Masûd, the new king, appears to have been a man of considerable character and grim humour, for one of the first acts of his reign was in cold blood to hang an unfortunate gentleman who once, long years before, when the question of succession was the subject of conversation, had been heard to say crudely that if Masûd ever came to the throne he would suffer himself to be hanged. So he suffered. But in truth, as we read the story of this Ghuznevide dynasty, and of the Ghori dynasty which followed it, we rub our eyes and wonder how many centuries we have gone back. For these big, bold, burly men are fairly savages in comparison with the cultured Hindu whom they harried. And Masûd, though by repute an affable gentleman, generous even to prodigality, and of uncommon personal strength and courage, was as turbulent as a king as he had been as a prince. His favourite maxim was, "Dominion follows the longest sword." His was not only long, but heavy. No other man of his court could wield it, and an arrow from his bow would pierce the hide of a mailed elephant. During the ten years of his reign he entered India with an army three times. But the first of these raids was followed, A.D. 1033, by a terrible famine, a still more terrible outbreak of plague, from which in one month, more than forty thousand people died in Isphahân alone. This was in its turn followed by a severe defeat of the Ghuznevide arms by the Turkomâns on the north-east frontier; for it must not be forgotten that though these dynasties of which we are treating are counted as of India, they have in reality but little to do with it. They were but titular suzerains, and very often not that, of the more northerly provinces of Hindustan. Apparently as a salve to resentment and shame at this defeat, Masûd began to build a fine palace at Ghuzni, over which he must have spent some of his father's treasures, for a golden chain and a golden crown of incredible weight appears as a canopy in the Hall of Audience. It must have been this depletion of the royal treasures which led to his last and most successful campaign against the kingdom of Sivalak, where he is said to have found enormous wealth; and so on to Sônput, ancient Hindu shrine and city to the north of Delhi, whence he made a Mahmûd-like return laden with loot. A quaint old city is Sônput, and a curious authenticity of its hoar antiquity turned up not long ago, when some cultivators were digging a well. This was a small clay image of the Sun-God, a deity to which there is now in India but one single shrine. But here the star of Masûd's fortune touched its zenith. The Turkomâns, encouraged by success, renewed operations, finally forcing the king to abandon his border principalities and seek time in India to recover strength for renewed efforts.