A Book of Conquest The Chachnama and Muslim Origins in South Asia

A DEMON WITH RUBY EYES III

the gold and the rubies. I only wanted to show that it has no power

to help or harm." He then conquered Bust and Zabul by covenant.^12

This early account from Baladhuri presents three motifs that
come to dominate later Muslim accounts of Hindu-Muslim encounters
in the temple: the gold-filled house of the idol, the idol with human
form and ruby eyes, and the caretaker who acts as the mediator or inter-
locutor. Here, removing of the eyes shows the incapacity of the idol to
see, and the Arab account notes that the caretaker recognizes the hi-
erarchy of power. For Baladhuri, the account asserts dominance, in line
with the concerns of the fathnama genre.
The idol with ruby eyes appears again in geographic,narratives on
Sind. The location of the idol and the description of the temple and the
riches differ, and one further difference is striking: The idol is left un-
molested and is made to represent the political coexistence of Mus-
lims in India. In line with the concerns we saw in Chapter 3, in the
early tenth century, Istakhri moves the motif of the ruby eyes to the
idol in Multan and highlights the marvel of wealth:

He has the form of a man, fourfold, and he sits on a throne of stucco

and bricks. He is covered with a skin which looks like red Saffiano

leather, so that nothing is visible of his body except for his two eyes.

Some people maintain that his body is made of wood, and others

reject that, but no part of his body is uncovered. His eyes are of pre-

cious rubies. On his head he wears a fourfold diadem of gold. In this

way he sits on the throne, holding his forearms stretched out over

his knees, spreading his fingers like someone indicating the number

four in counting.^13

Istakhri focuses on the richness of the temple and on the presence

of pilgrims and their material donations to the temple. Ibn Hawqal,

another Arab geographer who visited Multan, repeats this account. He

also includes the details that pilgrims pay tribute to the idol and that

Isma'ili rulers of Multan protect the temple and the idol. The presence

of this account in the Arab geographical narratives, as discussed ear-

lier, proposes that the frontier of Sind was a negotiated space where

Islam was in political dialogue with neighboring Hindu polities.

A different treatment of the idol with ruby eyes is given by Abu

Rayhan Biruni (d. ro48), who visits Multan in the early eleventh