The Rashtrakutas and their Times c10.s1.16

c10.s1.16

Pathari pillar inscription of king Parabala³² discloses the existence of a Rāṣṭrakūṭa family in Malva during the first half of the ninth century. This inscription, which is dated 861 A.D., informs us that an unnamed elder brother of Jejja, the grand-father of Parabala, had conquered Lāṭa country, after defeating the Karṇāṭaka army, and that his father Karkarāja had inflicted a crushing defeat upon a king called Nāgāvaloka. It cannot, however, be maintained that Dhruva I, his son and grandson were engaged in fighting with a king or kings of this Rāṣṭrakūṭa branch. It is no doubt true that Jejja's elder brother is represented as the conqueror of Lāṭa, when Dhruva and his successors were ruling; but Akālavarsha Śubhatuṅga had lost his thrown in his war with Vallabha in c. 840 A.D., while Jejja's elder brother must have flourished much earlier, as his grandson was ruling in 861 A.D. It is possible to argue that Jejja's elder brother conquered Lāṭa in c. 840 A.D. from Akālavarsha Śubhatuṅga and was succeeded not by Jejja but by his son Karkarāja, and that the king Nāgāvaloka defeated by the latter may have been Akālavarsha or his son Dhruva of the Gujrat line with an *avaloka*-ending epithet. This argument, besides being based upon an unproved assumption that Nāgāvaloka was an epithet of Akālavarsha or Dhruva II, ignores the fact that the Pathari pillar record nowhere states that Nāgāvaloka was a ruler of Lāṭa or Gujrat. The fact, that even the name of Jejja's elder brother, who had conquered Lāṭa, is not mentioned in Parabala's record, suggests that Parabala and his father Karka had nothing to do with Lāṭa, and, therefore, could not have been the enemies of the Gujrat Rāshṭrakūṭas. (33)