Punjab States Gazetteers Bahawalpur State

· 1908 · Public domain (published pre-1930) · archive.org ↗

1Banawarve Srare.] The Ghasnivides, [Pane A,

2which they had groaned. One of the Baloch clans, indoad,, still preserves CHAP. §, B.

3the memory of its heresy,.or that of its Progenitor, im retaining its History.

4present title of Karmati ...... Independent of the reneral dissemination ~

5of Shid sentiments in the valley of the Indus, which fivonved notions of

6the incorporation of the Godhead in Man, the old eccupants of the

7soil must, from other causes, have been ready to acquiesea in the wild

8doctrines of the heretics, who now offered themselves for spiritual

9“Their... ... incarnation of the Deity; their types and allegories;

10their philosophy divided’ into exoteric and esoteric; their religions

11reticence ;. their regard for particular numbers, particularly 7 and 12; the

12various: stages of initiation; their abstruse allusions ; their mystical

13interpretations; ase. paoibolatin theosophy, were so much in conformity

14with sentiments already prevalent among these willing disciples, that

15little pergvasion could have been required to induce them to embrace

16socongemial aw system of metaphysical divinity, of which the final degree

17of initiation... ... undoubtedly introduced the disciple into the regions os

18of the most unalloyed atheiam. //

19“ So susceptible, indeed, must the native mind have been of theep

20insidioue doctrines that Hammer-Purgstall and others......have very

21reasonably concluded that the doctrines of these secret societies,—such as

22the Karmations, Ismdiliang or Assassina, Druses, Batinis, and sundry

23others, which at various periods have devastated the Muhammadan

24world, and frequently threatened the extinction of that faith,—though

25eriginally based upon the errors of the Gnostica, were yet largely indebted

26to the mystical philosopliy and theology of Eastern nations, and especially

27of India, where the tenets of transmigration and of absorption into the

28Deity were even more familiar both to Baddhists ard Bralimans than

29they were to these miserablé schismatics,

30“The Hinda population, therefore, though they had much to dread

31from them, if it continued obstinately in the path of idolatory, was

32likely to offer a rich field of proselytism to such zealous fanatics as the

33Karmatians, or “people of the veil," whose creed could not have been

34less uttractive to an ignorant and superstitious multitude, from its eluding

35in many instances the grasp of human apprehension, and from ita founder

36being announced, in profane and incomprehensible jargon, ta be ‘the

37Guide! the Director! the Invitation! the Word! the Holy Ghost! the

38Demonstration ! the Herald ! the Camel !" *

39Farishta thus remarks on the Karmatian rule in Multan :—

40*On referring to historical works such as the Tarjuma-i-Ma’snt

41&e., it appears that Sultin Mahmtid wrested Multan fica tae

42possession of the Karmatian heretics and that it remainec under hig

43splendid dynasty till its decline, when the Karmatians regained gained its

44cE ith, as its rovernor.’

45THe GHAZNIVIDE Periop,

46A, D, 978,