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The Turks were eager to gain wealth and spread their religion but there was also another important interest they had in mind—the capture of slaves. Over the next few centuries, hundreds of thousands of Indian slaves—particularly from West Punjab and Sind—were marched into Afghanistan and were then sold in the bazaars of Central Asia and the Middle east. They were unused to the extreme cold of the Afghan mountains and died in such large numbers that the range came to be known as the Hindukush or the ‘Killer of Hindus’.

These raids and invasions were not met with a strong response as there would have been in the times of the Mauryans or the Guptas. The last great Hindu empire of North India—that of the Gurjara-Pratiharas—was reduced in power and the heart of the civilization had shifted south to the Vindhyas. The most powerful Indian kingdom of that time was that of the Cholas, who ruled in the far south and were not much concerned with what was happening in the North West.

Meanwhile, freed from the political and cultural domination of the Gangetic plains, central India experienced a cultural and economic boom. This was the age of the remarkable Raja Bhoj, the warrior-scholar who ruled much of central India and of the Chandelas of Bundelkhand, who built the temples of Khajuraho.

Raja Bhoj is not given much importance by historians but central India is full of stories and ballads about him. How much of these are true? It’s hard to say but one cannot deny his importance to this region. Raja Bhoj rebuilt the Somnath temple, fought against many Turkish raids and built one of the largest forts in the world at Mandu in Madhya Pradesh. But the most visible of his achievements is the huge lake that he created using an earthen dam in Bhopal, a city that is named after him. Before the Bhopal gas tragedy of 1984, the city was best known for this body of water. It shows the skills of the medieval engineers. The lake still stands, after all these years, proving that big dams work well in the Malwa plateau unlike the Himalayas where tectonics and silt can make them risky to build.

from Page 119-120 of ‘The Incredible History of the Geography of India by Saneev Sanyal