazn