भारतीय इतिहास के ६ स्वर्णिम पृष्ठ (वीर सावरकर - विदेशी आक्रान्ताओं पर विजय गाथा)

The Age-Long Relation of the Arabs with India 648. When I first read the word मुसल (Musal) in my student days in ‘Mousal Parva’ in one of the secondary Puranas like the Hariwansh, and wondered how the huge rushes uprooted by the Yadavas from the seashores became big pounding pestles, which crushed their bones as some lethal weapons would, I at once hit upon one probable explanation that perhaps the word, ‘Mousal’, might be an attempt at pun on the word Musal (मुसल) by the Puranic punsters, and that it might have been suggested by the word Musalman given to the Arab traders of the past after their conversion to Islam. But this fanciful explanation could not then be supported by the time-sense and other coordinating historical events. 649. Much later in the Andamans, when I began reading a lot of Bengali literature, I remember to have then perused an essay about the passing away of Lord Krishna either by Shree Madhusudan Datta, the famous Bengali poet, of the narative ‘Meghanad’ and the promoter of the ‘Amitrakshar’ metre, or by Bankimchandra, the poet who sang the national song, Vande Mataram! The said essay tries to offer a plausible explanation of the final exit of Balaram, after the death of Lord Krishna, along with his followers into the sea in his original form of Shesh(शेष), a snake. It meant to say that Balaram entered the Western sea at Dwarka in his ships and went away to some foreign island in a serpentine fashion. I then remembered to have read a parallel instance mentioned by an Arya Samaji traveller in the account of his travels. About fifty years ago, this Arya Samaji traveller had visited Arabia to see the actual condition of the Hindu residents of the place. After enquiry, he found there is a small section of people who grew tufts of hair on the top of their heads (as the Brahmins and other Hindus here did till very recently). They told him that, according to a very sacred legend handed down to them by their forefathers, they were supposed to have gone there from India at some very ancient time. It is believed that at the time of a great war in India, they had left for Arabia and established a colony there, but never got themselves mixed up with the factions of the natives there, nor with their