Chapter XXIX: Concerning the Kingdom of Semenat

Semenat is a great kingdom towards the west. The people are Idolaters, and have a king and a language of their own, and pay tribute to nobody. They are not corsairs, but live by trade and industry as honest people ought. It is a place of very great trade. They are forsooth cruel Idolaters.{1}

NOTE 1.—SOMNATH is the site of the celebrated Temple on the coast
of Sauráshtra, or Peninsular Guzerat, plundered by Mahmúd of Ghazni
on his sixteenth expedition to India (A.D. 1023). The term “great
kingdom” is part of Polo’s formula. But the place was at this time
of some importance as a commercial port, and much visited by the
ships of Aden, as Abulfeda tells us. At an earlier date Albiruni
speaks of it both as the seat of a great Mahadeo much frequented
by Hindu pilgrims, and as a port of call for vessels on their way
from Sofala in Africa to China,—a remarkable incidental notice
of departed trade and civilisation! He does not give Somnath so
good a character as Polo does; for he names it as one of the
chief pirate-haunts. And Colonel Tod mentions that the sculptured
memorial stones on this coast frequently exhibit the deceased as a
pirate in the act of boarding. In fact, piratical habits continued
in the islands off the coast of Kattiawár down to our own day.

Properly speaking, three separate things are lumped together as
Somnáth: (1) The Port, properly called Veráwal, on a beautiful
little bay; (2) the City of Deva-Pattan, Somnáth-Pattan, or
Prabhás, occupying a prominence on the south side of the bay,
having a massive wall and towers, and many traces of ancient Hindu
workmanship, though the vast multitude of tombs around shows the
existence of a large Mussulman population at some time; and among
these are dates nearly as old as our Traveller’s visit; (3) The
famous Temple (or, strictly speaking, the object of worship in that
Temple) crowning a projecting rock at the south-west angle of the
city, and close to the walls. Portions of columns and sculptured
fragments strew the soil around.

Notwithstanding the famous story of Mahmúd and the image stuffed
with jewels, there is little doubt that the idol really termed
Somnáth (Moon’s Lord) was nothing but a huge columnar emblem of
Mahadeo. Hindu authorities mention it as one of the twelve most
famous emblems of that kind over India, and Ibn Ásir’s account,
the oldest extant narrative of Mahmúd’s expedition, is to the same
effect. Every day it was washed with water newly brought from the
Ganges. Mahmúd broke it to pieces, and with a fragment a step was
made at the entrance of the Jámi’ Mosque at Ghazni.

The temples and idols of Pattan underwent a second visitation at
the hands of Aláuddin’s forces a few years after Polo’s visit
(1300),[1] and this seems in great measure to have wiped out the
memory of Mahmúd. The temple, as it now stands deserted, bears
evident tokens of having been converted into a mosque. A good
deal of old and remarkable architecture remains, but mixed with
Moslem work, and no part of the building as it stands is believed
to be a survival from the time of Mahmúd; though part may belong
to a reconstruction which was carried out by Raja Bhima Deva of
Anhilwara about twenty-five years after Mahmúd’s invasion. It is
remarkable that Ibn Ásir speaks of the temple plundered by Mahmúd
as “built upon 56 pillars of teak-wood covered with lead.” Is it
possible that it was a wooden building?

In connection with this brief chapter on Somnáth we present a
faithful representation of those Gates which Lord Ellenborough
rendered so celebrated in connection with that name, when he caused
them to be removed from the Tomb of Mahmúd, on the retirement of
our troops from Kabul in 1842. His intention, as announced in that
once famous _pæan_ of his, was to have them carried solemnly to
Guzerat, and there restored to the (long desecrated) temple. Calmer
reflection prevailed, and the Gates were consigned to the Fort of
Agra, where they still remain.

Captain J. D. Cunningham, in his _Hist. of the Sikhs_ (p. 209),
says that in 1831, when Sháh Shúja treated with Ranjít Singh for
aid to recover his throne, one of the Mahárája’s conditions was the
restoration of the Gates to Somnáth. This probably put the scheme
into Lord Ellenborough’s head. But a remarkable fact is, that the
Sháh reminded Ranjít of _a prophecy that foreboded the downfall of
the Sikh Empire on the removal of the Ghazni Gates_. This is quoted
from a report of Captain Wade’s, dated 21st November, 1831. The
gates were removed to India in the end of 1842. The “Sikh Empire”
practically collapsed with the murder of Sher Singh in September,
1843.

It is not probable that there was any _real_ connection between
these Gates, of Saracenic design, carved (it is said) in Himalayan
cedar, and the Temple of Somnáth. But tradition did ascribe to
them such a connection, and the eccentric prank of a clever man in
high place made this widely known. Nor in any case can we regard
as alien to the scope of this book the illustration of a work
of mediæval Asiatic art, which is quite as remarkable for its
own character and indisputable history, as for the questionable
origin ascribed to it. (_Tod’s Travels_, 385, 504; _Burgess,
Visit to Somnath_, etc.; _Jacob’s Report on Kattywar_, p. 18;
_Gildemeister_, 185; _Dowson’s Elliot_, II. 468 _seqq._; _Asiatic
Journal_, 3rd series, vol. I.).

---------------------------------------------------------------------- [1] So in _Elliot_, II. 74. But Jacob says there is an inscription of a Mussulman Governor in Pattan of 1297.