The Rashtrakutas and their Times c11.39

c11.39

It was some time in the last decade of the 9th century, that the career of the Gujrat Rāṣṭrakūṭa branch came to an end. 888 A.D. is the latest date, so far known, for its last ruler Kṛṣṇa, when he was fighting at Ujjayinī under his feudal lord Kṛṣṇa II. But soon thereafter the two rulers became enemies and a war ensued. Sangli²⁸ and Cambay²⁹ plates of Govinda IV refer to the evacuation of Kheṭaka by the enemies of Kṛṣṇa II; this must refer to the expulsion of the Gujrat ruler Kṛṣṇa or his successor from Kaira.³⁰ We come across no inscriptions of the Gujrat branch after 888 A.D.; the Kapadwanj grant of Kṛṣṇa II, dated 910 A.D.,³¹ reveals the existence of a new feudatory Pracaṇḍa of Brahmāvaloka house. To judge from the names of its members, this seems to have been a Canarese family, ruling under direct imperial supervision over the Kapadwanj Kaira area, which was formerly being governed by the Gujrat Rāṣṭrakūṭas. In the time also of the next ruler Indra III we find Gujrat being directly controlled from Malkhed. In his Begumra plates of 914 A.D. Indra regrants a village named Treṇṇā, which had been formerly bestowed upon the donee's ancestors both by Dhruva I and Dhruva II of the Gujrat branch. The donee's descendant was anxious for a regrant of the village, obviously because the grantor's family was no longer in power in southern Gujrat. We may, therefore, conclude that the Gujrat branch came to an end in c. 900 A.D.