Marco Polo
translation: Henry Yule, Henri Cordier

THE TRAVELS OF MARCO POLO
Volume II.
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CHAPTER XXIX.

CONCERNING THE KINGDOM OF SEMENAT.

Semenat is a great kingdom towards the west. The people are Idolaters, and have a king and a language of their own, and pay tribute to nobody. They are not corsairs, but live by trade and industry as honest people ought. It is a place of very great trade. They are forsooth cruel Idolaters. [NOTE 1]

[Illustration: 'The Gates of Somnath,' preserved in the British Arsenal at
Agra, from a photograph (converted into elevation)]

NOTE 1.—SOMNATH is the site of the celebrated Temple on the coast of Sauráshtra, or Peninsular Guzerat, plundered by Mahmúd of Ghazni on his sixteenth expedition to India (A.D. 1023). The term "great kingdom" is part of Polo's formula. But the place was at this time of some importance as a commercial port, and much visited by the ships of Aden, as Abulfeda tells us. At an earlier date Albiruni speaks of it both as the seat of a great Mahadeo much frequented by Hindu pilgrims, and as a port of call for vessels on their way from Sofala in Africa to China,—a remarkable incidental notice of departed trade and civilisation! He does not give Somnath so good a character as Polo does; for he names it as one of the chief pirate-haunts. And Colonel Tod mentions that the sculptured memorial stones on this coast frequently exhibit the deceased as a pirate in the act of boarding. In fact, piratical habits continued in the islands off the coast of Kattiawár down to our own day.

Properly speaking, three separate things are lumped together as Somnáth: (1) The Port, properly called Veráwal, on a beautiful little bay; (2) the City of Deva-Pattan, Somnáth-Pattan, or Prabhás, occupying a prominence on the south side of the bay, having a massive wall and towers, and many traces of ancient Hindu workmanship, though the vast multitude of tombs around shows the existence of a large Mussulman population at some time; and among these are dates nearly as old as our Traveller's visit; (3) The famous Temple (or, strictly speaking, the object of worship in that Temple) crowning a projecting rock at the south-west angle of the city, and close to the walls. Portions of columns and sculptured fragments strew the soil around.

Notwithstanding the famous story of Mahmúd and the image stuffed with jewels, there is little doubt that the idol really termed Somnáth (Moon's Lord) was nothing but a huge columnar emblem of Mahadeo. Hindu authorities mention it as one of the twelve most famous emblems of that kind over India, and Ibn Ásir's account, the oldest extant narrative of Mahmúd's expedition, is to the same effect. Every day it was washed with water newly brought from the Ganges. Mahmúd broke it to pieces, and with a fragment a step was made at the entrance of the Jámi' Mosque at Ghazni.

The temples and idols of Pattan underwent a second visitation at the hands of Aláuddin's forces a few (...)

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