The assassin's song by M. G. Vassanji

Author:M. G. Vassanji [M. G. Vassanji]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religion
ISBN: 9781400042173
Published: 2007-12-14T10:00:00+00:00

The two came to the door of our Pir

bleeding beggar, angelic child.

“Walking, running, Patan's enemies pursuant

we have now reached the end of our road,”

the beggar said; “My child is precious,

more precious is her honour and the word.”

c. A.D. 1300.

Death of the sufi; fall of a kingdom.

Forty years before, the wandering sufi Nur Fazal had departed Gujarat's capital, Patan, with the goodwill of its ruler, Vishal Dev—vainly styled King of Kings and Siddhraj II, titles that already rang hollow in the face of a bitter reality, the threat from a powerful army rattling its steel in the north. Vishal Dev was succeeded in time by the tragic prince known to the generations to follow by the unhappy title Crazy Karan.

The heedless devastations of war in his homeland had brought the Wanderer to the friendly gates of Patan. By a strange reversal, the conquest of Patan brought its last king, Karan, to the door of Pirbaag seeking protection for life and honour. It has been said that in the latter case the hand of fate was tempted by the lust and arrogance of Patan's king.

Raja Karan had long lusted after his able minister Madhav's beautiful wife, a padmini and a Brahmin; he managed to steal her. The minister, to revenge himself upon his king, did the unthinkable. He went to Delhi, capital of the dreaded Afghan ruler, and invited him to invade Gujarat. Gujarat of the glorious Patan, city of poets, philosophers, and princes, known to Arab travellers as Anularra; of the bustling wealthy ports Khambayat and Bharuch trading cotton and spices, horses and slaves with the entire world, from Africa to Arabia to China; of Somnath and its temple of untold riches; Gujarat with its handsome moon-faced people and beautiful women. Come to Gujarat, said Madhav to the sultan, there is much that awaits you there; the king is ineffectual and ill prepared to fight. The pass at Abu, where two of your illustrious brethren were defeated in the past, is not defended.

The sultan in Delhi was Alaudin Khilji, self-styled Alexander the Second, who had only three years before assumed the throne, having put to death his uncle, the previous sultan. Khilji sent two generals to conquer Gujarat. From the Banas River in the east to the ocean in the west, the earth trembled under Delhi's might, and Gujarat's cities and towns fell one after another: Patan, the capital; Khambayat and Bharuch, the ports; Somnath, Diu, Junagadh, Surat. Blood flowed in torrents, the dead littered the landscapes; chestfuls of gold, pearls, diamonds, and rubies, thousands of elephants, frightened boys and weeping women trailed behind the victorious armies as the added spoils of war. The temple at Somnath, destroyed before by another ferocious Afghan and subsequently rebuilt, was destroyed again; the sacred lingam was dragged all the way to Delhi to be stepped upon. The Queen of Patan, Karan's wife Kawal Devi, was taken away to the harem in Delhi, there to become a wife of the sultan; the unfortunate Karan, losing

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.