But there was something else now to be done. At the village of Roza, in the vicinity of Ghuznee, is the tomb of Sultan Mahmoud. A peculiar odour of sanctity is exhaled from that shrine. The priests, in whose guardianship it is held, have their traditions concerning it, in which the spurious greatly prevails. Its boasted antiquity is not supported by any credible evidence; and when Major Rawlinson carried to the examination of the inscriptions on the tomb all that profound knowledge and acute penetration which have since attained for him, in the Eastern and in the Western world, so wide a celebrity as the first of Oriental antiquaries, he had at once detected unmistakeable proofs of their belonging to a more recent period than the Moollahs had claimed for them.[300] Still the shrine was a venerable one, and by the priesthood of Afghanistan held in no common esteem. The famous sandal-wood gates of Somnauth, which Mahmoud had carried off from their home in Guzerat, were deposited at the conqueror’s tomb. Such at least had long been the popular faith; and among the priesthood and the people of Afghanistan, no one doubted that the trophies were genuine. It was reserved for European scepticism to cast discredit upon the reality of the sacred relics. But, whether genuine or spurious, upon these gates Lord Ellenborough had fixed his desires. What he knew about them, where he had read of them, or by whom his attention was drawn to them, History cannot determine. It is sufficient that on the 4th of July, when the Governor-General wrote to General Nott, authorising him to “retire” to the provinces of India, by the route of Ghuznee, Caubul, and Jellalabad, he inserted in this memorable letter a paragraph instructing the General to despoil the tomb of Sultan Mahmoud. “You will bring away,” he wrote, “from the tomb of Mahmoud of Ghuznee, his club, which hangs over it, and you will bring away the gates of his tomb, which are the gates of the Temple of Somnauth.” So, on the 8th of September, under Sanders’s superintendence, the gates of Mahmoud’s tomb were carried off, as tenderly as they could perform the duty, by a party of English soldiers. The Moollahs wept bitterly. But the shrine was not otherwise profaned; and the excitement which the spoliation created scarcely extended beyond the holy circle of the priesthood.[301]