The Last Frontier

The Pre-Ghaznavid History of the Punjab and Afghanistan

By: Srikala Balakrishnan

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

The history of India is not complete without a description of the Ghaznavid invasion, a pre-cursor to the invasion of the 12th century which transfromed the history of India unalterably. What were the conditions in India, previous to the invasion of Mahmud of Ghazni? Could they have been prevented? Apart from other things, the Ghaznavid invasion led to the Islamization of India's borderlands. Those lands which had been satellites of the Indic civilization became part of the Islamic world. Hence, they were lost to India forever. The book traces the centuries before the Islamic invasion of India. It begins with the early Arab incursions into India's frontier. It then goes on to describe hindu empires and kingdoms which arose in the subsequent centuries and how they held off repeated Islamic raids. Afghanistan and the kingdoms that arose therein are also described. Then slowly, repeated attacks by the Caliphate and subsequent kingdoms that arose in its ruins started having an effect on those valiant little frontier kingdoms, outposts of Indian civilization, which bore the brunt of these repeated incursions. Those valiant, unsung heroes whose bravery has gone unmentioned in the tides of time are hereby remembered. One of these unknown dynasties was the Shahiyas who valiantly guarded India's frontier in the ninth and tenth centuries. The book traces the history of this dynasty as well whose fall coincided with the rise of Mahmud of Ghazni and his invasion of India. Then it traces events in Afghanistan, another frontier of Indian civilization. How first Zabul and then Kabul fell to the Muslims, the rise of the Samanids and how a Turkish slave dynasty arose in the unlikeliest of places, Ghazni. Ghazni is today an obscure town in Afghanistan as it was even in the day of the Great Mogul, Babur. Yet it produced the scourge of northern India, Mahmud of Ghazni, whose repeated invasions plundered the Indian mainland. An account of his invasions, seventeen in all is given. The story of these invasions is one of loot, plunder and rapine. Thus the book is about the time previous to the invasions as well as the invasion itself.