6_Glorious_Epochs_of_Indian_History

6TH GLORIOUS EPOCH 133
various skirmishes by armed bands or military detachments'.
It is enough for our purpose to bear in mind that all these
attempts were foiled successfully by the Hindus*. At length
Usman', the governor of the Grand Khalipha's distant
province of Oman, openely attacked the Hindu state of Sindh.
The then Brahmin King of Sindh, Chacha, vanquished not
only these Arabs, but killed their very Commander-in-Chief,
Abdul Aziz, in a battle^". After these sporadic attempts
till about A.D. 640, the Arabs did not undertake any
important expedition, with perhaps the only exception of the
small distant province of Makram^^, which they reduced
to ashes converting the Hindus there at the point of the
sword to the Muslim faith^^. These Hindu Baluchistanian
converts of those days became later on bigoted Muslims.
THE FIRST BIG MUSLIM EXPEDITION
AGAINST SINDH
325. Thereafter it was in A.D. 711 that Mohammed
Bin-Kasim launched the first large-scale offensive against
Sindh with a huge army, fifty-thousand strong^*. The
majority of the population of Sindh, then, was Vedic Hindus,
with King Dahir at the head of the state, while, only a small
minority was the follower of Lord Buddha. Formerly, when
Sindh was under the Huns, their last King Mihirgula had
persecuted the Buddhists very cruelly, because in spite of his
Hunnish extraction, he had become a faithful follower of the
Vedic religion and hated Buddhism for its feebleness^*.
(Chapter 4—Paragraphs 284 & 285.) But after Mihirgula, when
Sindh went under the sway of the Vedic Hindu Kings, the
Buddhists no longer suffered any such persecution. They
were free to follow their own religion so far as it concerned
only with their own selves.
THE BUDDHIST TRAITORS
326. Nevertheless, these Indian Buddhists were elated,
to see the Muslim foreigners march against the Hindu
kingdom. These Buddhists, who bore malice towards the