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Somnath might have appeared as a rival of Delphi, the treasures of Hind might outweigh the riches of the King of Lydia, while compared with the army of the brothers Pandu, that of Xerxes would seem an inconsiderable handful of men, worthy only to rank in the second place." * In nearly every instance the passages quoted from various authorities have been retranslated from the Russian.
They were the subject of a most extraordinary archæological blunder by the Governor-General, Lord Ellenborough, who, in a grandiloquent proclamation, identifying them with the gates of carved sandalwood which Mahmud according to tradition, had taken from the celebrated Hindu temple of Somnath in 1025, announced to the people of India that "the insult of eight hundred years had been avenged."
It occurred to me, through calling to recollection the story of the treasures concealed in the Hindoo idol at Somnath which was broken open by Sultan Mahmoud in the eleventh century, that possibly the same kind of receptacle might disclose a like prize, though on a smaller scale, among the numerous temples scattered through the city of Delhi.
One glance would convince any expert in Oriental archæology that they could not by any possibility have been the gates of a Hindu temple. It has been supposed that the original gates were destroyed by fire, and that these were made to replace them, but there seems to be considerable doubt whether Mahmud really took away any gates from the Somnath temple.
Having fulfilled Lord Ellenborough's ridiculous order to carry away from the tomb of Sultan Mahmoud in the environs of Ghuznee, the supposititious gates of Somnath, a once famous Hindoo shrine in the Bombay province of Kattiawar, Nott marched onward unmolested till within a couple of marches of Cabul, when near Maidan he had some stubborn fighting with an Afghan force which tried ineffectually to block his way.
The only other interesting relics in the fort are the renowned gates of Somnath, which are placed in the arsenal, and which need no description from my pen.
THE "SOMNATH" GATES. Before entering the Jahangiri Mahal, on the opposite side of the Anguri Bagh, we will pause at a corner of the zanana courtyard, where a small apartment contains an interesting relic of the Afghan expedition of 1842 the so-called "Somnath" gates, taken from the tomb of Mahmud of Ghazni in the capture of that city by the British.
The gates of Somnath, twelve feet high, were beautiful pieces of carving. They once guarded the entrance to the temple of Krishna, in Goojerat; but in the tenth century they were carried off by Sultan Mahmoud, of Ghuzni, in Afghanistan. He captured Somnath, and destroyed all the idols.
The first serious Moslim incursions were those of Mahmud of Ghazni, who between 997 and 1030 made many raids in which he sacked Kanauj, Muttra, Somnath and many other places but without acquiring them as permanent possessions. Only the Panjab became a Moslim province.
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