King Rajendra I looted the temples of the defeated rulers and seized prized statues from them He put these statues in the decoration of the Shiva temple, which he built in his capital in the early 11th century. Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni was a contemporary of Rajendra I. He destroyed and looted the temples of defeated kings in order to win credit as a great hero of Islam. Thus, King Rajendra I constructed temples while Mahmud of Ghazni destroyed it. In this way, their actions were very much different.