| Hieun
Tsang, the Chinese traveller who visited India between A.D. 630 and 644, does not make any
mention of the shrine although during his itineraries he had come as near as Girnar which
is only 52 miles from Somanatha. There can be only three explanations: (a) no such temple
existed during his time; (b) it must have been an in. significant temple to attract the
attention of the traveller; and (c) the temple being a Brahminical one would obviously not
find a place in the writings of Hieun Tsang who was interested mostly in Buddhist
monuments. Al-Biruni writing in about A.D. 1030
informs us that the fortress of Somanatha had been built about a 100 years before its
capture by Sultan Mahmud.4 The statement, no doubt, has only an indirect bearing on the
shrine.
4 Al-Biruni, Tahqiq ma li’l-Hind, ii, p. 105;
Muhammad Nazim, op. cit., p. 117, fn. 1. |
