تحقيق ما للهند (Al-Biruni's India — Sachau edition, BnF)

From this year, we must distinguish another, which he also calls "our year"—the gauge- or test-year. He uses this as a standard in all the chronological computations of the book and reduces all dates in the text, whether relating to preceding or following times, to it. It is also called mithālunā our standard. While in the first part of the book, up to page 190, the term "our year" refers to the time of composition, in the latter part (starting on page 203), it refers to this gauge year. The author chose it based on technical chronology and took great pains to fix it by expressing it in dates of the Hindu, Persian, and Arabian eras. It is February 25, 1031 AD, a Thursday.

The gauge-date, it must be kept in mind, is a day chosen for convenience and is not connected with the time of the book's composition. When the author wrote, the date belonged to the future, falling five months after he had finished his work.

Regarding the place where Alberuni wrote, we have no direct information. We can only refer the reader to the note at the end of the manuscript Schefer see p. IX, which states he finished his autograph copy in Ghazna. We may therefore conjecture that the Indica was composed in Ghazna, then one of the largest capitals in Asia. In Ghazna, he had plenty of opportunities to consult Hindus of all descriptions. The Hindu population of the town was quite large, consisting of indigenous Hindus of Kabulistan, prisoners of war, and free men attracted to the center of power and wealth to serve as laborers, artists, and craftsmen. They built mosques and palaces for the Muslim conqueror, just as Greek architects did for the Umayyad Caliphs in Damascus. Further, there were soldiers, officers, politicians, scholars, and merchants—representatives of all castes and tribes from nearly all parts of northwestern India.

But Alberuni did not study India only in Ghazna. He traveled in India and probably stayed there many years. Reserving the description of his study of Sanskrit for a later chapter, we shall limit ourselves here to enumerating those places which, according to his own statement, he visited. Whether he lived and traveled in India in an official capacity or as a private man under the protection of the Ghazna government is a question regarding which he leaves us in the dark. The towns he saw, besides Ghazna and Kabul, are the following:

Gandi Gandī, also called Ribāṭ al-amīr the station of the prince.