The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c31.s5.11

c31.s5.11

After Harsha's death the earliest known king of Kanauj was Yasovarman, who sent an embassy to China in A.D. 731,² and nine or ten years later was dethroned and slain by Lalitāditya Muktāpīda of Kashmir.³ In the history of Sanskrit literature Yasovarman's name holds an honoured place as that of the patron of Bhavabhūti, the famous author of the *Mālatīmādhava*, and of Vākpatirāja, a less renowned author, who wrote in Prākrit. The next occupant of the throne of Kanauj apparently was Vajrāyudha, who, like his predecessor, suffered the fate of defeat and dethronement by Lalitāditya's son, Jayāpīda.⁴ Similar ill-luck attended his successor, Indrāyudha, who is known to have been reigning in A. D. 783, and was dethroned, about A. D. 810, by Dharmapāla, king of Bengal and Bihār. The eastern monarch, while probably insisting on a right to homage and tribute, did not keep the administration of Panchāla in his own hands, but entrusted it to Chakrāyudha, presumably a relative of the defeated rāja. The new ruler was consecrated with the consent of the kings of all the neighbouring states.¹ His fortune was no better than that of his predecessors. About a.d. 816 he was deprived of his throne by Nāgabhata, the ambitious king of the Gurjara-Pratīhāra kingdom in Rājputāna, the capital of which was at Bhilmāl.²