Religion and Society in Arab Sind.

This important book takes a look at a period many might call the Dark Ages of medieval South Asia and sheds much light on society, religion, and history. The geographic focus is on Arab Sind, an area much larger than the present province of that name in Pakistan; in fact, it is nearly equivalent to the whole of contemporary Pakistan. Maclean's time frame is the period of Arab rule in this region, from 711 A.D. tO 1026 A.D. By a very close reading of the Chachnamah and other contemporary texts, including Arabic and Indic works and the translations of the Chinese Buddhist travelers' accounts, he has sorted out and corrected much confusion in earlier histories, especially on the topics of collaboration and conversion (of non-Muslims, with the conquerors and to Islam), the Islamic topics of concern to Sindi Muslims, and the rise of the Isma'ili state at Multan. His analysis, sometimes brilliant and always convincing, adds considerably to our understanding.

Maclean's first task is to identify the players in the history. He demonstrates that the Arab writers indeed distinguished Buddhists and Hindus, and provided enough information to identify particular sects of both. Nineteenth- and twentieth-century authors have introduced confusion here by failing to understand the different uses of words, and especially of the word budd, which they take as always signifying "Buddha." Maclean shows that it is used to mean "an image" or "a temple," and he demonstrates that it is used (with different modifiers) to refer to the Buddhist monasteries and temples, to the Saivite temple at Daybul, to the temple of Surya at Multan, and others. By such careful looking at the specific context and references, Maclean can show that on the Buddhist side the most numerous and influential group of Sindis were members of the Sammitiya sect, a Hinayana populist and textualist sect. On the Hindu side, the predominant sect was Pasupata Saivism, but in the city of Multan the votaries of the famous sun-temple had significance.

In his fascinating chapter two, "Conquest and Conversion," Maclean makes his most important points. First, he shows that most previous scholars have failed to distinguish these two processes or events, and have argued from reified versions of the three religions instead of from actual evidence available in historical sources. He shows that the conquest proceeded from rational economic and political causes and that it affected different groups in the Sindi...