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

A CONQUEST OF PASTS

the province raised himself to independence. [ ... ] The original
Hindu tribes who were lords of the soil are all now ranged under the
faith of Muhammed, or have become assimilated to his followers.^30
Although McMurdo died of cholera, his posthumous papers were '
published in 1834 alongside the work of another young political agent,
Thomas Postans (1808-1846), who continued writing on the original
conquest of Sind by the Muslims. His account, incorporating selections
from Chachnama, was published in the f ournal of the Royal Asiatic
Society of Bengal in 1838. He later expanded his translations of
Chachnama in his Personal Observations on Scinde, published in 1843.
He referred to Chachnama as the "principal Persian manuscript au-
thority consulted in the history of Sind.^11 For him, Chachnama was a
record of centuries of Muslim barbarity:

Sind ... under its Hindu possessors was a rich, flourishing, and ex-

tensive monarchy, but that, subsequently becoming the prey of con-

querors, who, paid no attention to the improvement of the country

,or maintenance of the imperial authority, this valuable territory

dwindled at length into waste .... All the peculiarities and unsullied

pride of caste, which distinguishes the Hindu under his own or British

government, has been completely lost in Sind. In India we have seen

the dormant spirit of an injured people rousing itself to retributive

vengeance, flinging off the yoke of Islam, regaining their monarchies,. -

and making the bigoted Moslem tremble at the Pagan's power; but in

Sind oppression has rooted out all patriotism, and the broken spir-

ited Hindu becomes a helpless servant to his Moslem tyrant, and

willing inducer of his own extreme degradation.^31

The portrait of Qasim that emerges in Postans's work focuses on
his habit of "converting the Pagan temples into mosques and places of
Mohammedan prayer." His destruction of the temple at Daybul "oc-
casioned a general despondency throughout the country."^32 After the
killing of Dahir, "as usual, mosques were erected on the ruins of the
temples, or those places were transformed for purposes of Moham-
medan worship."^33.
Postans was not the only subordinate of Charles Napier traveling
across Sind. The hills of Thatta were also the training grounds for per-
haps the greatest Orientalist translator and explorer, Richard F. Burton