Al-Biruni writes his India

Al-Biruni (973 – c. 1050), born in Khwarazm, had served as a counsellor of its Ma’munid rulers. When Mahmud of Ghazni conquered the country in 1017, he carried off its princes and leading men, al-Biruni among them, to Ghazni. Eduard Sachau, who translated the book into English, inferred that in the following years al-Biruni enjoyed no favour at court and stayed in various parts of India, probably as a hostage or prisoner kept on honourable terms; there he learned Sanskrit and collected Indian books. The Arabic title of the work, Tahqiq ma li-l-Hind, announces ‘a critical study of Indian doctrines, whether rationally acceptable or rejected’. In his preface al-Biruni declares that the book ‘is not a polemical one’ but ‘a simple historic record of facts’, in which he sets out the theories of the Hindus exactly as they are and places beside them similar theories of the Greeks.

The book discusses Hindu ideas of God and the soul, the Vedas and Puranas, castes, weights and measures, geography, eras and calendars, astronomy and astrology, festivals, marriage, law and ritual; al-Biruni translated passages of the Yoga Sutras and drew on Brahmagupta and Varahamihira. He writes with unusual frankness about the conquests of his own ruler: he describes the destruction of the linga of Somnath in the year 416 of the Hijra and says that Mahmud ‘utterly ruined the prosperity of the country’, leaving the scattered Hindus with ‘the most inveterate aversion towards all Muslims’, while Hindu learning withdrew to Kashmir, Benares and other places out of the conquerors’ reach. Internal evidence dates the work: al-Biruni names the year 952 of the Shaka era (AD 1030) as ‘our time’ and takes the year 953 (1031) as the base year for comparing the Indian eras. Eduard Sachau printed the Arabic text in 1885–1886 and his English translation in 1887–1888.