Note {1} — Chapter XXIX

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.