The popular notion that India fell an easy prey to the Mussulmans is opposed to the historical facts. Mahometan rule in India consists of a series of invasions and partial conquests, during eleven centuries from Othman's raid, about A.D. 647, to Ahmad Shah's tempest of devastation in 1761. At no time was Islam triumphant throughout all India. Hindu dynasties always ruled over a large area. The first collision between Hinduism and Islam on the Punjab frontier was the act of the Hindus. In 977 Jaipal, the Hindu chief of Lahore, annoyed by Afghan raids, led his troops through the mountains against the Mahometan kingdom of Ghazni, in Afghanistan. Subuktigin, the Ghaznivide prince, after severe fighting, took advantage of a hurricane to cut off the retreat of the Hindus through the pass. He allowed them, however, to return to India, on the surrender of fifty elephants and the promise of one million _dirhams_ [about $125,000]. In 997 Subuktigin died, and was succeeded by his son, Mahmud of Ghazni, aged sixteen. This valiant monarch, surnamed "the Great," reigned for thirty-three years, and extended his father's little Afghan kingdom into a great Mahometan sovereignty, stretching from Persia on the west to far within the Punjab on the east.) Mahmud was born about the year 357 of the Hegira--or 350, according to some authorities--and, as astrologers say, with many happy omens expressed in the horoscope of his life. Subuktigin, being asleep at the time of his birth, dreamed that he beheld a green tree springing forth from his chimney, which threw its shadow over the face of the earth and screened from the storms of heaven the whole animal creation. This indeed was verified by the justice of Mahmud; for, if we can believe the poet, in his reign the wolf and the sheep drank together at the same brook.