[Advaita-l] meera bhai & bhakti

[Sanjay Srivastava]

Just a small correction.

>>
>> ... Recently I heard one Swami saying
>> that the people who were singing bhajans inside
>>  Somnath temple  when it was being attacked and
>> razed to the ground by the forces of Aurangazeb
>> hoping that ...

It was Mahmud of Ghazni who is credited(?) for razing of Somnath -- not 
Aurangzeb. Arab historian Al-Beruni who was in Mahmud's court has 
mentioned one hindu general by the name of Tilak who assisted Mahmud in 
planning of attack on Somnath. In the contemporary poetry of Sanai, 
Attar and Omar Khayyam, smashing of Somnath was hailed as one of the 
greatest achievements of Islam and Mahmud was compared with the prophet 
himself.

The temple was rebuilt several times and destroyed again and again by 
muslim rulers and finally in the time of Aurangzeb in 1706. However by 
this time, the temple was only a pale shadow of its earlier self and 
its demolition did not require orders at the level of the emperor. By 
Aurangzeb's standards, Somnath temple was a small fry.

praNAm