The Rashtrakutas and their Times c8.s1: Kṛṣṇa I

The Rāṣṭrakūṭas and their Times c8.s1

Language: English

Kṛṣṇa I

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Dantidurga was succeeded by his uncle Kṛṣṇa I probably because he left no male issue. This reason is no doubt given by the Kadba plates which were issued in the reign of Karka II, but a record from Chitaldurg confirms it. This record³⁵ informs us that when Dantidurga died without a son, Kannara, his junior uncle, succeeded him.

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³⁵ E. C., XI, Chitaldurga No. 49, Alas plates of Yuvarāja Govinda refer to मानावलोकरत्नवर्षश्रीविजयादित्य, son of Dantivarman, as the person at whose request the grant was made. But since Dantivarman of this record is not the son of Indra, it will not be possible to identify him with Dantidurga.

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The view that Dantidurga was deposed by his uncle Kṛṣṇa for oppressing the subjects was based upon a misunderstanding of the verse:—

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तस्मिन्दिवं प्रयाते वल्लभराजेऽकृतप्रजाबाधे । श्रीकर्कराजसूनुर्महीपतिः कृष्णराजोऽभूत् ॥

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occurring in the Begumra plates of Kṛṣṇa II. The reading of the last part of the first line is ‘Kṣataprajābādhaḥ’ in the Talegaon plates of Kṛṣṇa I himself, and the Paithan plates of Govinda III, ‘Kṛtaprajāpālaḥ’ in the Daulatabad plates of S’aṅkaragaṇa, and ‘kṣitau prajāpālaḥ’ in the Alas plates of Kṛṣṇa’s son Govinda II. It is, therefore, clear that this line either praises Kṛṣṇa I for removing the miseries of the subjects or observes that Dantidurga was also a ruler of the same category; the correct reading of the last word of the first line in the Begumra plates is clearly, ‘akṛtaprajābādhe’ and not kṛtaprajābādhe. (36) A verse in the Baroda plates of Karka of the Gujrat branch no doubt says that Kṛṣṇa I had ousted a relative, who had gone astray, but the Bharata Itihasa Samshodhaka Mandala, (37) Talegaon (38) and Bhanduk (39) plates of Kṛṣṇa I himself make it abundantly clear that this relative could not have been Dantidurga. As Dr. D. R. Bhandarkar observes, (40) Kṛṣṇa I would not have tolerated a eulogy of his murdered nephew in his own grant, and added at the end that when the victim of his machinations had departed from this world, he ascended the throne. The relative ousted by Kṛṣṇa was very probably Karka II of the Antroli-Chharoli record who, we have seen, was a distant cousin of his. The Antroli-Chharoli record itself shows that Karka II was even then entertaining imperial ambition. Karka there styles himself ‘Samadhigatapanchamahāś’abda-parama-bhaṭṭāraka-mahārājādhirāja-parameś’vara : It will be seen that here Karka is trying to smuggle cleverly for himself the imperial title after first using the feudatory one to which alone he was entitled. After the death of Dantidurga he may have openly declared himself emperor. It is, therefore, very probable that the relative ousted by Kṛṣṇa was Karka II, he was certainly not Dantidurga.

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³⁶ I. A., XIII, pp. 66 ff.

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³⁷ B. I. S. M. J., VIII, p. 165.

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³⁸ E. I., XIII, pp. 275 ff.

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³⁹ E. I., XIV, pp. 121 ff.

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A verse occurring in four records of the Gujrat branch⁴¹ states that Kṛṣṇa obtained the title of *Rājādhirājaparameśvara* after defeating Rāhappa who had become inflated with pride about his strength. This Rāhappa must have been different from the relative, whom Kṛṣṇa had ousted, for he is nowhere described as a relative of Kṛṣṇa. He cannot be, therefore, Karka of the Antroli-Chharoli record. The present state of our knowledge, however, does not enable us to identify this potentate with certainty. A ruler of Mewar, bearing that name, is known to have flourished in c. 1200 A.D.; an inscription from the same province, dated 725 A.D., refers itself to the rule of *Mahārājādhirāja Parameśvara* Śrī-Dhavalappadeva.⁴² It may thus appear that in some of the ruling families of Mewar, names ending in *ppa* were current, and it is not impossible that Rāhappa, the opponent of Kṛṣṇa I, may have been a ruler in Mewar, possibly a hitherto unknown son or successor of king Dhavalappa just referred to. It has also to be remembered that the last part of the name Rāhappa bears a Canarese appearance, and since Kṛṣṇa I is said to have obtained the imperial position after defeating Rāhappa, it is not impossible that Rāhappa may have been either another name of Kīrtivarman, or a *biruda* of the contemporary Vengi ruler Viṣṇuvardhana defeated by his heir-apparent. It must, however, be confessed that in the present state of our knowledge no identification, that can be unreservedly accepted, can be proposed.

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⁴¹ Kavi Plates of Govinda, 827-8 A. D., I. A., V, pp. 145 ff. Begumra plates of Dhruvarāja II, 867-8 A. D., I. A., XII, pp. 181 ff. ,, ,, ,, Kṛṣṇa, 888-9 A. D., I. A., XIII, pp. 46 ff. Surat plates of Karka, 821 A. D. (being edited by the writer in E. I.)

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⁴² E. I., XII, pp. 11 ff.

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Kṛṣṇa was a mature man of about 45 when he succeeded his nephew in c. 756. He had very probably participated in many of the campaigns of his nephew, and it is very probable that the final defeat of Kīrtivarman was his achievement. For Kīrtivarman was holding his own in Karnatak as late as 757 A.D., i. e. three years after the last known date of Dantidurga and one year before the first known date of Kṛṣṇa I. The Bharata Itihasa Samshodhak Mandala plates of Kṛṣṇa, issued in September 758, do not refer to his defeat of the Chālukyas; it is probable that the event was yet to take place then. But not much later than that date he must have completed the Chālukya overthrow, and annexed the southern part of that kingdom.

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He must have spent some time in consolidating his position; but that was not much. Soon he undertook an offensive expedition against Gangavadi; for his Talegaon plates (43) show him encamped in 768 A.D. at Maṇṇe in Mysore state during the course of that expedition. An echo of this invasion of Gangavadi is heard in a lithic record from Tumkur district, (44) immortalising the memory of a hero, who had fallen in the war caused by the rising of the Raṭṭas against Gangavadi. Since this record refers itself to the reign of Srīpurusha, it is clear that this aged ruler was on the throne of Gangavadi when Kṛṣṇa invaded it after annexing the Chālukya dominions. The issue of Talegaon plates from Maṇṇe, the Ganga capital, shows that Kṛṣṇa was successful in his expedition. Kṛṣṇa's expedition against the Gangas was not known before the publication of his Talegaon plates.

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The Chālukyas of Vengi were next attacked, and this expedition was under the charge of Yuvarāja Govinda whom we find encamped on the confluence of the Musi and the Krishna—hardly 100 miles from Vengi itself—in 770 A.D. while conducting that expedition (45). Viṣṇuvardhana IV, who was then upon the Vengi throne, was defeated by Govinda. As a result of this victory a major part of the modern state of Hyderabad must have passed under the Rāṣṭrakūṭa sway. The recently published Bhanduk plates (46) of Kṛṣṇa show that in 772 A.D. practically the whole of Marathi C. P. was then under his rule.

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⁴³ E. I., XIII, pp. 275 ff.

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⁴⁴ E. C., XII, Maddagiri, No. 99.

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Kṛṣṇa I had also brought under his sway southern Konkan. From the Kharepatan plates of Raṭṭarāja, we learn that Saṇaphulla, the founder of the line, had obtained the territories between the Sahya and the sea through the favour of Kṛṣṇarāja. (47) S'ilāhāras were for a long time very loyal feudatories of the Rāṣṭrakūṭas; allowing about 25 years per generation for the ancestors of Raṭṭarāja, we find that Saṇaphulla has to be placed in the latter half of the 8th century It is therefore evident that Kṛṣṇarāja, who had placed Saṇaphulla in charge of Konkan, must be Kṛṣṇa I.

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The date of the death of Kṛṣṇa I is not known, but it must have taken place some time between the 23rd of June 772 A.D., when the Talegaon plates were issued and October 775 A.D., when the Pimperi plates (48) were issued by his son Dhruva, which do not refer to Kṛṣṇa I as living or ruling.

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Kṛṣṇa was undoubtedly an able ruler and a skilful general. During his short reign of about 18 years he enlarged the kingdom he had inherited to three times its original size by annexing Konkan, Karnatak and the major portion of Hyderabad state to his empire. He had humbled down the Ganga and Vengi rulers and the expression ‘Kāñchīguṇālaṅkṛtā vis'vambharā nijavaniteva sā tena bhuktā’ occurring in his Talegaon plates, may perhaps be referring to the defeat of the Pallava ruler of Kanchi as well, though we have no other evidence on the point. It is clear that by his conquests Kṛṣṇa I had secured for his house a dominating position in the Deccan paving thereby the way of his successors to participate in the politics of the north. He was also a great builder and caused to be excavated the Ellora Kailasa temple which is one of the architectural wonders of the world, since the whole structure is hewn out of solid rock.

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⁴⁵ Alas plates of Yuvarāja Govinda, E. I., VI, pp. 208 ff.

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⁴⁶ E. I., XIV, pp. 121 ff.

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⁴⁷ E. I., III, pp. 292 ff.

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⁴⁸ E. I., X, pp. 81 ff.

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The overthrow of the Cālukyas was complete and decisive, and it is only rarely that we come across even Cālukya feudatories in the first century of the Rāṣṭrakūṭa rule. Only three such feudatories come to our notice. (i) Kaṭṭiyira of Diḍgur inscription (49) was possibly a Cālukya chief but he was a very petty ruler. Kaṭṭiyiradeva, who is mentioned as an ancestor of later Cālukyas in Managoli inscription, (50) may possibly be this Kaṭṭiyira. (ii) Kadba plates of Govinda III (51) disclose another Cālukya feudatory named Yaśovarman, but since he had to requisition the services of the Ganga chief to secure the permission of Govinda III for certain grants it is doubtful whether he was a ruler of even a mediocre feudatory status. (iii) Mahāsāmanta Budhavarsha of the Torkhede plates of Govinda III (52) was possibly of Cālukya extraction, but his feudal sway extended over only 12 villages. Arikesarin was a powerful Cālukya feudatory, but he belongs to the eve of the rise of the later Cālukyas. It seems clear that Kṛṣṇa had not permitted any member of the dethroned dynasty to occupy a position of any political importance in his empire.

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It was only for the sake of convenience that the house of Dantidurga was designated as the Malkhed Rāṣṭrakūṭa house in the present and the preceding chapter. Malkhed became the capital in the time of Amoghavarsha I, and the pre-Malkhed capital of the house cannot yet be determined with certainty. On the strength of a verse in the Kathākosha, it was once suggested that Malkhed was the capital of the Rāṣṭrakūṭas from the beginning, since the verse in question mentions Śubhatuṅga, which was one of the *birudas* of Kṛṣṇa I, as ruling at Malkhed. This view, however, does not seem to be correct, since Śubhatuṅga is known to have been a *biruda* of Kṛṣṇa II as well. Besides a verse in the Karda plates of Karka II distinctly states that Amoghavarṣa I built Mānyakheṭa, which could put to shame even the capital of gods. ⁽⁵³⁾ It would, therefore, seem that before the time of Amoghavarṣa I some other city than Malkhed was the capital of the empire, especially as no record earlier than his time refers to Malkhed as capital. It has been suggested that Mayūrakhiṇḍi or Morkhind, a fort in the district of Nasik, may have been the pre-Malkhed capital, since Wani-Dindori, Radhanpur and Kadba plates of Govinda III were issued from that place. But the expression used in these records is *Mayūrakhiṇḍīsamāvāsitena mayā* and not *Mayūrakhiṇḍīvāstav-yena mayā*. It is, therefore, quite possible that at the time of the issue of these records Govinda III may have temporarily encamped in this fort. In the Wani-Dindori plates the village granted is described as included in Vaṭanagara *viṣaya* of Nāsika *deś'a*. If Morkhinda of Nasik district were really the capital at this period, it is strange that the *viṣaya* or *deś'a* in which it was situated should not have been designated after it. It would, therefore, appear that Mayūrakhiṇḍī was only a military station and not a capital. This same circumstance would go against the view that Nasik was the capital. The Dhulia ⁽⁵⁴⁾ and Pimperi ⁽⁵⁵⁾ plates besides show that Nasik was the seat of a viceroy, and not of the central Government, in the 8th century. Lāṭūra was the original home of the family, from which it had migrated in Berar a few centuries earlier; and it was also included in the Rāṣṭrakūṭa kingdom in the reign of Kṛṣṇa I. But there is no evidence to show that the earlier rulers of the family had made their ancestral home once more their capital. Paithan also was not the capital as the Paithan plates of Govinda III would show. As it is, we have to confess that the early capital of the house cannot be determined with certainty. It is, however, not improbable that Elichpur in Berar, where the ancestors of Dantidurga were ruling before the rise of the house, may have continued to be the capital, till it was changed to Malkhed. Cousens has recently suggested ⁵⁶ that the Rāṣṭrakūṭa capital may have been located somewhere in the vicinity of the Elora caves in the time of Dantidurga. He thinks that the place called as 'Sooloobunjun' in the Indian atlas sheets, which is just above the plateau near the Elora caves, may have been the actual locality of the capital, since what look like the remains of a town and a very large tank are still to be seen in the place. This view is a probable one, but the identification of the pre-Malkhed capital with Sooloobunjun can be accepted as proved only when more substantial evidence can be adduced. As it is, we have to admit that we have no definite knowledge as to the precise site of the capital before it was shifted to Malkhed.

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Epigraphia Carnatica