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

INTRODUCTION II

Chachnama that did not speak directly to Muhammad bin Qasim's
conquest were considered redundant and discardable, as Hodivala
commented:

The whole of the first part of the work is overgrown with legendary

matter and all but valueless as history .... It may have some basis in

the flotsam and jetsam of local tradition, but if so, the tradition has

been so grossly corrupted in the cours<; of transmission by the fan-

tastic accretions of subsequent iμventiveness, as to amount to a trav-

esty of the truth. 20

Chachnama had already inherited from the colonial historians a
marked valence as a politically sensitive text unveiling the destruction
of the golden age of India (pre-Muslim classical period) by the invading
Muslims, and the subsequent ushering in of India's dark ages (the me-
dieval period). In the backdrop of this historiographical debate-as the
discussion over the destruction of Somanath exemplified-Chachnama
had to be read as a history of the eighth century and not as a history of
the thirteenth century, during which it was produced. This view of the
hidden historical value of Chachnama crystallizes in the works of
postcolonial scholars such as H. T. Lambrick, P.eter Hardy, and Yo-
hanan Friedmann.^21
They chose to systematically and thoroughly separate the history
from the "flotsam and jetsam" that surrounded it. Names of people
and places, dates of events, and actions of political, religious or so-
ciocultural significance were teased out and carefully compared
with biographical dictionaries, histories, and chronicles, where
available. The notion of Chachnama as a carrier text became the
overarching consensus of the field. The fact that the majority of
Chachnama cannot be corroborated from any other source-textual
or otherwise-is dealt with by relying on 'Ali Kufi's own testimony
that his text is a translation from an earlier Arabic text, as Fried-
mann notes:

Though tumerous other persons who appear in the Chach Nama are

not to be located easily in Arab historiography, one has the distinct

impression that Kiifi had the Arab tradition at his disposal and used

it extensively. The Chach Nama thus seems to be the only extant