The Dynastic History of Northern India (Early Mediaeval Period) v1.c10: Introduction

The Dynastic History of Northern India (Early Mediaeval Period) v1.c10

Language: English

v1.c10.12 — 5 parts

Introduction

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Nowhere is the comparison of history with a stream that rises in the dark and mysterious heights of the past and flows into eternity more apt than in the case of Indian history. Very few countries in the world "can boast of an ancient civilization, so continuous and unbroken as in India." But while this is true, it is also unfortunately a fact that its source and earlier courses are shrouded in a mystery which is darker than in the case of most countries. We do not even know who were the most ancient peoples in India. The theory that the Dravidians were the autochthons of India is gradually being given up in favour of the Pre-Dravidians. The Mundas of North-Eastern India are supposed to be typical representatives of this physical type, which is preserved on small isolated areas in India and Burma. Their language, which is closely allied to the Austric group of speech, is found scattered over a wide area, extending from the South Pacific and the Indian Ocean to the Punjab. So far there is no inherent improbability in the supposition that a branch of this great race of the human family inhabited India at least before the Dravidians. As to these latter nobody can definitely say whence they originally came or what their features originally were. The difficulty of an attempt to generalise a physical type from the appearance of the modern speakers of the Dravidian languages, is exemplified in the case of the Brahuis in Baluchistan, who are totally different in appearance from their supposed cousins in the south of India. If the Brahui type was altered by the admixture of Iranian blood, what guarantee is there that the Dravidian tribes who filtered into the Indian peninsula were not also fundamentally altered by contact with the Pre-Dravidians? The presence of Dravidian speech in Baluchistan, near one of the gates of India, in the north-west, and "the undoubted similarity of the Sumerian and Dravidian ethnic types," have given rise to rival theories. While Rapson contends that they came into India through Baluchistan, Hall thought that they went to Western Asia from India. The recent excavations at Harappa (Montgomery district, Punjab) and Mohen-jo Daro (Larkana district, Sind) may have important bearings on the question. Scholars have found a similarity between this Indian civilization and the Sumerian culture of the 4th millennium B.C. In the present state of our knowledge, it would be perhaps risky to base any conclusions on the data revealed by the explorers' spade; but it is significant that so far no arms or weapons of any kind have been discovered at Harappa and Mohen-jo Daro. To all appearance therefore they were colonies of a people devoted mainly to the arts of peace. If this is conceded, it rather goes against their identification with the *Dāsas* against whose citadels and weapons the Āryans so often invoked the aid of Indra. The identification of the *Dāsas* with the Dravidians, again, though frequently assumed, is difficult to prove. Beyond the fact that they had flat noses (*anās* = noseless?) and are described as 'of hostile speech' (*mṛdhra-vāc*), of black skin (*tvacam kṛṣṇām*; *kṛṣṇā*) and possibly as phallus-worshippers (*śiśna-devāḥ*), we know very little about the physical appearance of these enemies of the Āryans. It may be pointed out that some of the epithets mentioned above may still be applied without distinction to many of the tribes who now speak Dravidian or the Austric languages. It is not unlikely therefore that the word *Dāsa* was a term which was used in general to denote the non-Āryan tribes who opposed the Vedic Indians. In that case, the term may not have had in the Vedic period any definite ethnic sense to designate a compact racial group.

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The problems confronting us in regard to the rise and growth of the power of the Vedic Āryans are not less obscure. After a discussion extending over a period of about a hundred years we are still in the region of conjecture as to their original habitat and the date of their first arrival in India. The discovery of the names of Ṛgvedic gods in the Boghaz-köi inscriptions in Cappadocia, dated in about 1400 B.C., and of Āryan names in the inscriptions of Mesopotamia of about the same period, must have an important bearing on these questions. But though this may be accepted as “specific evidence for the supposition that by the fifteenth century B.C. tribes of Āryan stock held, or exercised influence over, a wide area, extending from northern Asia Minor over north-west Babylonia to Media,” the further assumption of Dr. Giles that “even then, or soon after, the Āryans pushed their way still eastwards” till they reached India is obviously open to some doubt. Jacobi and Pargiter, for instance, have formed quite different conclusions on the same data. Without agreeing with all that these scholars have urged, we may point out that nothing conclusive can be urged against their view that the Boghaz-köi inscription may be an evidence of an overflow of races of Āryan stock from India. Not only is the date of the first arrival of the Āryans in India uncertain, but anything of the nature of the accepted chronology for the whole period down to about 600 B.C. is practically non-existent. It is true that the epic and *pauranic* literatures claim to give us the history of this period. Thorough analysis of this tradition by Pargiter and a number of Indian scholars has shown that these should not be hastily rejected as mere ‘bardic tales.’ But the scheme of chronology proposed by them on the basis of this tradition¹ has not yet been thoroughly discussed and tested so that it can be safely adopted in any survey of Indian history. For practical purposes the approximate dates of the

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¹ | | | | |

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| (*a*) | Kṛta Age | . . . . . c. | 2090-1610 B.C. |
| (*b*) | Tretā Age | . . . . . c. | 1610-1310 B.C. |
| (*c*) | Dvāpara Age | . . . . . c. | 1310-950 B.C. |
| (*d*) | Sudāsa and the battle of the 10 kings | . . . . . c. | 1274 B.C. |
| (*e*) | Foundation of the Bārhadrathas | . . . . . c. | 1106 B.C. |
| (*f*) | The Bhārata battle | . . . . . c. | 950 B.C |
| (*g*) | Beginning of the Pradyotas | . . . . . c. | 619 B.C. |
| (*h*) | Accession of Mahāpadma | . . . . . c. | 402 B.C. |

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See Pargiter, *Ancient Indian Historical Tradition*, London, 1922. The chronology adopted in Raychaudhuri's *Political History of Ancient India*, Book I, and Pradhan's *Chronology of Ancient India* is somewhat different.

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Achaemenian invasion of India (*c.* 520-18 B.C.) and the date of Alexander's irruption (*c.* 326-25 B.C.) are still the earliest landmarks known for certain in Indian history. By calculating backwards from these dates, and with the assistance of the information contained in the chronicles of the Brahmans, Jains, and Buddhists a rough chronological framework has been established from about 600 B.C. downwards. It seems that about this period Northern India and a portion of the Deccan were parcelled out into small independent principalities. A stereotyped list of sixteen such states is probably contained in the *Aṅguttara Nikāya* of the Buddhists. Before the death of Buddha, however, in the eighties of the fifth century B.C. a considerable change appears to have taken place in the political geography of Northern India. Some of the smaller states seem to have been absorbed in four principalities of considerable size, viz., Avanti, Vatsa, Kosala and Magadha. About the last quarter of the 4th century B.C., the last of these had swallowed up the other three. When Alexander crossed the Ravi in 326 B.C., he was opposed on the Beas by an Indian prince who was most probably a king of the Nanda dynasty of Magadha. Under the Mauryas the Magadhan empire grew until it embraced the whole of India excepting the extreme south, where a few Tamil states were suffered to exist by the peaceful policy of Aśoka. This practical unification of India under the hegemony of Magadha is an event of great importance in the history of India before the advent of the British. It was twice nearly achieved under some of the Tughluqs and the Mughuls. But during the Hindu period India was never again united under one sceptre. Historians have, of course, tried to add unity to pre-Muslim history by clustering the political events round this or that dynasty of Northern India which grew powerful from time to time; but it must be pointed out that none of these ruled even over the whole of Northern India, not to speak of the peninsular portion, where often equally powerful if not stronger dynasties ruled contemporaneously, with them. The Magadhan empire did not long survive the death of Aśoka. The pressure of successive hordes of Yavanas, Śaka-Pahlavas, and Yueh-chi invaders from the north-western gates and the rise of the Sātavāhanas in the Deccan gradually reduced the successors of the Mauryas to little more than Magadhan princes. The establishment of the Kuṣāṇa empire in the North-west removed the centre of political interest, at least in Northern India, from Pāṭaliputra to Peshawar. In the time of Kaniṣka the Kuṣāṇa dominions stretched across the Punjab to the Ganges valley as far east as Sarnath, and may have even included Magadha. By the beginning of the 3rd century, the Kuṣāṇas were reduced to the position of local rulers in the Punjab, while the rest of Northern India was probably parcelled out amongst the Satraps of Ujjayinī, the Nāgas, the Licchavis, and other minor powers, and in the Deccan the position of the Sātavāhanas appears to have been taken up by the Vākāṭakas. Further south, in the Guntur, Bellary and the Northern Tamil districts, we find the first beginnings of the rise of the Pallava power. The end of the 3rd century brings us to a revival of the power of Magadha under the Guptas. By the end of the 4th century the Magadhan empire under Candragupta II embraced a large portion of Northern India. But Sind, portions of Rajputana and the Punjab, Kashmir, portions of Nepal, Assam, and large areas of Bengal and Orissa remained permanently outside the orbit of the Gupta empire, though some of them may have acknowledged a nominal allegiance to the Gupta emperor. The Southern contemporaries of the Guptas during this period were in the Deccan, the Vākāṭakas and further south the Pallavas and Kadambas.

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The failure of the Guptas to capture and guard the north-western gates of India soon resulted in the arrival of another horde of barbarian invaders, the Hūṇas, about the middle of the 5th century A.D. The shock of the Hūṇa invasions must have shaken the foundations of the imperial power of the Guptas, although, as is indicated by the Damodarpur plates (443-543 A.D.), they apparently retained a substantial section of their dominions till about the first half of the 6th century A.D. But the Gupta power was fast declining by that time, and new rivals had arisen who threatened its foundations. The period that followed saw a scramble for power amongst the Puṣpabhūtis of Sthāṇvīśvara, the Maukharis of Kānyakubja, the Gauḍas of Karṇasuvarṇa, the Bhagadattas of Prāgjyotiṣa, and the later Guptas. The struggle ended about the beginning of the 7th century A.D. in the establishment of the hegemony of the Puṣpabhūtis over a large portion of Northern India, with their capital at Kanauj. In the Deccan the Cāḷukyas of Vātāpi had supplanted the Vākāṭakas, while further south the Pallavas of Kāñcī were fast growing into a great power. There was little love lost between these three kingdoms, and bitter wars soon ensued between them. The Cāḷukyas had to maintain a twofold struggle on the Narbada and the Kistna-Tungabhadra frontiers against their northern and southern enemies.

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The death of Harṣa, soon after 646 A.D., has been regarded by historians as an epoch in the history of India. According to V. A. Smith, India after this date lapsed back into its normal condition, " a medley of petty states with ever varying boundaries and engaged in unceasing internecine war," till it fell a prey to Islamic invaders. During the period that followed everything declined, and polity, literature, and religion sank into mediocrity. Accordingly that excellent historian considered the year 647 A.D. as the beginning of the mediaeval period of Indian history. In this conclusion, he has of late been followed by a number of writers both European and Indian. But even a superficial examination of the facts shows the utter hollowness of the proposition. The year 647 A.D. marked no epoch in the history of the Deccan and the far south, which continued to flourish as before under separate dynasties. In the Deccan the Cālukyas (c. 550-753 A.D.) were followed about the middle of the 8th century by the Rāṣṭrakūṭas (c. 753-973 A.D.) and the latter in the middle of the 10th century by the Cāḷukyas of Kalyāṇa (c. 973-1190 A.D.). In the south the Pallavas (c. 550-880 A.D.)

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continued to reign till about the last quarter of the 8th century, when they were supplanted by the Cōḷas (*c.* 880-1300 A.D.) as the supreme power south of the Tungabhadra. Even Northern India was not wholly included in Harṣa's dominions. Smith himself admits that Kashmir, Punjab, Sind, Rajputana and Kāmarūpa were outside his empire. The evidence on which Valabhī, Nepal, and Bengal are reckoned as part of his dominions is extremely uncertain and vague. An Indian scholar has recently tried to show after a critical study of the epigraphic and literary evidence that Harṣa's territory only "comprised the districts roughly corresponding to the present United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, with a portion of Eastern Punjab and Western Bihar.¹ "According to this view Harsa's dominions were bounded by the Himalayas, the Western Punjab, Rajputana, Central India, and Bengal." Though this may perhaps be regarded as a rather extreme statement of the position, yet I think the time has come when we should try to avoid basing our conclusions on vague statements of partisans and *prasastikāras*. That Harṣa was the most considerable prince of Northern India is proved by the epithet *Sakala-Uttarā-patheśvara*, applied to him by his enemies the Cālukyas;² but we must learn to differentiate between the most powerful king of Northern India and the emperor of Northen India. In view of this position, it is absurd to say that no emperor arose in Northern India whose dominions could rival those of Harṣa. There is unquestioned evidence, as we shall see later on, that some of the Pratīhāra emperors ruled over an empire more extensive than that of the Puṣpabhūti king. Again, the assertion that there was a general decline in everything from about 647 A.D. is, to say the least, extremely exaggerated. It is true that no Kālidāsa was born again; but to regard poets and dramatists like Bahavabhūti, Viśākhadatta and Rājaśekhara as representatives of a decadent literature is, I fear, somewhat inaccurate. In religion; if Buddhism disappeared, the period saw the birth of teachers like Śaṅkara and Rāmānuja. In the field of Mathematics and Astronomy it produced the famous Bhāskarācārya, whose work “enjoyed more authority in India than any other astronomical work except the *Sūrya-Siddhānta*.” In the domain of architecture Smith himself admits that “it was practised on a magnificent scale” during the period that followed the death of Harṣa. Under these circumstances to regard Harṣa's death as an epoch marking the end of all unity in India and ushering in the mediaeval period is to show a false perspective of the main currents of affairs. If Indian history lost her unity she lost it with the death of Aśoka in the 3rd century B.C. If we have to find for practical purposes another date which will serve as a landmark in the history of Northern India, then 916 A.D., and not 647, is more appropriate, as we shall presently see.

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¹ Dr. R. C. Majumdar, *JBORS*, 1923.

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² *EI*, Vol. V, p. 202, line 9.

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But though the year 647 A.D. cannot be regarded as an epoch marking the transition of the ancient into the mediaeval period, it is certainly a date of considerable importance in the history of Northern India. There is some reason to believe that after the death of Harṣa the power of Tibet extended across Nepal to the Ganges valley. There was also probably a revival of the power of the Guptas under Ādityasena. But the most important event that followed was the struggle for the mastery of Kanauj. That city appears to have acquired an imperial reputation under the sway of the Maukharis and the Puṣpabhūtis. For about a hundred years Kānyakubja and the Ganges-Jumna Doab remained a bone of contention amongst the rulers of India. The struggle was opened by the Kārkoṭa Lalitāditya of Kashmir, who about 736 A.D. conquered the principality of Kānyakubja, which at that time extended “from the bank of the Yamunā to that of the Kālikā” (probably the Kālī Nadī, which runs parallel to the Ganges and falls into it below Kanauj). Then came the Pālas of Bengal and Bihar, who some time after 783 A.D., under Dharmapāla, conquered the city of Kanauj and extended their power as far as the eastern districts of the Punjab. Then came the attacks of the Gurjara-Pratīhāras of Western India and the Rāṣṭrakūṭas of the Deccan. The tripartite struggle between Pālas, Raṣṭrakūṭas and Pratīhāras at last resulted in the winning of the *Mahodayaśrī* by the last-named.

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It is not exactly known when they first captured Kanauj; but they must have done it some time before 836 A.D., the date of the Barah inscription of Bhoja I, which was issued from Mahodaya itself. The capture of this city gradually led to the foundation of a Gurjara-Pratīhāra empire which rivalled that of the Guptas, and was more extensive than that of the Puṣpabhūtis. Even if we omit the somewhat doubtful passage in the *Rājataraṅgiṇī* which refers to the dominion in the Punjab of an *Adhirāja* Bhoja, the power of the Bhoja I in the Punjab is unquestionably demonstrated by the discovery of his Pehowa inscriptions in the district of Karnal. The Una grants of Balavarman and Avanivarman show that the Saurāṣṭra-*Maṇḍala* (Kathiawar) was within the dominions of Mahendrapāla I. As the Khajuraho inscription of the Candellas, dated in V. S. 1101 (A.D. 954) still acknowledges the sovereignty of Vināyakapāla, it is reasonable to conclude that the Candellas were also feudatories of the Pratīhāras from an earlier period. The Dighwa Dubauli plates of Mahendrapāla I, show that Śrāvastī-*Viṣaya* in the U. P. was in his dominions. The writings of the Arab geographers seem to indicate that the Gurjara empire touched the borders of Sind in the extreme west, while the Ramgaya, Guneria and Itkhori inscriptions in the East show Pratīhāra power in Bihar.

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The recent discovery of a pillar-inscription of Mahendrapāla I at Paharpur, in North Bengal probably shows the extreme eastern extension of the Gurjara-Pratīhāras' kingdom. In the face of all this epigraphic evidence which shows that the Gurjara-Pratīhāra empire embraced the whole of Northern India excepting Sind, western portions of the Punjab, Kashmir, Nepal, Assam and portions of Bengal, C. P., and Orissa, it is absurd to say that they ruled over only "the Cis-Sutlej districts of the Punjab, the greater part of the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh and the Gwalior territory.’¹ Unlike the limits of the empire of Harṣa, which has been defined for us by vague expression of his friends and enemies, the bounds of the Pratīhāras’ empire are determined by unquestioned archaeological evidence. It is of course unfortunate that no Bāṇa or Yuan Chwang has left for us a detailed account of the life and administration of Bhoja and Mahendrapāla I; but that is no reason why we should relegate their history to the mediaeval period, which, according to V. A. Smith and his followers, specifically deals with the history of the ‘petty states’ whose internecine wars preceded the Muslim conquest of India. The period of disruption that intervened between the fall of the Puṣpabhūtis and the rise of the Gurjara-Pratīhāras cannot in any sense be regarded as a curious phenomenon marking an epoch in Indian history.

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A period of struggle has always intervened between the fall of one and the rise of another powerful dynasty in India until the establishment of British rule. But if for practical purposes we must draw a line between the so-called ancient and mediaeval periods, it is more convenient to draw it somewhere about 916 A.D. when the Pratīhāra empire in Northern India at last began to break up into numerous petty states. As usual, ‘‘a political re-adjustment would probably have taken place, sooner or later, if the Indian states were left to themselves.’’ But unfortunately the Turks appeared at this crisis on the north-western frontier carrying the Muslim flag. The Pratīhāra empire had played no insignificant part in preventing the Arabs from gaining the same success in India as in other lands. But the Turks were more fortunate, and before the breach could be repaired by the same natural process which had hitherto always operated in India, they charged through the gap and carried everything before them. The incidents during the period of about three hundred years (*c.* 916 to 1200 A.D.) may be taken to be only a prelude to the final act of the drama, which saw the standards of Islam on most of the important citadels of Northern India. Considered from this point of view, the year 916 A.D. may for practical purposes be accepted as the line of demarcation between the two periods in the history of Northern India. These may be called the ancient and the mediaeval periods;

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but it would perhaps be more reasonable to call them simply the Hindu period and the period of the Turks and Afghans.

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¹ Ishwari Prasad, *History of Mediaeval India*, 1925, Allahabad, pp. 2-3.

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I have already pointed out the danger of calling Harṣa the emperor of Northern India on the strength of mere catch-phrases. A large portion of Northern India remained outside his dominions; and in this region the year 647 A.D. was only in a very limited sense, if at all, an event of any importance. Similarly a large part of it, though probably less in extent than in the time of Harṣa, lay outside the orbit of the Gurjara-Pratīhāra empire; and here again the year 916 A.D., which saw the beginning of the break-up of the Pratīhāra empire did not bring such vital changes as to mark an epoch in its history. To some at least the year 916 A.D., does not appear to have had the slightest significance. The time has come when we should realise more clearly the vastness of India and recognise the limitations of such expressions as 'emperor of India' or even 'emperor of Northern India' which are so frequently used in text-books on Indian history. In the strictest sense of the word there was perhaps no Hindu ruler who could be called the emperor of the whole of Northern India after the fall of the Mauryas. But for practical purposes, as I have said, the arrival of the Turk on the Indian frontier in the 10th century may well serve as a land-mark in Indian history.

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A minute study of the dynasties that ruled in Northern India from the 10th century till the completion of the Turkish conquest is important for more than one reason.

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Firstly, the period forms a very important chapter in the growth, rise, and decay of the Rajput states. Most of the Hindu states in Northern India during this period were ruled by tribes who claimed Rajput descent. Since the day when Tod wrote his celebrated *Annals*, no attempt has yet been made to study systematically the various sources of information and give a connected account of these tribes based on sound archæological evidence.¹ Tod’s work is in many ways a masterpiece; but it is hopelessly out-of-date. The scanty accounts of these tribes given in various publications since the time of Tod are mainly based on Muḥammadan chronicles. These works have many excellent characteristics, but they were written by enemies of the Rajputs, whose difference in religion would further tend to make them more tainted and onesided. Again, these chroniclers often wrote as historians of the Delhi empire, and as such omitted many interesting details of the history of these Rajput tribes which appeared to them to be rather trivial and unimportant It has, therefore, become necessary to check and supplement their accounts, wherever possible, with the evidence of archæology and more reliable Hindu chronicles, some of which have recently been discovered.

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¹ Since this was written, I have seen some fascicules of Rai Bahadur G. H. Ojha's *History of the Rajputs*, written in Hindi.

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Secondly, a critical study of this period is important for the history of the Hindus in general. For it will probably reveal some of the forces which vitally influenced Hindu society, religion and polity, the marks of which can be traced even to this day. But a critical study of the period is perhaps more important for the history of the Turks and Afghans in India. When they conquered Northern India, they could not at once change the whole system of administration of the country. Local government, revenue administration and many other features of Hindu polity must have continued unchanged under their régime. A careful analysis of this data from the inscriptions and other records of the Hindu states cannot therefore fail to be of supreme value if we would rightly understand the beginnings of Muslim rule in India. It will help us to judge how far, if at all, the Turkish and Afghan rulers borrowed their methods of administration from their Hindu predecessors.

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DYNASTIC HISTORY OF NORTHERN INDIA