Note 75 — Chapter IX · THE SPREAD OF ISLAM IN INDIA.

Sind was also the scene of the labours of Pīr Ṣadr al-Dīn, an Ismāʻīlī 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 ʻAlī 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 Ismāʻīlians, the incarnation and coming manifestation of ʻAlī. Further, he made out Brahmā to be Muḥammad, Viṣṇu to be ʻAlī 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