12 MOHAMMEDAN INVASION life. When the sacrifice was accomplished, however, the Indian princesses, moved perhaps by the courage of a victim brave as their own devoted race, confessed that their tale was deliberately invented to avenge their father's death upon his conqueror. The caliph in impo- tent fury had them dragged at horses' tails through the city till they perished miserably, but the second crime was no expiation for the first. The Arabs had conquered Sind, but the conquest was only an episode in the history of India and of Islam, a triumph without results. The Indus province, it is true, is as large as England, but it consists chiefly of desert, and the Arabs made no attempt to extend their dominion into the fertile plains beyond. It has been supposed that the crude civilization and austere creed of the Moslems stood aghast before the rich and ancient culture, the profound philosophy, and the sensual ritual of the Hindus; but these contrasts did not check the later successes of Islam in the same land. The more obvious explanation of the Arabs' failure is found in the as yet unbroken strength of the Kajput kings on the north and east, and in the inadequate forces des- patched by the caliphs for so formidable a project as the conquest of India. After the first expedition under the ill-fated Mohammad ibn Kasim we hear of no rein- forcements, and twenty years after his death the Arabs were still so insecure on the Indus that they built a city of refuge as a retreat in times of jeopardy. The province was not only imperfectly subdued but ex- tremely poor, and the caliphs soon abandoned it in all
