CHAPTER IX. THE SPREAD OF ISLAM IN INDIA.

CHAPTER IX.

THE  SPREAD  OF ISLAM  IN   INDIA.

the Muhammadan invasions of India and the foundation and growth of the Muhammadan power in that country, have found many historians, both among contemporary and later writers. But hitherto no one has attempted to write a history of the spread of Islam in India, considered apart from the military successes and administrative achievements of its adherents. Indeed, to many, such a task must appear impossible. For India has often been picked out as a typical instance of a country in which Islam owes its existence and continuance in existence to the settlement in it of foreign, conquering Muhammadan races, who have transmitted their faith to their descendants, and only succeeded in spreading it beyond their own circle by means of persecution and forced conversions. Thus the missionary spirit of Islam is supposed to show itself in its true light in the brutal massacres of Brahmans by Mahmūd of Ghaznặ, in the persecutions of Aurangzeb, the forcible circumcisions effected by Ḥaydar 'Alī, Tīpū Sulṭān and the like.

But among the sixty-six millions of Indian Musalmans there are vast numbers of converts or descendants of con­verts, in whose conversion force played no part and the only influences at work were the teaching and persuasion of peaceful missionaries. This class of converts forms a very distinct group by itself which can be distinguished from that of the forcibly converted and the other hetero­geneous elements of which Muslim India is made up. The entire community may be roughly divided into those of foreign race who brought their faith into the country along with them, and those who have been converted from one of the previous religions of the country under various inducements and at many different periods of history. The foreign settlement consists of three main bodies: first, and numeri­cally the most important, are the immigrants from across the north-west frontier, who are found chiefly in Sind and the Panjab; next come the descendants of the court and armies of the various Muhammadan dynasties, mainly in Upper India and to a much smaller extent in the Deccan; lastly, all along the west coast are settlements probably of Arab descent, whose original founders came to India by sea.[1] But the number of families of foreign origin that actually settled in India is nowhere great except in the Panjāb and its neighbourhood. More than half the Muslim population of India has indeed assumed appellations of distinctly foreign races, such as Shaykh, Beg, Khān, and even Sayyid, but the greater portion of them are local converts or descendants of converts, who have taken the title of the person of highest rank amongst those by whom they were converted or have affiliated themselves to the aristocracy of Islam on even less plausible grounds.[2] Of this latter section of the community—the converted natives of the country—part no doubt owed their change of religion to force and official pressure, but by far the majority of them entered the pale of Islam of their own free will. The history of the proselytising movements and the social influences that brought about their conversion has hitherto received very little attention, and most of the commonly accessible histories of the Muhammadans in India, whether written by European or by native authors, are mere chronicles of wars, campaigns and the achievements of princes, in which little mention of the religious life of the time finds a place, unless it has taken the form of fanaticism or intolerance. From the biographies of the Muslim saints, however, and from local traditions, something may be learned of the missionary work that was carried on quite independently of the political life of the country. But before dealing with these it is pro­posed to give an account of the official propagation of Islam and of the part played by the Muhammadan rulers in the spread of their faith.

          From the fifteenth year after the death of the Prophet, when an Arab expedition was sent into Sind, up to the eighteenth century, a series of Muhammadan invaders, some founders of great empires, others mere adventurers, poured into India from the north-west. While some came only to plunder and retired laden with spoils, others remained to found kingdoms that have had a lasting influence to the present day. But of none of these do we learn that they were accompanied by any missionaries or preachers. Not that they were indifferent to their religion. To many of them, their invasion of India appeared in the light of a holy war. Such was evidently the thought in the minds of Maḥmūd of Ghaznặ and Tīmūr. The latter, after his capture of Dehli, writes as follows in his autobiography:— "I had been at Dehli fifteen days, which time I passed in pleasure and enjoyment, holding royal Courts and giving great feasts. I then reflected that I had come to Hindustān to war against infidels, and my enterprise had been so blessed that wherever I had gone I had been victorious. I had triumphed over my adversaries, I had put to death some lacs of infidels and idolaters, and I had stained my proselyt­ing sword with the blood of the enemies of the faith. Now this crowning victory had been won, and I felt that I ought not to indulge in ease, but rather to exert myself in warring against .the infidels of Hindustan."[3] Though he speaks much of his "proselyting sword," it seems, however, to have served no other purpose than that of sending infidels to hell. Most of the Muslim invaders seem to have acted in a very similar way; in the name of Allāh, idols were thrown down, their priests put to the sword, and their temples destroyed; while mosques were often erected in their place. It is true that the offer of Islam was generally made to the unbelieving Hindus before any attack was made upon them.[4] Fear occasionally dictated a timely acceptance of such offers and led to conversions which, in the earlier days of the Muham­madan invasion at least, were generally short-lived and ceased to be effective after the retreat of the invader. An illustration in point is furnished by the story of Hardatta, a ra'is of Bulandshahr, whose submission to Maḥmūd of Ghaznặ is thus related in the history of that conqueror's campaigns written by his secretary. "At length (about a.d. 1019) he (i.e. Maḥmūd) arrived at the fort of Barba,[5] in the country of Hardat, who was one of the rā'īs, that is "kings," in the Hindī language. When Hardat heard of this invasion by the protected warriors of God, who advanced like the waves of the sea, with the angels around them on all sides, he became greatly agitated, his steps trembled, and he feared for his life, which was forfeited under the law of God. So he reflected that his safety would best be secured by conforming to the religion of Islam, since God's sword was drawn from the scabbard, and the whip of punishment was uplifted. He came forth, therefore, with ten thousand men, who all proclaimed their anxiety for conversion and their rejection of idols."[6]

These new converts probably took the earliest opportunity of apostatising presented to them by the retreat of the conqueror—a kind of action which we find the early Muhammadan historians of India continually complaining of. For when Quṭb al-Dīn Ībak attacked Baran in 1193, he was stoutly opposed by Chandrasen, the then Rājā, who was a lineal descendant of Hardatta and whose very name betrays his Hindu faith : nor do we hear of there being any Musalmans remaining under his rule.[7]

But these conquerors would appear to have had very little of that " love for souls " which animates the true missionary and which has achieved such great conquests for Islam. The Khiljīs (1290-1320), the Tughlaqs (1320-1412), and the Lodis (1451-1526) were generally too busily engaged in fighting to pay much regard to the interests of religion, or else thought more of the exaction of tribute than of the work of conversion.[8] Not that they were entirely lacking in religious zeal: e. g. the Ghakkars, a barbarous people in the mountainous districts of the North of the Panjab, who gave the early invaders much trouble, are said to have been converted through the influence of Muḥammad Ghorī at the end of the twelfth century. Their chieftain had been taken prisoner by the Muhammadan monarch, who induced him to become a Musalman, and then confirming him in his title of chief of this tribe, sent him back to convert his followers, many of whom having little religion of their own were easily prevailed upon to embrace Islam.[9] According to Ibn Baṭūṭah, the Khiljīs offered some encouragement to con­version by making it a custom to have the new convert presented to the sultan, who clad him in a robe of honour and gave him a collar and bracelets of gold, of a value proportionate to his rank.[10] But the monarchs of the earlier Muhammadan dynasties as a rule evinced very little prosely­tising zeal, and it would be hard to find a parallel in their history to the following passage from the autobiography of Fīrūz Shāh Tughlaq (1351-1388): " I encouraged my infidel subjects to embrace the religion of the Prophet, and I proclaimed that every one who repeated the creed and became a Musalman should be exempt from the jizyah, or poll tax. Information of this came to the ears of the people at large and great numbers of Hindus presented themselves, and were admitted to the honour of Islam. Thus they came forward day by day from every quarter, and, adopting the faith, were exonerated from the jizyah, and were favoured with presents and honours."[11]

As the Muhammadan power became consolidated, and particularly under the Mughal dynasty, the religious influ­ences of Islam naturally became more permanent and per­sistent. These influences are certainly apparent in the Hindu theistic movements that arose in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and Bishop Lefroy has conjectured that the positive character of Muslim teaching attracted minds that were dissatisfied with the vagueness and subjectivity of a Pantheistic system of thought. "When Mohammedanism, with its strong grasp of the reality of the Divine existence and, as flowing from this, of the absolutely fixed and objec­tive character of truth, came into conflict with the haziness of Pantheistic thought and the subjectivity of its belief, it necessarily followed, not only that it triumphed in the struggle, but also that it came as a veritable tonic to the life and thought of Upper India, quickening into a fresh and more vigorous life many minds which never accepted for themselves its intellectual sway."[12]

A powerful incentive to conversion was offered, when adherence to an idolatrous system stood in the way of advancement at the Muhammadan courts; and though a spirit of tolerance, which reached its culmination under the eclectic Akbar, was very often shown towards Hinduism, and respected even, for the most part, the state endowments of that religion;[13] and though the dread of unpopularity and the desire of conciliation dictated a policy of non-interference and deprecated such deeds of violence and such outbursts of fanaticism as had characterised the earlier period of invasion and triumph, still such motives of self-interest gained many converts from Hinduism to the Muhammadan faith. Many Rajputs became converts in this way, and their descendants are to this day to be found among the landed aristocracy. The most important perhaps among these is the Musalman branch of the great Bachgoti clan, the head of which is the premier Muhammadan noble of Oudh. According to one tradition, their ancestor Tilok Chand was taken prisoner by the Emperor Bābar, and to regain his liberty adopted the faith of Islam;[14] but another legend places his conversion in the reign of Humāyūn. This prince having heard of the marvellous beauty of Tilok Chand's wife, had her carried off while she was at a fair. No sooner, however, was she brought to him than his conscience smote him and he sent for her husband. Tilok Chand had despaired of ever seeing her again, and in gratitude he and his wife embraced the faith "which taught such generous purity."[15] These con­verted Rajputs are very zealous in the practice of their religion, yet often betray their Hindu origin in a very striking manner. In the district of Bulandshahr, for example, a large Musalman family, which is known as the Lālkhānī Paṭhāns, still (with some exceptions) retains its old Hindu titles and family customs of marriage, while Hindu branches of the same clan still exist side by side with it.[16] In the Mirzapur district, the Gaharwar Rajputs, who are now Muslim, still retain in all domestic matters Hindu laws and customs and prefix a Hindu honorific title to their Muhammadan names.[17]

Official pressure is said never to have been more persist­ently brought to bear upon the Hindus than in the reign of Aurangzeb. In the eastern districts of the Panjāb, there are many cases in which the ancestor of the Musalman branch of the village community is said to have changed his religion in the reign of this zealot, "in order to save the land of the village." In Gurgaon, near Dehli, there is a Hindu family of Banyas who still bear the title of Shaykh (which is commonly adopted by converted Hindus), because one of the members of the family, whose line is now extinct, became a convert in order to save the family property from confisca­tion.[18] Many Rajput landowners, in the Cawnpore district, were compelled to embrace Islam for the same reason.[19] In other cases the ancestor is said to have been carried as a prisoner or hostage to Dehli, and there forcibly circumcised and converted.[20] It should be noted that the only authority for these forced conversions is family or local tradition, and no mention of such (as far as I have been able to discover) is made in the historical accounts of Aurangzeb's reign.[21] It is established without doubt that forced conversions have been made by Muhammadan rulers, and it seems probable that Aurangzeb's well-known zeal on behalf of his faith has caused many families of Northern India (the history of whose conversion has been forgotten) to attribute their change of faith to this, the most easily assignable cause. Similarly in the Deccan, Aurangzeb shares with Ḥaydar 'Alī and Tīpū Sulṭān (these being the best known of modern Muhammadan rulers) the reputation of having forcibly converted sundry families and sections of the population, whose conversion undoubtedly dates from a much earlier period, from which no historical record of the circumstances of the case has come down.[22]

Tīpū Sulṭān is probably the Muhammadan monarch who most systematically engaged in the work of forcible conver­sion. In 1788 he issued the following proclamation to the people of Malabar: " From the period of the conquest until this day, during twenty-four years, you have been a turbu­lent and refractory people, and in the wars waged during your rainy season, you have caused numbers of our warriors to taste the draught of martyrdom. Be it so. What is past is past. Hereafter you must proceed in an opposite manner, dwell quietly and pay your dues like good subjects; and since it is the practice with you for one woman to associate with ten men, and you leave your mothers and sisters uncon­strained in their obscene practices, and are thence all born in adultery, and are more shameless in your connections than the beasts of the field, I hereby require you to forsake these sinful practices and to be like the rest of mankind; and if you are disobedient to these commands, I have made repeated vows to honour the whole of you with Islam and to march all the chief persons to the seat of Government." This proclamation stirred up a general revolt in Malabar, and early in 1789 Tīpū Sulṭān prepared to enforce his proclamation with an army of more than twenty thousand men, and issued general orders that " every being in the district without distinction should be honoured with Islam, that the houses of such as fled to avoid that honour should be burned, that they should be traced to their lurking places, and that all means of truth and falsehood, force or fraud should be employed to effect their universal conversion." Thousands of Hindus were accordingly circumcised and made to eat beef; but by the end of 1790 the British army had destroyed the last remnant of Tīpū Sulṭān's power in Malabar, and this monarch himself perished early in 1799 at the capture of Seringapatam. Most of the Brahmans and Nayars who had been forcibly converted, subsequently disowned their new religion.[23]

How little was effected towards the spread of Islam by violence on the part of the Muhammadan rulers may be judged from the fact that even in the centres of the Muham­madan power, such as Dehli and Agra, the Muhammadans in modern times in the former district hardly exceeded one-tenth, and in the latter they did not form one-fourth of the population.[24] A remarkable example of the worthlessness of forced conversion is exhibited in the case of Bodh Mal, Raja of Majhauli, in the district of Gorakhpur; he was arrested by Akbar in default of revenue, carried to Dehli, and there converted to Islam, receiving the name of Muḥam­mad Salīm. But on his return his wife refused to let him into the ancestral castle, and, as apparently she had the sympathy of his subjects on her side, she governed his territories during the minority of his son Bhawāni Mal, so that the Hindu succession remained undisturbed.[25] Until recently there were some strange survivals of a similarly futile false conversion, noticeable in certain customs of a Hindu sect called the Bishnois, the principal tenet of whose faith is the renunciation of all Hindu deities, except Viṣṇu. They used recently to bury their dead, instead of burning them, to adopt Ghulām Muḥammad and other Muhammadan names, and use the Muslim form of salutation. They ex­plained their adoption of these Muhammadan customs by saying that having once slain a Qāḍī, who had interfered with their rite of widow-burning, they had compounded for the offence by embracing Islam. They have now, however, renounced these practices in favour of Hindu customs.[26]

But though some Muhammadan rulers may have been more successful in forcing an acceptance of Islam on certain of their Hindu subjects than in the last-mentioned cases, and whatever truth there may be in the assertion[27] that " it is impossible even to approach the religious side of the Mahomedan position in India without surveying first its political aspect," we undoubtedly find that Islam has gained its greatest and most lasting missionary triumphs in times and places in which its political power has been weakest, as in Southern India and Eastern Bengal. Of such mis­sionary movements it is now proposed to essay some account, commencing with Southern India and the Deccan, then after reviewing the history of Sind, Cutch and Gujarat, passing to Bengal, and finally noticing some missionaries whose work lay outside the above geographical limits. Of several of the missionaries to be referred to, little is recorded beyond their names and the sphere of their labours; accord­ingly, in view of the general dearth of such missionary annals, any available details have been given at length.

The first advent of Islam in South India dates as far back as the eighth century, when a band of refugees, to whom the Mappillas trace their descent, came from 'Iraq and settled in the country.[28] The trade in spices, ivory, gems, etc., between India and Europe, which for many hundred years was conducted by the Arabs and Persians, caused a continual stream of Muhammadan influence to flow in upon the west coast of Southern India. From this constant influx of foreigners there resulted a mixed population, half Hindu and half Arab or Persian, in the trading centres along the coast. Very friendly relations appear to have existed be­tween these Muslim traders and the Hindu rulers, who extended to them their protection and patronage in con­sideration of the increased commercial activity and con­sequent prosperity of the country, that resulted from their presence in it,[29] and no obstacles were placed in the way of proselytising, the native converts receiving the same con­sideration and respect as the foreign merchants, even though before their conversion they had belonged to the lowest grades of society.[30]

The traditionary account of the introduction of Islam into Malabar, as given by a Muhammadan historian of the sixteenth century, represents the first missionaries to have been a party of pilgrims on their way to visit the foot-print of Adam in Ceylon; on their arrival at Cranganore the Raja sent for them and the leader of the party, Shaykh Sharaf b. Mālik, who was accompanied by his brother, Mālik b. Dīnār, and his nephew, Mālik b. Ḥabīb, took the oppor­tunity of expounding to him the faith of Islam and the mission of Muḥammad, " and God caused the truth of the Prophet's teaching to enter into the king's heart and he believed therein; and his heart became filled with love for the Prophet and he bade the Shaykh and companions come back to him again on their return from their pilgrimage to Adam's foot-print."[31] On the return of the pilgrims from Ceylon, the king secretly departed with them in a ship bound for the coast of Arabia, leaving his kingdom in the hand of viceroys. Here he remained for some time, and was just about to return to his own country, with the intention of erecting mosques there and spreading the faith of Islam, when he fell sick and died. On his death-bed he solemnly enjoined on his companions not to abandon their proposed missionary journey to Malabar, and to assist them in their labours, he gave them letters of recommendation to his viceroys, at the same time bidding them conceal the fact of his death. Armed with these letters, Sharaf b. Mālik and his companions sailed for Cranganore, where the king's letter secured for them a kindly welcome and a grant of land, on which they built a mosque. Malik b. Dīnār decided to settle there, but Mālik b. Ḥabīb set out on a missionary tour with the object of building mosques throughout Malabar. " So Mālik b. Ḥabīb set out for Quilon with his worldly goods and his wife and some of his children, and he built a mosque there; then leaving his wife there, he went on to Hīlī Mārāwī,[32] where he built a mosque "; and so the narrative continues, giving a list of seven other places at which the missionary erected mosques, finally returning to Cranganore. Later on, he visited all these places again to pray in the mosque at each of them, and came back "praising and giving thanks to God for the manifestation of the faith of Islam in a land filled with unbelievers."[33]

In spite of the circumstantial character of this narrative, there is no evidence of its historicity. Popular belief puts the date of the events recorded as far back as the lifetime of the Prophet; with a mild scepticism Zayn al-Dīn thought that they could not have been earlier than the third century of the Hijrah;[34] but there is no more authority for the one date than for the other, or for the common Mappilla tradition of the existence of the tomb of a Hindu king at Zafār, on the coast of Arabia, bearing the inscription, " 'Abd al-Raḥmān al-Sāmirī, arrived a.h. 212, died a.h. 216 ";[35] and the mosque at Madāyi, said to have been founded by Malik b. Dīnār, bears an inscription commemorating its erection in A.D.1124.[36]

But the legend certainly bears witness to the peaceful character of the proselytising influences that were at work on the Malabar coast for centuries. The agents in this work were chiefly Arab merchants, but Ibn Baṭūṭah makes mention of several professed theologians from Arabia and elsewhere, whom he met in various towns on the Malabar coast.[37] The Zamorin of Calicut, who was one of the chief patrons of Arab trade, is said to have encouraged conversion to Islam, in order to man the Arab ships on which he depended for his aggrandisement, and to have ordered that in every family of fishermen in his dominion one or more of the male members should be brought up as Muhammadans.[38] At the beginning of the sixteenth century the Mappillas were esti­mated to have formed one-fifth of the population of Malabar, spoke the same language as the Hindus, and were only distinguished from them by their long beards and peculiar head-dress. But for the arrival of the Portuguese, the whole of this coast would have become Muhammadan, because of the frequent conversions that took place and the powerful influence exercised by the Muslim merchants from other parts of India, such as Gujarāt and the Deccan, and from Arabia and Persia.[39]

But there would appear to be no record of the individuals who took part in the propaganda, except in the case of the historian 'Abd al-Razzaq, who has himself left an account of his unsuccessful mission to the court of the Zamorin of Calicut. He was sent on this mission in the year 1441 by the Timurid Shah Rukh Bahadur, in response to an appeal made by an ambassador who had been sent by the Zamorin of Calicut to this monarch. The ambassador was himself a Musalman and represented to the Sultan how excellent and meritorious an action it would be to send a special envoy to the Zamorin, " to invite him to accept Islam in accordance with the injunction ' Summon thou to the ways of thy Lord with wisdom and with kindly warning,'[40] and open the bolt of darkness and error that locked his benighted heart, and let the splendour of the light of the faith and the bright­ness of the sun of knowledge shine into the window of his soul." 'Abd al-Razzāq was chosen for this task and after an adventurous journey reached Calicut, but appears to have met with a cold reception, and after remaining there for about six months abandoned his original purposes and made his way back to Khurāsān, which he reached after an absence of three years.[41]

Another community of Musalmans in Southern India, the Ravuttans,[42] ascribe their conversion to the preaching of. missionaries whose tombs are held in veneration by them to the present day. The most famous of these was Sayyid Nathar Shah[43] (a.d. 969-1039) who after many wanderings in Arabia, Persia and Northern India, settled down .in Trichinopoly, where he spent the remaining years of his life in prayer and works of charity, and converted a large number of Hindus to the faith of Islam; his tomb is much resorted to as a place of pilgrimage and the Muhammadans re-named Trichinopoly Natharnagar, after the name of their saint.[44] Sayyid Ibrāhīm Shahīd (said to have been born about the middle of the twelfth century), Whose tomb is at Ervadi, was a militant hero who led an expedition into the Pandyan kingdom, occupied the country for about twelve years, but was at length slain; his son's life was, however, spared in consideration of the beneficent rule of his father, and a grant of land given to him, which his descendants enjoy to the present day. The latest of these saints, Shāh al-Ḥamīd"(1532-1600), was born at Manikpur in Northern India, and spent most of his life in visiting the holy shrines of Islam and in missionary tours chiefly throughout Southern India; he finally settled in Nagore, where the descendants of his adopted son are still in charge of his tomb.[45]

Another group of Muhammadans in Southern India, the Dudekulas, who live by cotton cleaning (as their name denotes) and by weaving coarse fabrics, attribute their conversion to Bābā Fakhr al-Dīn, whose tomb they revere at Penukonda. Legend says that he was originally a king of Sīstān, who abdicated his throne in favour of his brother and became a religious mendicant. After making the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, he was bidden by the Prophet in a dream to go to India; here he met Nathar Shah, of Trichinopoly, and became his disciple and was sent by him in company with 200 religious mendicants on a proselytising mission. The legend goes on to say that they finally settled at Penukonda in the vicinity of a Hindu temple, where their presence was unwelcome to the Raja of the place, but instead of appealing to force he applied several tests to discover whether the Muhammadan saint or his own priest was the better qualified by sanctity to possess the temple. As a final test, he had them both tied up in sacks filled with lime and thrown into tanks. The Hindu priest never re-appeared, but Bābā Fakhr al-Dīn asserted the superiority of his faith by being miraculously transported to a hill outside the town. The Raja hereupon became a Musalman, and his example was followed by a large number of the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, and the temple was turned into a mosque.[46]

The history of Islam in Southern India by no means always continued to be of so peaceful a character, but it does not appear that the forcible conversions of the Hindus and others to Islam which were perpetrated when the Muhammadan power became paramount under Ḥaydar 'Alī (1767-1782) and Tīpū Sulṭān (1782-1799), can be paralleled in the earlier history of this part of India. However this may be, there is no reason to doubt that constant conversions by peaceful methods were made to Islam from among the lower castes,[47] as is the case at the present day when accessions to Islam from time to time occur from among the Tiyans, who are said to form one of the most progressive communities in India, the Mukkuvans or fisherman caste, as well as from the Cherumans or agricul­tural labourers, and other serf castes, to whom Islam brings deliverance from the disabilities attaching to the outcasts of the Hindu social system; occasionally, also, converts are drawn from among the Nayars and the native Christians. In Ponnani, the residence of the spiritual head of the majority of the Muhammadans of Malabar, there is an association entitled Minnat al-Islam Sabha, where converts are instructed in the tenets of their new faith and material assistance rendered to those under instruction; the average number of converts received in this institution in the course of the first three years of the twentieth century, was 750.[48] So numerous have these conversions from Hinduism been, that the tendency of the Muhammadans of the west as well as the east coast of Southern India has been to reversion to the Hindu or aboriginal type, and, except in the case of some of the nobler families, they now in great part present all the characteristics of an aboriginal people, with very little of the original foreign blood in them.[49] In the western coast dis­tricts the tyranny of caste intolerance is peculiarly oppres­sive ; to give but one instance, in Travancore certain of the lower castes may not come nearer than seventy-four paces to a Brahman, and have to make a grunting noise as they pass along the road, in order to give warning of their ap­proach. Similar instances might be abundantly multiplied. What wonder, then, that the Musalman population is fast increasing through conversion from these lower castes, who thereby free themselves from such degrading oppression, and raise themselves and their descendants in the social scale?

In fact the Mappilas on the west coast are said to be increasing so considerably through accessions from the lower classes of Hindus, as to render it possible that in a few years the whole of the lower races of the west coast may become Muhammadans.[50]

It was most probably from Malabar that Islam crossed over to the Laccadive and Maldive Islands, the population of which is now entirely Muslim. The inhabitants of these islands owed their conversion to the Arab and Persian merchants, who established themselves in the country, intermarrying with the natives, and thus smoothing the way for the work of active proselytism. The date of the con­version of the first Muhammadan Sultan of the Maldive Islands, Aḥmad Shanūrāzah,[51] has been conjectured to have occurred about a.d. 1200, but it is very possible that the Muhammadan merchants had introduced their religion into the island as much as three centuries before, and the process of conversion must undoubtedly have been a gradual one.[52] No details, however, have come down to us.

At Mālē, the seat of government, is found the tomb of Shaykh Yūsuf Shams al-Din, a native of Tabrīz, in Persia, who is said to have been a successful missionary of Islam in these islands. His tomb is still held in great veneration, and always kept in good repair, and in the same part of the island are buried some of his countrymen who came in search of him, and remained in the Maldives until their death.[53]

The introduction of Islam into the neighbouring Laccadive Islands is attributed to an Arab preacher, known to the islanders by the name of Mumba Mulyaka; his tomb is still shown at Androth and as the present qāḍī of that place claims to be twenty-sixth in descent from him, he probably reached these islands some time in the twelfth century.[54]

The Deccan also was the scene of the successful labours of many Muslim missionaries. It has already been pointed out that from very early times Arab traders had visited the towns on the west coast; in the tenth century we are told that the Arabs were settled in large numbers in the towns of the Konkan, having intermarried with the women of the country and living under their own laws and religion.[55] Under the Muhammadan dynasties of the Bahmanid (1347-1490) and Bījāpūr (1489-1686) kings, a fresh impulse was given to Arab immigration, and with the trader and the soldier of fortune came the missionaries seeking to make spiritual conquests in the cause of Islam, and win over the unbelieving people of the country by their preaching and example, for of forcible conversions we have no record under the early Deccan dynasties, whose rule was characterised by a striking toleration.[56]

One of these Arab preachers, Pīr Mahābīr Khamdāyat, came as a missionary to the Deccan as early as a.d. 1304, and among the cultivating classes of Bījāpūr are to be found descendants of the Jains who were converted by him.[57] About the close of the same century a celebrated saint of Gulbarga, Sayyid Muḥammad Gīsūdarāz,[58] converted a number of Hindus of the Poona district, and twenty years later his labours were crowned with a like success in Belgaum.[59] At Dahanu still reside the descendants of a relative of one of the greatest saints of Islam, Sayyid 'Abd al-Qādir Jīlānī of Baghdād; he came to Western India about the fifteenth century, and after making many converts in the Konkan, died and was buried at Dahanu.[60] In the district of Dharwar, there are large numbers of weavers whose ancestors were converted by Hāshim Pīr Gujarātī, the religious teacher of the Bījāpūr king, Ibrāhīm 'Ādil Shāh II, about the close of the sixteenth century. These men still regard the saint with special reverence and pay great respect to his descen­dants.[61] The descendants of another saint, Shāh Muḥam­mad Ṣādiq Sarmast Ḥusaynī, are still found in Nasik; he is said to have been the most successful of Muhammadan missionaries; having come from Medina in 1568, he travelled over the greater part of Western India and finally settled at Nasik—in which district another very successful Muslim missionary, Khwājah Khunmir Ḥusaynī, had begun to labour about fifty years before.[62] Two other Arab mis­sionaries may be mentioned, the scene of whose proselytising efforts was laid in the district of Belgaum, namely Sayyid Muḥammad b. Sayyid 'Alī and Sayyid 'Umar 'Aydrūs Basheban.[63]

Another missionary movement may be said roughly to centre round the city of Multan.[64] This in the early days of the Arab conquest was one of the outposts of Islam, when Muḥammad b. Qāsim had established Muhammadan supremacy over Sind (a.d. 714). During the three centuries of Arab rule there were naturally many accessions to the faith of the conquerors. Several Sindian princes responded to the invitation of the Caliph 'Umar b. 'Abd al-'Azīz to embrace Islam.[65] The people of Sāwandari—who submitted to Muḥammad b. Qāsim and had peace granted to them on the condition that they would entertain the Musalmans and furnish guides—are spoken of by al-Balādhurī (writing about a hundred years later) as professing Islam in his time; and the despatches of the conqueror frequently refer to the conversion of .the unbelievers.

That these conversions were in the main voluntary, may be judged from the toleration that the Arabs, after the first violence of their onslaught, showed towards their idolatrous subjects. The people of Brahmanābād, for example, whose city had been taken by storm, were allowed to repair their temple, which was a means of livelihood to the Brahmans, and nobody was to be forbidden or prevented from following his own religion,[66] and generally, where submission was made, quarter was readily given, and the people were permitted the exercise of their own creeds and laws.

During the troubles that befell the caliphate in the latter half of the ninth century, Sind, neglected by the central government, came to be divided among several petty princes, the most powerful of whom were the Amīrs of Multan and Mansūra. Such disunion naturally weakened the political power of the Musalmans, which had in fact begun to decline earlier in the century. For in the reign of al-Mu'taṣim (a.d. 833-842), the Indians of Sindān[67] declared themselves independent, but they spared the mosque, in which the Musalmans were allowed to perform their devotions undisturbed.[68] The Muhammadans of Multan succeeded in maintaining their political independence, and kept themselves from being conquered by the neighbouring Hindu princes, by threatening, if attacked, to destroy an idol which was held in great veneration by the Hindus and was visited by pilgrims from the most distant parts.[69] But in the hour of its political decay, Islam was still achieving missionary successes. Al-Balādhurī[70] tells the following story of the conversion of a king of 'Usayfān, a country between Kashmir and Multan and Kabul. The people of this country worshipped an idol for which they had built a temple. The son of the king fell sick, and he desired the priests of the temple to pray to the idol for the recovery of his son. They retired for a short time, and then returned saying: "We have prayed and our supplications have been accepted." But no long time passed before the youth died. Then the king attacked the temple, destroyed and broke in pieces the idol, and slew the priests. He afterwards invited a party of Muhammadan traders, who made known to him the unity of God; whereupon he believed in the unity and became a Muslim. A similar missionary influence was doubtless exercised by the numerous communities of Muslim merchants who carried their religion with them into the infidel cities of Hindustan. Arab geographers of the tenth and twelfth centuries mention the names of many such cities, both on the coast and inland, where the Musalmans built their mosques, and were safe under the protection of the native princes, who even granted them the privilege of living under their own laws.[71] The Arab merchants at this time formed the medium of commercial communication between Sind and the neighbouring countries of India and the outside world. They brought the produce of China and Ceylon to the sea-ports of Sind and from there conveyed them by way of Multan to Turkistan and Khurāsān.[72]

It would be strange if these traders, scattered about in the cities of the unbelievers, failed to exhibit the same proselytising zeal as we find in the Muhammadan trader elsewhere. To the influence of such trading communities was most probably due the conversion of the Sammas, who ruled over Sind from a.d. 1351 to 1521. While the reign of Nanda b. Bābiniyyah of this dynasty is specially mentioned as one of such " peace and security, that never was this prince called upon to ride forth to battle, and never did a foe take the field against him,"[73] it is at the same time described as being " remarkable for its justice and an increase of Islam." This increase could thus only have been brought about by peaceful missionary methods. One of the most famous of these missionaries was the celebrated saint, Sayyid Yūsuf al-Dīn, a descendant of 'Abd al-Qādir Jīlānī, who was bidden in a dream to leave Baghdād for India and convert its inhabitants to Islam. He came to Sind in 1422 and after labouring there for ten years, he succeeded in winning over to Islam 700 families of the Lohāna caste, who followed the example of two of their number, by name Sundarjī and Hansrāj; these men em­braced Islam, after seeing some miracles performed by the saint, and on their conversion received the names of Adamjī and Taj Muhammad respectively. Under the leadership of the grandson of the former, these people afterwards migrated to Cutch, where their numbers were increased by converts from among the Cutch Lohānas.[74]

          Sind was also the scene of the labours of Pīr Ṣadr al-Dīn, an Ismā'īlī missionary, who was head of the Khojah sect about the year 1430. In accordance with the principles of accommodation practised by this sect, he took a Hindu name and made certain concessions to the religious beliefs of the Hindus whose conversion he sought to achieve, and introduced among them a book entitled Dasavatār in which 'Alī was made out to be the tenth Avatār or incarnation of Viṣṇu; this book has been from the beginning the accepted scripture of the Khojah sect, and it is always read by the bedside of the dying and periodically at many festivals; it assumes the nine incar­nations of Viṣṇu to be true as far as they go, but to fall short of the perfect truth, and supplements this imperfect Vaiṣṇav system by the cardinal doctrine of the Ismā'īlians, the incar­nation and coming manifestation of 'Alī. Further, he made out Brahmā to be Muḥammad, Viṣṇu to be ' Alī and Adam Siva. The first of Pīr Ṣadr al-Dīn's converts were won in the villages and towns of Upper Sind: he preached also in Cutch and from these parts the doctrines of this sect spread southwards through Gujarāt to Bombay; and at the present day Khojah communities are to be found in almost all the large trading towns of Western India and on the seaboard of the Indian Ocean,[75]

          Pīr Ṣadr al-Dīn was not however the first of the Ismā'īlian missionaries who came into India. He was preceded by 'Abd Allāh, a missionary sent from Yaman about 1067; he is said to have been a man of great learning, and is credited with the performance of many miracles, whereby he convinced a large number of Hindus of the truth of his religion.[76] The second Ismā'īlī missionary, Nūr al-Dīn, generally known by the Hindu name he adopted, Nūr Satāgar, was sent into India from Alamūt, the stronghold of the Grand Master of the Ismā'īlīs, and reached Gujarāt in the reign of the Hindu king, Siddhā Rāj (a.d. 1094-1143).[77] He adopted a Hindu name but told the Muhammadans that his real name was Sayyid Sa'ādat; he is said to have converted the Kanbīs, Khārwās and Korīs, low castes of Gujarāt.[78]

          As Nūr Satāgar is revered .as the first missionary of the Khojahs, so is 'Abd Allah believed by some to have been the founder of the sect of the Bohras, a large and important community of Shī'ahs, mainly of Hindu origin, who are found in considerable numbers in the chief commercial centres of the Bombay Presidency. But others ascribe the honour of being the first Bohra missionary to Mullā 'Alī, of whose proselytising methods the following account is given by a Shi'ah historian: "As the people of Gujarāt in those days were infidels and accepted as their religious leader an old man whose teaching they blindly followed Mullā 'Alī saw no alternative but to go to the old man and ask to become his disciple, intending to set before him such convincing arguments that he would become a Musalman, and afterwards to attempt the con­version of others. He accordingly spent some years in the service of the old man, and having learned the language of the people of the country, read their books and acquired a knowledge of their sciences. Step by step he unfolded to the enlightened mind of the old man the truth of the faith of Islam and persuaded him to become a Musalman. After his conversion, some of his disciples followed the old man's example. Finally, the chief minister of the king of that country became aware of the old man's conversion to Islam, and going to see him submitted to his spiritual guid­ance and likewise became a Musalman. For a long time, the old man, the minister and the rest of the converts to Islam, kept the fact of their conversion concealed and through fear of the king always took care to prevent it coming to his knowledge; but at length the king received a report of the minister's having adopted Islam and began to make inquiries. One day, without giving previous notice, he went to the minister's house and found him bowing his head in prayer and was vexed with him. The minister recognised the purpose of the king's visit, and realised that his displeasure had been excited by suspicions aroused by his prayer, with its bowing and prostrations; but the guidance of God and divine grace befitting the occasion, he said that he was making these movements because he was watching a serpent in the corner of the room. When the king turned towards the corner of the room, by divine providence he saw a snake there, and accepted the minister's excuse and his mind was cleared of all suspicions. In the end the king also secretly became a Musalman, but for reasons of state con­cealed his change of mind; when however, the hour of his death drew near, he gave orders that his body was not to be burnt, as is the custom of the infidels. Subsequently to his decease, when Sulṭān Ẓafar, one of the trusty nobles of Sulṭān Fīrūz Shāh, king of Dehlī, conquered Gujarat, some of the Sunnī nobles who accompanied him used arguments to make the people join the Sunnī sect of the Muslim faith; so some of the Bohras are Sunnīs, but the greater part remain true to their original faith."[79]

Several small groups of Musalmans in Cutch and Gujarāt trace their conversion to Imām Shāh of Pīrāna,[80] who was actively engaged in missionary work during the latter half of the fifteenth century. He is said to have converted a large body of Hindu cultivators, by bringing about a fall of rain after two seasons of scarcity. On another occasion meeting a band of Hindu pilgrims passing through Pīrāna on their way to Benares, he offered to take them there; they agreed and in a moment were in the holy city, where they bathed in the Ganges and paid their vows; they then awoke to find themselves still in Pīrāna and adopted the faith of the saint who could perform such a miracle. He died in 1512 and his tomb in Pīrāna is still an object of pilgrimage for Hindus as well as for Muhammadans.[81]

Many of the Cutch Musalmans that are of Hindu descent reverence as their spiritual leader Dāwal Shāh Pīr, whose real name was Malik 'Abd al-Latif,[82] the son of one of the nobles of Maḥmūd Bīgarah (1459-1511), the famous monarch of the Muhammadan dynasty of Gujarat, to whose reign popular tradition assigns the date of the conversion of many Hindus.[83]

It is in Bengal, however, that the Muhammadan mission­aries in India have achieved their greatest success, as far as numbers are concerned. A Muhammadan kingdom was first founded here at the end of the twelfth century by Muḥam­mad Bakhtiyār Khiljī, who conquered Bihar and Bengal and made Gaur the capital of the latter province. The long continuance of the Muhammadan rule would naturally assist the spread of Islam, and though the Hindu rule was restored for ten years under the tolerant Rājā Kāns, whose rule is said to have been popular with his Muhammadan subjects,[84] his son, Jatmall, renounced the Hindu religion and became a Musalman. After his father's death in 1414 he called together all the officers of the state and announced his inten­tion of embracing Islam, and proclaimed that if the chiefs would not permit him to ascend the throne, he was ready to give it up to his brother; whereupon they declared that they would accept him as their king, whatever religion he might adopt. Accordingly, several learned men of the Muslim faith were summoned to witness the Raja renounce the Hindu religion and publicly profess his acceptance of Islam: he took the name of Jalal al-Dīn Muḥammad Shāh, and according to tradition numerous conversions were made during his reign.[85] Many of these were however due to force, for his reign is signalised as being the only one in which any wholesale persecution of the subject Hindus is recorded, during the five centuries and a half of Muhammadan rule in Eastern Bengal.[86]

Conversions, however, often took place at other times under pressure from the Muhammadan government. The Rajas of Kharagpur were originally Hindus, and became Muhammadans because, having been defeated by one of Akbar's generals, they were only allowed to retain the family estates on the condition that they embraced Islam. The Hindu ancestor of the family of Asad 'Ali Khān, in Chittagong, was deprived of his caste by being forced to smell beef and had perforce to become a Muhammadan, and several other instances of the same kind might be quoted.[87]

Murshid Qulī Khān (son of a converted Brahman), who was made governor of Bengal by the Emperor Aurangzeb at the beginning of the eighteenth century, enforced a law that any official or landord, who failed to pay the revenue, that was due or was unable to make good the loss, should with his wife and children be compelled to become Muhammadans. Further, it was the common law that any Hindu who forfeited his caste by a breach of regulations could only be reinstated by the Muhammadan government; if the government refused to interfere, the outcast had no means of regaining his position in the social system of the Hindus, and would probably find no resource but to become a Musalman.[88]

The Afghān adventurers who settled in this province also appear to have been active in the work of proselytising, for besides the children that they had by Hindu women, they used to purchase a number of boys in times of scarcity, and educate them in the tenets of Islam.[89] But it is not in the ancient centres of the Muhammadan government that the Musalmans of Bengal are found in large numbers, but in the country districts, in districts where there are no traces of settlers from the West, and in places where low-caste Hindus and outcasts most abound.[90] The similarity of man­ners between these low-caste Hindus and the followers of the Prophet, and the caste distinctions which they still retain, as well as their physical likeness, all bear the same testimony and identify the Bengal Musalmans with the aboriginal tribes of the country. Here Islam met with no consolidated religious system to bar its progress, as in the north-west of India, where the Muhammadan invaders found Brahmanism full of fresh life and vigour after its triumphant struggle with Buddhism; where, in spite of persecutions, its influence was an inspiring force in the opposition offered by the Hindus, and retained its hold on them in the hour of their deepest distress and degradation. But in Bengal the Muslim missionaries were welcomed with open arms by the aborigines and the low castes on the very outskirts of Hinduism, despised and condemned by their proud Aryan rulers. "To these poor people, fishermen, hunters, pirates, and low-caste tillers of the soil, Islam came as a revelation from on high. It was the creed of the ruling race, its missionaries were men of zeal who brought the Gospel of the unity of God and the equality of men in its sight to a de­spised and neglected population. The initiatory rite rendered relapse impossible, and made the proselyte and his posterity true believers for ever. In this way Islam settled down on the richest alluvial province of India, the province which was capable of supporting the most rapid and densest increase of population. Compulsory conversions are occa­sionally recorded. But it was not to force that Islam owed its permanent success in Lower Bengal. It appealed to the people, and it derived the great mass of its converts from the poor. It brought in a higher conception of God, and a nobler idea of the brotherhood of man. It offered to the teeming low castes of Bengal, who had sat for ages abject on the outermost pale of the Hindu community, a free entrance into a new social organisation."[91]

The existence in Bengal of definite missionary efforts is said to be attested by certain legends of the zeal of private individuals on behalf of their religion, and the graves of some of these missionaries are still honoured, and are annually visited by hundreds of pilgrims.[92] One of the earliest of these was Shaykh Jalāl al-Dīn Tabrīzī, who died in a.d. 1244. He was a pupil of the great saint, Shihāb al-Dīn Suhrawardī. In the course of his mis­sionary journeys he visited Bengal, where a shrine to which is attached a rich endowment was erected in his honour, the real site of his tomb being unknown. Many miracles are ascribed to him; among others, that he converted a Hindu milkman to Islam by a single look.[93]

In the nineteenth century there was a remarkable revival of the Muhammadan religion in Bengal, and several sects that owe their origin to the influence of the Wahhābī reformation, have sent their missionaries through the province purging out the remnants of Hindu superstitions, awakening religious zeal and spreading the faith among unbelievers.[94]

Some account still remains to be given of Muslim mission­aries who have laboured in parts of India other than those mentioned above. One of the earliest of these is Shaykh Ismā'īl, one of the most famous of the Sayyids of Bukhārā, distinguished alike for his secular and religious learning; he is said to have been the first Muslim missionary who preached the faith of Islam in the city of Lahore, whither he came in the year a.d. 1005. Crowds flocked to listen to his sermons, and the number of his converts swelled rapidly day by day, and it is said that no unbeliever ever came into personal contact with him without being converted to the faith of Islam.[95]

The conversion of the inhabitants of the western plains of the Panjāb is said to have been effected through the preach­ing of Bahā al-Ḥaqq of Multan[96] and Bābā Farīd al-Dīn of Pakpattan, who flourished about the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth centuries.[97] A biographer of the latter saint gives a list of sixteen tribes who were won over to Islam through his preaching, but unfortunately provides us with no details of this work of conversion.[98]

One of the most famous of the Muslim saints of India and a pioneer of Islam in Rajputana was Khwājah Mu'īn al-Dīn Chishtī, who died in Ajmīr in A.D. 1234. He was a native of Sajistān to the east of Persia, and is said to have received his call to preach Islam to the unbelievers in India while on a pilgrimage to Medina. Here the Prophet appeared to him in a dream and thus addressed him: " The Almighty has entrusted the country of India to thee. Go thither and settle in Ajmīr. By God's help, the faith of Islam shall, through thy piety and that of thy followers, be spread in that land." He obeyed the call and made his way to Ajmir which was then under Hindu rule and idolatry prevailed throughout the land. Among the first of his converts here was a Yogī, who was the spiritual preceptor of the Raja himself: gradually he gathered around him a large body of disciples whom his teachings had won from the ranks of infidelity, and his fame as a religious leader became very widespread and attracted to Ajmīr great numbers of Hindus whom he persuaded to embrace Islam.[99] On his way to Ajmīr he is said to have converted as many as 700 persons in the city of Dehli.

Of immense importance in the history of Islam in India was the arrival in that country of Sayyid Jalāl al-Dīn, who is said to have been born at Bukhārā in 1199. He settled in Uch, now in the Bahawalpur territory, in 1244, and converted numbers of persons in the neighbourhood to Islam; he died in 1291, and his descendants, many of whom are also revered as saints, have remained as guardians of his shrine up to the present day and form the centre of a widespread religious influence. His grandson, Sayyid Aḥmad Kabīr, known as Makhdūm-i-Jahāniyān, is credited with having effected the conversion of several tribes in the Punjab.[100] About a mile to the east of Uch is situated the shrine of Ḥasan Kabīr al-Dīn, son of Sayyid Ṣadr al-Dīn, who was a contemporary of Jalāl-al-Dīn; both father and son are said to have made many converts, and such was the influence attributed to Ḥasan Kabīr al-Dīn that it was said as soon as his glance fell upon any Hindu, the latter would accept Islam.[101]

          Rather later in the same century, a native of Persian 'Irāq, by name Abū 'Alī Qalandar, came into India and took up his residence at Panipat, where he died at the ripe age of 100, in A.D. 1324. The Muslim Rajputs of this city, numbering about 300 males, are descended from a certain Amir Singh who was converted by this saint. His tomb is still held in honour and is visited by many pilgrims.

Another such was Shaykh Jalāl al-Dīn, a Persian who came into India about the latter half of the fourteenth century and settled down at Silhat, in Lower Assam, in order to convert the people of these parts to Islam. He achieved a great reputation as a holy man, and his proselyt­ising labours were crowned with eminent success.[102]

          In more recent years there have been abundant witnesses for Islam seeking to spread this faith in India—and with very considerable success; the second half of the nineteenth century especially witnessed a great revival of missionary activity, the number of annual conversions being variously estimated at ten, fifty, one hundred and six hundred thousand.[103] But it is difficult to obtain accurate information on account of the peculiarly individualistic character of Muslim missionary work and the absence of any central organisation or of anything in the way of missionary reports, and the success that attends the labours of Muslim preachers is sometimes much exaggerated, e. g. in the Panjab a certain Hājī Muḥammad is said to have converted as many as 200,000 Hindus,[104] and a mawlavī in Bangalore boasted that in five years he had made as many as 1000 converts in this city and its suburbs. But that there are Muslim missionaries engaged in active and successful propagandist labours is undoubted, and the following examples are typical of the period referred to.

Mawlavī Baqā Ḥusayn Khān, an itinerant preacher, in the course of several years converted 228 persons, residents of Bombay, Cawnpore, Ajmir, and other cities. Mawlavī Ḥasan 'Alī converted twenty-five persons, twelve in Poona, the rest in Ḥaydarabad and other parts of India.[105] In the district of Khandesh, in the Bombay Presidency, the preach­ing of the Qāḍī of Nasirabad, Sayyid Safdar 'Alī, won over to Islam a large body of artisans, who follow the trade of armourers or blacksmiths,[106] A number of persons of the same trade, who form a small community of about 200 souls in the district of Nasik, were converted in a curious way about 1870. The Presbyterian missionaries of Nasik had for a long time been trying to convert them from Hinduism, and they were in a state of hesitation as to whether or not to embrace Christianity when a Muhammadan faqīr from Bombay, who was well acquainted with their habits of thought, expounded to them the doctrines of Islam and succeeded in winning them over to that faith.[107]

In Patiala, Mawlavī 'Ubayd Allāh, a converted Brahman of great learning, proved himself to be a zealous preacher of Islam, and in spite of the obstacles that were at first thrown in his way by his relatives, achieved so great a success that his converts almost filled an entire ward of the city. He wrote controversial works, which have passed through several editions, directed against the Christian and Hindu religions. In one of these books he thus speaks of his own conversion: " I, Muḥammad 'Ubayd Allāh, the son of Munshi Koṭā Mal, resident of Payal, in the Patiala State, declare that this poor man in his childhood and during the lifetime of his father was held in the bondage of idol-worship, but the mercy of God caught me by the hand and drew me towards Islam, i. e. I came to know the excellence of Islam and the deficiencies of Hinduism, and I accepted Islam heart and soul and counted myself one of the servants of the Prophet of God (peace be upon him !). At that time intelli­gence, which is the gift of God, suggested to me that it was mere folly and laziness to blindly follow the customs of one's forefathers and be misled by them and not make researches into matters of religion and faith, whereon depend our eternal bliss or misery. With these thoughts I began to study the current faiths and investigated each of them impartially. I thoroughly explored the Hindu religion and conversed with learned Pandits, gained a thorough knowledge of the Christian faith, read the books of Islam and conversed with learned men. In all of them I found errors and fallacies, with the exception of Islam, the excellence of which became clearly manifest to me; its leader, Muḥammad the Prophet, possesses such moral excellences that no tongue can describe them, and he alone who knows the beliefs and the liturgy, and the moral teachings and practice of this faith, can fully realise them. Praise be to God! So excellent is this religion that everything in it leads the soul to God. In short, by the grace of God, the distinction between truth and falsehood became as clear to me as night and day, darkness and light. But although my heart had long been enlightened by the brightness of Islam and my mouth fragrant with the profession of faith, yet my evil passions and Satan had bound me with the fetters of the luxury and ease of this fleeting world, and I was in evil case because of the outward observances of idolatry. At length, the grace of God thus admonished me : ' How long wilt thou keep this priceless pearl hidden within the shell and this refreshing perfume shut up in the casket ? thou shouldest wear this pearl about thy neck and profit by this perfume; Moreover the learned have declared that to conceal one's faith in Islam and retain the dress and habits of infidels brings a man to Hell. So (God be praised !) on the 'Id al-Fiṭr 1264 the sun of my conversion emerged from its screen of clouds, and I performed my devotions in public with my Muslim brethren."[108]

Many Muhammadan preachers have adopted the methods of Christian missionaries, such as street preaching, tract distribution, and other agencies. In many of the large cities of India, Muslim preachers may be found daily expounding the teachings of Islam in some principal thoroughfare. In Bangalore this practice is very general, and one of these preachers, who was the imam of the mosque about the year 1890, was so popular that he was even some­times invited to preach by Hindus: he preached in the market-place, and in the course of seven or eight years gained forty-two converts. In Bombay a Muhammadan missionary preaches almost daily near the chief market of the city, and in Calcutta there are several preaching-stations that are kept constantly supplied. Among the converts are occasionally to be found some Europeans, mostly persons in indigent circumstances; the mass, however, are Hindus.[109] Some of the numerous Anjumans that have of recent years sprung up in the chief centres of Musalman life in India, include among their objects the sending of missionaries to preach in the bazars; such are the Anjuman Ḥimāyat-i-Islām of Lahore, and the Anjuman Ḥāmī Islām of Ajmīr. These particular Anjumans appoint paid agents, but much of the work of preaching in the bazaars is performed by persons who are engaged in some trade or business during the working hours of the day and devote their leisure time in the evenings to this pious work.

Much of the missionary zeal of the Indian Musalmans is directed towards counteracting the anti-Islamic tendencies of the instruction given by Christian missionaries and the preachers of the Ārya Samāj, and the efforts made are thus defensive rather than directly proselytising.. Some preachers too turn their attention rather to the strengthening of the foundation already laid, and en­deavour to rid their ignorant co-religionists of their Hindu superstitions, and instil in them a purer form of faith, such efforts being in many cases the continuation of earlier mis­sionary activity. The work of conversion has indeed been often very imperfect. Of many, nominally Muslims, it may be said that they are half Hindus : they observe caste rules, they join in Hindu festivals and practise numerous idolatrous ceremonies. In certain districts also, e. g. in Mewāt and Gurgaon, large numbers of Muhammadans may be found who know nothing of their religion but its name; they have no mosques, nor do they observe the hours of prayer. This is especially the case among the Muhammadans of the villages or in parts of the country where they are isolated from the mass of believers; but in the towns the presence of learned religious men tends, in great measure, to counteract the influence of former superstitions, and makes for a purer and more intelligent form of religious life. In recent years, however, there has been, speaking generally, a movement noticeable among the Indian Muslims towards a religious life more strictly in accordance with the laws of Islam. The influence of the Christian mission schools has also been very great in stimulating among some Muhamma­dans of the younger generation a study of their own religion and in bringing about a consequent awakening of religious zeal. Indeed, the spread of education generally, has led to a more intelligent grasp of religious principles and to an increase of religious teachers in outlying and hitherto neglected districts. This missionary movement of reform (from whatever cause it may originate), may be observed in very different parts of India. In the eastern districts of the Panjab, for example, after the Mutiny, a great religious revival took place. Preachers travelled far and wide through the country, calling upon believers to abandon their idolatrous practices and expounding the true tenets of the faith. Now, in consequence, most villages, in which Muhammadans own any considerable portion, have a mosque, while the grosser and more open idolatries are being discontinued.[110] In Rajputana also, the Hindu tribes who have been from time to time converted to Islam in the rural districts, are now becoming more orthodox and regular in their religious observances, and are abandoning the ancient customs which hitherto they had observed in common with their idolatrous neighbours. The Merāts, for example, now follow the orthodox Muhammadan form of marriage instead of the Hindu ritual they formerly observed, and have abjured the flesh of the wild boar.[111] A similar revival in Bengal has already been spoken of above.

Such movements and the efforts of individual missionaries are, however, quite inadequate to explain the rapid increase of the Muhammadans of India, and one is naturally led to inquire what are the causes other than the normal increase of population,[112] which add so enormously to their numbers. The answer is to be found in the social conditions of life among Hindus. The insults and contempt heaped upon the lower castes of Hindus by their co-religionists, and the impassable obstacles placed in the way of any member of these castes desiring to better his condition, show up in striking contrast the benefits of a religious system which has no outcasts, and gives free scope for the indulgence of any ambition. In Bengal, for example, the weavers of cotton piece-goods, who are looked upon as vile by their Hindu co-religionists, embrace Islam in large numbers to escape from the low position to which they are otherwise degraded.[113] A very remarkable instance of a similar kind occurs in the history of the north-eastern part of the same province. Here in the year 1550 the aboriginal tribe of the Kocch established a dynasty under their great leader, Haju; in the reign of his grandson, when the higher classes in the state were received into the pale of Hinduism,[114] the mass of the people finding themselves despised as outcasts, became Muhammadans.[115]

The escape that Islam offers to Hindus from the oppression of the higher castes was strikingly illustrated in Tinnevelli at the close of the nineteenth century. A very low caste, the Shanars, had in recent years become prosperous and many of them had built fine houses; they asserted that they had the right to worship in temples, from which they had hitherto been excluded. A riot ensued, in the course of which the Shanars suffered badly at the hands of Hindus of a higher caste, and they took refuge in the pale of Islam. Six hundred Shanars in one village became Muslims in one day, and their example was quickly followed in other places.[116]

Similar instances might be given from other parts of India. A Hindu who has in any way lost caste and been in consequence repudiated by his relations and by the society of which he has been accustomed to move, would naturally be attracted towards a religion that receives all without distinction, and offers to him a grade of society equal in the social scale to that from which he has been banished. Such a change of religion might well be accom­panied with sincere conviction, but men also who might be profoundly indifferent to the number or names of the deities they were called upon to worship, would feel very keenly the social ostracism entailed by their loss of caste, and become Muhammadan without any religious feelings at all. The influence of the study of Muhammadan literature also, and the habitual contact with Muhammadan society, must often make itself insensibly felt. Among the Rajput princes of the nineteenth century in Rajputana and Bundelkhand, such tendencies towards Islamism were to be observed,[117] tendencies which, had the Mughal empire lasted, would probably have led to their ultimate conversion. They not only respected Muhammadan saints, but had Muhammadan tutors for their sons; they also had their food killed in accordance with the regulations laid down by the Muham­madan law, and joined in the Muhammadan festivals dressed as faqīrs, and praying like true believers. On the other hand, it has been conjectured that the present position of affairs, under a government perfectly impartial in matters religious, is much more likely to promote conversions among the Hindus generally than was the case under the rule of the Muhammadan kingdoms, when Hinduism gained union and strength from the constant struggle with an aggressive enemy.[118] Hindus, too, often flock in large numbers to the tombs of Muslim saints on the day appointed to commemorate them, and a childless father, with the feeling that prompts a polytheist to leave no God unaddressed, will present his petition to the God of the Muhammadans, and if children are born to him, apparently in answer to this prayer, the whole family will in such a case (and examples are not infrequent) embrace Islam.[119]

          Love for a Muhammadan woman is occasionally the cause of the conversion of a Hindu, since the marriage of a Muslim woman to an unbeliever is absolutely forbidden by the Muslim law. Hindu children, if adopted by wealthy Musalmans, would be brought up in the religion of their new parents; and a Hindu wife, married to a follower of the Prophet, would be likely to adopt the faith of her husband.[120] As the contrary process can rarely take place, the number of Muhammadans is bound to increase in proportion to that of the Hindus. Hindus, who for some reason or other have been driven out of their caste; the poor who have become the recipients of Muhammadan charity, or women and children who have been protected when their parents have died or deserted them—(such cases would naturally be frequent in times of famine)—form a continuous though small stream of additions from the Hindus.[121] There are often local circumstances favourable to the growth of Islam; for example, it has been pointed out[122] that in the villages of the Terai, in which the number of Hindus and Muhammadans happen to be equally balanced, any increase in the pre­dominance of the Muhammadans is invariably followed by disputes about the killing of cows and other practices offensive to Hindu feeling. The Hindus gradually move away from the village, leaving behind of their creed only the Chamar ploughman in the service of the Muhammadan peasants. These latter eventually adopt the religion of their masters, not from any conviction of its truth, but from the incon­venience their isolation entails.

Some striking instances of conversions from the lower castes of Hindus are also found in the agricultural districts of Oudh. Although the Muhammadans of this province form only .one-tenth of the whole population, still the small groups of Muhammadan cultivators form scattered centres of revolt against the degrading oppression to which their religion hopelessly consigns these lower castes."[123] The advantages Islam holds out to such classes as the Korīs and Chamars, who stand at the lowest level of Hindu society, and the deliverance which conversion to Islam brings them, may be best understood from the following passage descrip­tive of their social condition as Hindus.[124] " The lowest depth of misery and degradation is reached by the Koris and Chamars, the weavers and leather-cutters to the rest. Many of these in the northern districts are actually bond-slaves, having hardly ever the spirit to avail themselves of the remedy offered by our courts, and descend with their children from generation to generation as the value of an old purchase. They hold the plough for the Brahman or Chhattri master, whose pride of caste forbids him to touch it, and live with the pigs, less unclean than themselves, in separate quarters apart from the rest of the village. Always on the verge of starvation, their lean, black, and ill-formed figures, their stupid faces, and their repulsively filthy habits reflect the wretched destiny which condemns them to be lower than the beast among their fellow-men, and yet that they are far from incapable of improvement is proved by the active and useful stable servants drawn from among them, who receive good pay and live well under European masters. A change of religion is the only means of escape open to them, and they have little reason to be faithful to their present creed."

          It is this absence of class prejudices which constitutes the real strength of Islam in India, and enables it to win so many converts from Hinduism.

To complete this survey of Islam in India, some account still remains to be given of the spread of this faith in Kashmīr and thence beyond the borders of India into Tibet. Of all the provinces and states of India (with the exception of Sind) Kashmīr contains the largest number of Muhammadans (namely 70 per cent.) in proportion to the whole population; but unfortunately historical facts that should explain the existence in this state of so many Musalmans, almost entirely of Hindu or Tibetan origin, are very scanty. But all the evidence leads us to attribute it on the whole to a long-continued missionary movement inaugurated and carried out mainly by faqīrs and dervishes, among whom were Isma'ilian preachers sent from Alamut.[125]

It is difficult to say when this Islamising influence first made itself felt in the country. The first Muhammadan king of Kashmīr, Ṣadr al-Dīn,[126] is said to have owed his conversion to a certain Darwesh Bulbul Shāh in the early part of the fourteenth century. This saint was the only religious teacher who could satisfy his craving for religious truth when, dissatisfied with his own Hindu faith, he looked for a more acceptable form of doctrine. Towards the end of the same century (in 1388) the progress of Islam was most materially furthered by the advent of Sayyid 'Alī Hamadānī, a fugitive from his native city of Hamadan in Persia, where he had incurred the wrath of Tīmūr. He was accompanied by 700 Sayyids, who established hermitages all over the country and by their influence appear to have assured the acceptance of the new religion. Their advent appears, however, to have also stirred up considerable fanaticism, as Sultan Sikandar (1393-1417) acquired the name of Butshikan from his destruction of Hindu idols and temples, and his prime minister, a converted Hindu, set on foot a fierce per­secution of the adherents of his old faith, but on his death toleration was again made the rule of the kingdom.[127] Towards the close of the fifteenth century, a missionary, by name Mīr Shams al-Dīn, belonging to a Shi’ah sect, came from 'Irāq, and, with the aid of his disciples, won over a large number of converts in Kashmīr.

When under Akbar, Kashmīr became a province of the Mughal empire, the Muhammadan influence was naturally strengthened and many men of learning came into the country. In the reign of Aurangzeb, the Rajput Raja of Kishtwar was converted by the miracles of a certain Sayyid Shāh Farīd al-Dīn and his conversion seems to have been followed by that of the majority of his subjects, and along the route which the Mughal emperors took on their pro­gresses into Kashmīr we still find Rajas who are the descen­dants of Muhammadanised Rajputs.[128]

To the north and north-east of Kashmir, the provinces of Baltistan and Ladakh are inhabited by a mixed Tibetan race, among whom Islam has been firmly established for several centuries, but the date and manner of its introduction is unknown. The Muhammadans of Baltistan tell of four brothers who came from Khurasan and brought about a revival of the faith, but appear to have no tradition regarding the earliest propagandists.[129] Up to the middle of the nineteenth century Islam appeared to be making progress, but this tendency was counteracted by the encouragement which Maharaja Ranbir Singh gave to the followers of the Buddhist faith. In Ladakh there are a number of half-castes, called Arghons,[130] born of Tibetan mothers and Muhammadan fathers, traders who have come to Leh and persuaded the Tibetan women they marry to accept Islam. These Arghons are all Musalmans and, like their fathers, marry Tibetan wives; they are said to be increasing in num­bers more rapidly than the pure Tibetan stock.[131] Islam has also been carried into Tibet Proper by Kashmiri merchants. Settlements of such merchants are to be found in all the chief cities of Tibet; they marry Tibetan wives, who often adopt the religion of their husbands; and there are now said to be as many as 2000 Muhammadan families in Lhasa.[132] Islam has made its way into Tibet also from Yunnan,[133] and at Su-ching, on the border of the Sze-chwan province and Tibet, converts are being won from among the Tibetan inhabitants.[134] Muhammadan influences are also said to have come from Persia[135]  and from Turkestan.[136]

---

[1] Census of India, 1891. General Report by J. A. Baines, p. 167. (London, 1893.)

[2] Id. pp. 126, 207.

[3] Elliot, vol. ii. p. 448.

[4] Muḥammad b. Qāsim invited the Hindu princes to embrace Islam, and the invaders who followed him were probably equally observant of the religious law. (Elliot, vol. i. pp. 175, 207.)

[5] Or Baran, the old name of Bulandshahr.

[6] Elliot, vol. ii. pp. 42-3.

[7] Gazetteer of  the N.W.P., vol. iii. part ii. p. 85.

[8] "The military adventurers, who founded dynasties in Northern India and carved out kingdoms in the Dekhan, cared little for things spiritual; most of them had indeed no time for proselytism, being continually engaged in conquest or in civil war. They were usually rough Tartars or Moghals; themselves ill-grounded in the faith of Mahomed, and untouched by the true Semitic enthusiasm which inspired the first Arab standard bearers of Islam. The empire which they set up was purely military, and it was kept in that state by the half success of their conquests and the comparative failure of their spiritual invasion. They were strong enough to prevent anything like religious amalgamation among the Hindus, and to check the gathering of tribes into nations; but so far were they from converting India, that among the Mahommedans themselves their own faith never acquired an entire and exclusive monopoly of the high offices of adminis­tration." (Sir Alfred C. Lyall: Asiatic Studies, p. 289.) (London, 1882.)

[9] Firisbtah, vol. i. p. 184.

[10] Ibn Baṭūṭah, tome iii. p. 197.

[11] Elliot, vol. iii. p. 386.

[12] Mankind and the Church, p, 286. (London, 1907.)

[13] Sir Richard Temple : India in 1880, p. 164. (London, 1881.) Punjab States Gazetteers. vol. xxxvi a, Bahawalpur, p. 183.

[14] Manual of Titles for Oudh, p. 78.    (Allahabad, 1889.)

[15] Gazetteer of the Province of Oudh, vol. i. p. 466.

[16] Gazetteer of the N.W,P., vol. iii. part ii. p. 46.

[17] Gazetteer of the N.W.P., vol. xiv. part ii. p. 119. In the Cawnpore district, the Musalman branch of the Dikhit family observes Muhammadan customs at births, marriages, and deaths, and, though they cannot, as a rule, recite the prayers (namāz), they perform the orthodox obeisances (sijdah). But at the same time they worship Chachak Devī to avert small-pox, and keep up their friendly intercourse with their old caste brethren, the Thakurs, in domestic occurrences, and are generally called by common Hindu names. (Gazetteer of the N.W.P., vol. vi. p. 64.)

[18] Ibbetson, p. 163.

[19] Gazetteer of the N.W.P., vol. vi. p. 64. Compare also id. vol. xiv. part iii. p. 47." Muhammadan cultivators are not numerous; they are usually Nau-Muslims.    Most of them assign the date of their conversion to the reign of Aurangzeb, and represent it as the result sometimes of persecution and sometimes as made to enable them to retain their rights when unable to pay revenue."

[20] Ibbetson, p. 163.

[21] Indeed Firishtah distinctly says : " Zealous for the faith of Mahommed, he rewarded proselytes with a liberal hand, though he did not choose to persecute those of different persuasions in matters of religion." (The History of Hindostan, translated from the Persian, by Alexander Dow, vol. iii. p. 361.) (London, 1812.)

[22] The Bombay Gazetteer, vol. xxil. p. 222; vol. xxiii. p. 282.

[23] Innes, pp. 72-3, 190.

[24] Sir W. W. Hunter: The Religions of India.    (The Times, February 25^th, 1888.)

[25] Gazetteer of the N.W.P., vol. vi. p. 518.

[26] Gazetteer of the N.W.P., vol. v. part i. pp. 302-3.

[27] Sir Alfred C. Lyall: Asiatic Studies, p. 336.

[28] A tomb in the cemetery of Pantalāyini Kollam bears an inscription with the date A.H. 166. (Innes, p. 436.)

[29] Zayn al-Dīn, pp. 34-5.

[30] Id. p. 36 (init).

[31] Id. p. 21.

[32] The modern Madāyi.

[33] Zayn al-Dīn, pp. 23-4.

[34] Id. p. 25.

[35] Innes, p. 41.

[36] Id. p.398.

[37] Ibn Batutah, tome iv. pp. 82, 88, etc.

[38] Innes, p. 190.

[39] Oboardo Barbosa, p. 310.

Similarly it has been conjectured that but for the arrival of the Portu­guese, Ceylon might have become a Muhammadan kingdom. For before the Portuguese armaments appeared in the Indian seas, the Arab merchants were undisputed masters of the trade of this island (where indeed they had formed commercial establishments centuries before the birth of the Prophet), and were to be found in every sea-port and city, while the facilities for commerce attracted large numbers of fresh arrivals from their settlements in Malabar. Here as elsewhere the Muslim traders intermarried with the natives of the country and spread their religion along the coast. But no very active proselytising movement would seem to have been carried on, or else the Singhalese showed themselves unwilling to embrace Islam, as the Muhammadans of Ceylon at the present day appear mostly to be of Arab descent. (Sir James Emerson Tennent: Ceylon, vol. i. pp. 631-3.) (5th ed., London, 1860.)

[40] Qur'ān, xvi. 126.

[41] Abd al-Razzāq : Maṭla' al-sa'dayn, fol. 173.

[42] They are found chiefly in the Tamil-speaking districts of Madura, Tinnevelly, Coimbatore, North Arcot and the Nilgiris.

[43] The Imperial Gazetteer of India (vol. xxiv. p. 47) spells his name Nādir Shah; Qādir Ḥusayn Khān calls him Nathad Vali.

[44] Madras District Gazetteers,   Trichinopoly, vol. i. p. 338.    (Madras, 1907) Qādir Ḥusayn Khān: South Indian Musalmans, p. 36. (Madras, 1910.)

[45] ) Qādir Ḥusayn Khān, pp. 36-8.

[46] Qādir Ḥusayn Khān, op. cit. pp. 39-42.    Madras District Gazetteers. Anantapur, vol. i. pp. 193-4.    (Madras, 1905.)

[47] Zayn al-Din, pp. 33 (l 4), 36 (l I).

[48] Innes, p. l90. Census of India, 19II. Vol. xii. Part. I. p. 54.

[49] Report on the Census of the Madras Presidency, 1871, by W. R Cornish, pp. 71. 72, 109. (Madras, 1874.)

[50] Report of the Second Decennial Missionary Conference held at Calcutta 1882-3 (pp. 228, 233, 248). (Calcutta, 1883.)

[51] Ibn Baṭūṭah, tome iv. p. 128. Ibn Baṭūṭah resided in the Maldive Islands during the years 1343-4 and married " the daughter of a Vizier who was grandson of the Sulṭan Dā'ūd, who was a grandson of the Sulṭān Ahmad Shanūrāzah " (tome iv. p. 154); from this statement the date a.d. 1200 has been conjectured.

[52] H. C. P. Bell: The Maldive Islands, pp. 23-5,57-8, 71.  (Colombo, 1883.)

[53] Memoir on the Inhabitants of the Maldive Islands. By J. A. Young and W. Christopher. (Transactions of the Bombay Geographical Society from 1836 to 1838, p. 74. Bombay, 1844.)

[54] Innes, pp. 485, 492.

[55] Mas'ūdī, tome ii. pp. 85-6.

[56] The Bombay Gazetteer, vol. x. p  132; vol. xvi. P. 75

[57] Id. vol. xxiii. p. 282.

[58] Sometimes called Sayyid Makhdūm Gīsūdarāz.

[59] The Bombay Gazetteer, vol. xviii. p. 501; vol. xxi. pp. 218, 223.

[60] Id. vol. xiii. part i. p. 231.

[61] Id. vol. xxii. p. 242.

[62] Id. vol. xvi. pp. 75-6.

[63] Id. vol. xxi. p. 203.

[64] At the time of the Arab conquest the dominions of the Hindu ruler of Sind extended as far north as this city, which is now no longer included in this province.

[65] Balādhurī, p. 441 (fin.)

[66] Elliot, vol. i. pp. 185-6.

[67] Probably the Sindān in Abṝasa, the southern district of Cutch.

[68] Balādhurī, p. 446.

[69] Istakhri. PP. 173-4

[70] Balādhurī, p. 446.

[71] Istakhrī, loc.cit. Ibn Ḥawqal, p. 230 sq. Idrīsī (Géographie d'Édrisi, traduite par P. A. Jaubert, vol. i. p. 175 sqq.).

[72] Mas'ūdī, vol. i. p. 207.

[73] Elliot, vol. i. p. 273.

[74] Bombay Gazetteer, vol. i. p. 93.

[75] Khojā Vṛttānt, p. 208. Sir Bartle Frere: The Khojas : the Disciples of the Old Man of the Mountain. Macmillan's Magazine, vol. xxxiv. pp. 431, 433-4. (London, 1876.)

[76] Bombay Gazetteer, vol. ix. part ii. p. 26.

[77] K. B. Fazalullah lutfullah conjectures that Nūr Satāgar came to India rather later, in the reign of Bhīma II (a.d. 1179-1242.) (Bombay Gazetteer, vol. ix. part ii. P. 38.)

[78] Khojā Vṛttānt, p. 154-8.

[79] Nūr Allāh al-Shūlshtarī: Majaliis al-Mu'minīn, fol. 65. (India Office MS. No. 1400.)

[80] A town ten miles south-west of Ahmadabad.

[81] Bombay Gazetteer, vol. ix. part ii. pp. 66, 76.

[82] Bombay Gazetteer, vol. v. p. 89.

[83] Id. vol. ii. p. 378; vol. iii. pp. 36-7.

[84] So Firishtah, but see H. Blochmann: Contributions to the Geography and History of Bengal.    (J. A. S. B., vol. xlii. No. I, pp. 264-6.   1873.)

[85] J. H. Ravenshaw : Gaur : its ruins and inscriptions, p. 99. (London, 1878.) Firishtah, vol. iv. p. 337.

[86] Wise, p. 29.

[87] Census of India, 1901, vol. vi. part i. p. 170.

[88] Id. p. 30

[89] Charles Stewart : The History of Bengal, p. 176. (London, 1813.) H. Blochmann: Contributions to the Geography and History of Bengal. (J. A. S. B., vol. xlii. No. I, p. 220. 1873.)

[90] The Indian Evangelical Review, p. 278.   (January 1883.)

[91] Sir W. W. Hunter: The Religions of India. (The Times, February 25, 1888.) See also Wise, p. 32.

[92] Wise, p. 37.

[93] Blochmann, op. cit. p. 260.

[94] Wise, pp. 48-55.

[95] Ghulām Sarwar : khazīnat al-Aṣfiyā, vol. ii. p. 230.

[96] Otherwise known as Shaykh Bahā al-Dīn Zakariyyā.

[97] Ibbetson, p. 163.

[98] Aṣghar 'Ali: Jawāhir-i-Farīdī (4,8. 1033), p. 395. (Lahore, 1884.)

[99] Elliot, vol. ii. p. 548.

[100] Punjab States Gazetteers, vol. xxxvi A. Bahawalpur State. (Lahore, 1908), p. 160 sqq. The names of some of the tribes who ascribe their conversion to Makhdūm-i-Jahāniyān are given on p. 162.

[101] Id. p. 171.

[102] Ibn Baṭūṭah, tome iv. p. 217.    Yule, p. 515.

[103] The Indian Evangelical Review, vol. xvi, pp. 52-3. (Calcutta,1889-90.) The  Contemporary Review, February   1889,   p.   170.     The Spectator, October 15, 1887, p. 1382.

[104] Garcia de Tassy : La Langue et la Litérature Hindoustanies de 1850 à 1869, p. 343. (Paris. 1874.)

[105] Mawlavi Hasan 'Alī furnished me with these figures some years before his death in 1896. In an obituary notice published in " The Moslem Chronicle " (April 4, 1896), the following quaint account is given of his life : "In private and school life, he was marked as a very intelligent lad and made considerable progress in his scholastic career within a short time. He passed Entrance at a very early age and received scholarship with which he went up to the First Art, but shortly after his innate anxiety to seek truth prompted him to go abroad the world, and abandoning his studies he mixed with persons of different persuasions, Fakirs, Pandits, and Christians, entered churches, and roamed over wilderness and forests and cities with nothing to help him on except his sincere hopes and absolute reliance on the mercy of the Great Lord; for one year he wandered in various regions of religion until in 1874 he accepted the post of a head master in a Patna school. . . . As he was born to become a missionary of the Moslem faith, he felt an imperceptible craving to quit his post, from which he used to get Rs. 100 per mensem. He tendered his resignation, much to the reluctance of his friends, and maintained himself for some time by publishing a monthly journal, ' Noorul Islam.' He gave several lectures on Islam at Patna, and then went to Calcutta, where he delivered his lecture in English, which produced such effect on the audience that several European clergymen vouchsafed the truth of Islam, and a notable gentleman, Babu Bepin Chandra Pal, was about to become Musalman. He was invited by the people at Dacca, where his preachings and lectures left his name imbedded in the hearts of the citizens. His various books and pamphlets and successive lectures in Urdu and in English in the different cities and towns in India gave him a historic name in the world. Some one hundred men become Musalmans on hearing his lectures and reading his books." His missionary zeal manifested itself up to the last hour of his life, when he was overheard to say, " Abjure your religion and become a Musalman." On being questioned, he said he was talking to a Christian.

[106] Bombay Gazetteer, vol. xii. p. 126.

[107] Id. vol. xvi. p. 81.

[108] Tuḥfat al-Hind. p. 3.    (Dehli, A.H. 1309.)

[109] The Indian Evangelical Review, 1884, p. 128. Garcin de Tassy: La Langue et la Littérature Hindoustanies de 1850 à 1869, p. 485. (Paris, 1874.) Garcin de Tassy : La Langue et la Littérature Hindoustanies en 1871, p. 12. (Paris, 1872.)

[110] Ibbetson, p. 184.

[111] The Rajputana Gazetteer, vol. I p. 90; vol. ii. p. 47.    (Calcutta, 1879.)

[112] On these as they affect the Muhammadans, see the Census of India, 1901. Vol. vi p. 172.

[113] E. T. Dalton, p. 324.

[114] For an account of such Hinduising of the aboriginal tribes see Sir Alfred Lyall: Asiatic Studies, pp. 102-4.

[115] E. T. Dalton, p. 89.

[116] The Missionary Review of the World. N. S. vol. xiii, pp. 72-3. (New York, 1900.)

[117] Sir Alfred Lyall (Asiatic Studies, p. 29) speaks of the perceptible proclivity towards the faith of Islam occasionally exhibited by some of the Hindu chiefs.

[118]  Gazetteer of the Province of Oudh, vol. i. p. xix.

[119] To give one instance only : in Ghātampur, id the district of Cawnpore, one branch of a large family is Muslim in obedience to the vow of their ancestor, Ghātam Deo Bais, who while praying for a son at the shrine of a Muhammadan saint, Madār Shāh, promised that if his prayer were granted, half his descendants should be brought up as Muslims. (Gazetteer of the N.W.P. vol. vi. pp. 64, 238.)

The worship of Muhammadan saints is so common among certain low-caste Hindus that in the Census of 1891, in the North-Western Provinces and Oudh alone, 2,333,643 Hindus (or 5.78 per cent. of the total Hindu population of these provinces) returned themselves as worshippers of Muhammadan saints. (Census of India, 1891, vol. xvi. part i. pp. 217,244). (Allahabad, 1894.)

[120] Instances of such causes of conversion are given in the Census of India, 1901. Vol. vi. Bengal, part, i. Appendix II.

[121] Report on the Census of the N.W.P. and Oudh, 1881, by Edward White, p. 62. (Allahabad, 1882.)

[122] Id. p. 63.

[123] Gazetteer of the Province of Oudh, vol. i. p. xix.

[124] Gazetteer of the Province of Oudh, vol. i.pp. xxiii-xxiv.

[125] Khojā Vṛttānt, p. 141.

[126] Or Shams al-Dīn, according to another account, see Muḥammad Haydar, p. 433 (n. 2).

[127] Firishtah, vol. iv. pp. 464. 469.

[128] F. Drew; The Jummoo and Kashmir Territories, pp. 58,155.    (London,1875)

[129] Drew, op. cit. p. 359.

[130] On this word see Yule's Marco Polo, vol. i. p. 290.

[131] Aḥmad Shāh: Four years in Tibet, pp. 45, 74. (Benares,1906.)

[132] Broomhall, p. 206.    Tu Wen-sin, the leader of the Panthay rebellion from 1856 to 1873, who for sixteen years was practically Sultan of half the province of Yunnan, issued a proclamation in Lhasa itself, at the outset of his revolt, in order to gain Muhammadan recruits.    (Id. p. 132.)

[133] Mission d'Ollone, pp. 207, 226, 233.

[134] Broomhall, p. 206.

[135] A. Bastian : Die Geschichte der Indochinesen, p.159. (Leipzig, 1866)

[136] R. du M. M., tome i, p. 275. (1907)