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| 0054 |
Archaeological Reconnaissances in North-Western India and South-Eastern Īrān : vol.1 |
Citation Information
OCR Text
Nandana figures repeatedly in the accounts of the successive campaigns which
carried the great conqueror Sultān Maḥmūd of Ghazna from eastern Afghānistān
into the plains of the Panjāb. Its position is clearly indicated by the events in
connexion with which it is mentioned. These leave no doubt about its having
been an important stronghold of the last rulers of the Hindu Shāhiya dynasty,
after it had been forced to retreat to the extreme north-west of the Panjāb from
its former possessions west of the Indus.⁴ Without going into such references
to Nandana as occur in the often confused accounts of Maḥmūd of Ghazna's
campaigns given by later Muhammadan chronicles,⁵ I may confine myself here
to those notices which at present can be checked in critically made extracts from
contemporary sources as presented by Dr. Muhammad Nazim in his Maḥmūd of
Ghazna.
Thus we are told of Sultān Maḥmūd that, intending to crush the power of the
Shāhi ruler Trilocanapāla in the Salt Range, he set out in March, A.D. 1014, 'and
marched to Nandana which, situated on the southern spur of the Salt Range,
commanded the main route into the Ganges Doāb'.⁶ I shall have occasion farther
on, when describing the ruins of Nandana, to discuss the details recorded as to
the brave defence offered by Bhīmapāla Shāhi, the king's son, in the 'strong
position between two hills at the junction of which the fort was situated'. The
account tells us how, after prolonged fighting beyond the upper entrance of the
pass, the Hindu defenders were driven back into the fort, and this was besieged
and ultimately taken by the Sultān. The importance attaching to the route thus
opened is attested by the special mention made of the Muhammadan commander
to whom Maḥmūd entrusted Nandana when he returned to Ghazna after having
pursued the fugitive Hindu king into the mountains south of Kashmīr.⁷ An
earlier notice, relating to an attempted invasion made A.D. 991 from the east by
the ruler of Lahore, gives Nandana as the name of a whole district adjacent to
Jhēlum, and thus helps to bring out the importance of the place and of the route
past it.⁸
In the following section I shall describe the interesting observations, archaeo-
logical and topographical, which our survey of the Nandana fort and its sur-
roundings yielded. Here I may turn at once to the very useful indications which
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