The Rashtrakutas and their Times c11.22

c11.22

¹³ Cf. the expression ‘रट्टैश्चोदितः’ in the passage quoted in the foot-note No. 6 above. This lord of the Raṭṭas who incited the Vengi ruler could not have been Prithvirāma, the Raṭṭa feudatory of Kṛṣṇa II; besides being a petty ruler, he was not an immediate neighbour either of Vijayāditya or of the Gangas to make his incitement to the former to attack the latter probable. I freely admit that the theory advanced in the text above that Vijayāditya attacked the Gangas at the instigation of his enemy Amoghavarsha or Krishna II looks a little unconvincing. In politics, however, the enemies of today become friends of tomorrow; the conduct of Greece and Italy in the last world war is a pertinent example. It is possible to argue that the Raṭṭa chief, who incited Vijayāditya, may have been a hitherto unknown feudatory Rāṣṭrakūṭa ruler, whose advice the Vengi ruler may have followed without any suspicion. The term Raṭṭas, however, can hardly be appropriate with reference to a mere feudatory and can properly denote only the Rāṣṭrakūṭa emperor ruling at the time. Fleet's view that Vijayāditya was challenged by the Rattas to attack the Gangas is also unconvincing, for ‘sanchodita’ cannot mean ‘challenged by.’ The theory propounded above in the text is therefore the only one that explains the facts known so far.