GENESIS OF THE MEDIEVAL CIVILIZATION 15 They had already achieved an accommodation with the dihqans, or the rural aristocracy of the Sassanian regime in Iran; to accept Brahmans and possibly Thakkuras 'takurs',9 as subordinate ruling class was thus in conformity with their tradition. Their scorn for the mawali moderated their zeal to create a large population of converts in Sind : the Chachnama thus records not a single forcible conversion to Islam. If this was the attitude of the conquerors, how were they looked at by the vanquished? The only source for this is the Chachnama, It is by no means an unreliable source. The presence of an entire local chronicle for the history of the pre-Arab dynasty—reminding us of the later, celebrated Rajatarangini of Kalhana and of constant reports from the Indian side on the war, including much hero-worship of Dahar's son Jaisiya, shows that it can claim some authenticity as conveyor of the Indian sentiments. It represents Dahar's sister preparing for self-immolation to escape from captivity under those 'cow-eating Chandalas'.10 But, after the settlement at Brahmanabad, the Brahman officials are said to have dispersed over the country and to have thus addressed the 'notables' everywhere: Dahar is dead; the power of the 'infidels' has come to an end. In the whole of Sind and Hind, the writ of the Arabs has been established. The big and small of this territory, from town and village, has become one (under subjection), and our affairs are to be held to be managed under a great Empire. We have been sent by them to give you good assurances.11 Thus the response was of a dual kind. In the first instance, a bitter rejection of an alien invader: in the second, a realistic acceptance of conditions in which the invader became familiar and life with honour, though with reduced authority, undoubtedly, was possible. The question one tends to ask is whether the response could have been very greatly different if the invader had not been the Arabs, but, say, another North Indian power. Certainly, when King Harsha of Kashmir was overthrown by an internal revolt (1101 AD), the scene of fiery immolation of the queens and women of the royal family12 was no different from that described by the Chachnama in respect of Dahar's family faced with seizure by the Arabs.13 Undoubtedly, the Arabs were foreigners in that they represented a visibly different cultural tradition. But our present understanding that 'foreign' invasions have been detrimental to a country, derives from a natural, but illogical, confusion between pre-modem 'foreign' (a concept again based on modern national boundaries) and modern colonial acquisitions. There is in all advanced historiographies a much more critical attitude towards the role played by conquerors from different ctiltural areas. V. Barthold, the Soviet historian, had strongly opposed the negative assessment of the Mongol conquests pronounced by his Russian colleagues. It is thus equally important that we should not try to read back our present-national sentiments into those of the