The Dynastic History of Northern India (Early Mediaeval Period) v1.c18.242

v1.c18.242

We have very little other authentic information about him. *Pṛthvīrāja-Rāso* however purports to narrate some of his achievements. We are told in this work that Vijayapāla "attacked the Somavaṁśī king Mukundadeva of Katak, who gave his daughter in marriage to Vijayapāla's son Jayacandra, to whom a daughter named Saṁyogitā was born in S. 1133."¹ The *Rāso* also contains references to Vijayapāla's attack on Bholābhīm of Paṭṭanapura (Anhilvāḍ) and Anaṅgapāla of Delhi.² In the latter case he is reported to have been defeated by the combined armies of Anaṅgapāla and Someśvara. It is difficult to accept any of these statements as historical.³ The available lists of the Somavaṁśīs of Orissa do not contain the name Mukundadeva.⁴ Moreover, as I have shown elsewhere,⁵ the Somavaṁśīs were most probably destroyed by the Gaṅgas in the 11th century and the king who ruled in Cuttack contemporaneously with Vijayacandra was not the fictitious Mukundadeva but the Gaṅgas Kāmārṇava VII (*c.* 1147-56 A.D.) and Rāghava (*c.* 1156-70 A.D). Similarly, if Bholābhīm is to be identified with the Caulukya king Bhīmadeva II (*c.* 1178-1241 A.D.) it is impossible to make him a contemporary of Vijayacandra, whose reign certainly ended before 1170 A.D. Again as Delhi was under the Cāhamānas of Sākambharī from the time of Vīsaladeva (*c.* 1153-1163 A.D.) there seems to be no place for an Anaṅgapāla of Delhi in the reign of Vijayapāla. The only reliable evidence for any military success of Vijayacandra is the statement of the Benares College grant of his son Jayaccandra⁶ that his father "swept away the affliction of the globe by the streams (of water flowing as) from clouds from the eyes of the wives of the Hambīra, the abode of wanton destruction to the earth." This passage probably contains a genuine reference to a conflict of the Gāhaḍavālas with a hitherto unrecorded invasion of the last Yamīnī king, Khusrau Malik Tāj ud-Daulah (*c.* 1160-86 A.D.).¹