Page:History of India Vol 3.djvu/57

CHARACTER OF MAHMUD 33 quaint anecdote in Sa'di's " Rose Garden," a tedious but renowned Persian classic, in which it is related how a certain king of Khorasan dreamed that he saw Mah- mud a hundred .years after his death, and perceived that, whilst his body had crumbled to dust, the eyes still rolled in their sockets, as if seeking the wealth that had vanished from their sight. Yet it is hard to reconcile this reputation for avarice with what is re- corded of the Sultan's gifts; his annual grant of two hundred thousand guineas to men of letters; his foun- dation of a university at Ghazni, endowed with a great library, a museum, salaried professors, and pensions for scholars; his sumptuous mosque of marble and granite, furnished with gold and silver lamps and ornaments and spread with costly carpets; or the aqueducts, foun- tains, cisterns, and other improvements with which he enriched his capital. If Mahmud was fond of money, assuredly he knew how to spend it wisely and munifi- cently; and the splendour of his courtiers' palaces, vying with his own, testified to the liberal encourage- ment of the arts which raised Ghazni, under the rule of the Idol-breaker, from a barracks of outlaws to the first rank among the many stately cities of the caliphate. The man who could so create and develop a centre of civilization was no barbarian. Like many another, Mahmud is said to have devoted himself to the cultiva- tion of his mind in order to efface the impression of his physical defects; but it was no ordinary mind that he had to work upon, and no mean genius that could expand a little mountain principality into an empire