THE SWORD AND INDIA 53Hindus look for a succession of reincarnations, and Muslims believe that
man has one life in which to serve God. Hindus use music and dance in
worship, Muslims do not. Hinduism stresses tolerance of all faiths, Islam
does not. Hindus hold to a caste system, Islam is a classless creed. The
list could go on, and is probably best illumined by the well-known dietary
restrictions of each faith. Hindus keep cattle as sacred beasts, and Muslims
keep them as livestock. Hindus care nothing about pork, and to Muslims
it is forbidden.
All of these differences were heightened by the Islamic scriptures that
allow only slaughter or conversion for people not “of the book”—Jews
and Christians. Of course, Islam had ceased to be a reason for conquest
by the eleventh century and was hardly even an excuse. Still, the great
disparities between the native Hindus and the incoming Muslims made
lasting assimilation a slow process and formed the basis for the enmities
that exist between Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India today.
The process of conquest was further slowed by the simple fact that me-
dieval warlords had to rely on their offspring to continue the dynasty. It
was extremely common for a capable parent to father an incompetent off-
spring, causing the empire-building process to go astray. Royal succession
was frequently accomplished with patricide or fratricide—probably better
practices than civil war—but stable and long-lasting administrations of con-
quered areas do not quickly grow from such erratic methods. Finally, the
Muslim raids, which became conquests, were themselves the targets of
several waves of destructive raids from the steppe peoples, culminating in
Tamerlane’s horrific sixteenth-century destruction of Delhi. And so the
Muslim conquests were neither rapid nor complete. But with the first foot-
hold in Sind, they came with the consistency of the tides.
The origin of the second wave of Muslim attacks on India came from
the Turkish general Alptigin, who was the governor of Transoxania, a
province of the old Persian Empire. The good general had made a subtle
attempt on the Iranian throne in 961 when Emir Abu al-Hasan had died.
Following his unsuccessful attempt at the crown, removing himself from
the dangerous intrigues of the capital, Alptigin moved his family and
forces east from Khurasan in northeastern Iran to Ghazni in modern
Afghanistan, thus looking east rather than west. He had picked a wise
time to do so, for neither northern India disrupted by the continual strug-
gles of its warring Rajput chiefs nor southern India torn by its rival
Dravidian principalities could offer resistance. Thus, all semblance of
unity in the subcontinent had vanished before the Islamic armies
launched their invasions. Warnings of the growing threat from the West
passed unheeded.