The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c31.s5.41

c31.s5.41

The pusillanimous submission of Rājyapāla incensed his Hindu allies, who felt that he had betrayed their cause. His fault was sternly punished by an army under the command of Vidhyādhara, heir-apparent of the Chandēl king, Ganda, supported by the forces of his feudatory, the chief of Gwālior, which attacked Kanauj in the spring or summer of A.D. 1019, soon after the departure of Sultan Mahmūd, and slew Rājyapāla, whose diminished dominions passed under the rule of Trilochanapāla. The Sultan was furious when he heard of the punishment inflicted on a prince whom he regarded as a vassal, and in the autumn of the same year (A.H. 410) started again from Ghaznī to take vengeance on the Hindu chiefs. Early in A.D. 1020 he captured Bārī, the new Pratihāra capital, without much difficulty, and then advanced into the Chandēl territory, where Ganda had assembled an apparently formidable force to oppose him. But the heart of the Chandēl king failed him, and, like Rājyapāla, he fled from the field without giving battle. His camp, munitions, and elephants were left a prey to the Sultan, who returned as usual to Ghaznī with heaps of spoil.²