History of Kanauj to the Moslem Conquest c15.s2.t2.1

c15.s2.t2.1

The first question that arises is whether Yaśovarman was a mere upstart adventurer who shot up like a brilliant meteor and soon vanished into nothingness, or had he any ancestral claims to the throne of Kanauj? Vākpati, the author of the Gauḍavaho, praises him as “an ornament to the lunar race of kings, to which he belonged,”² and we may, therefore, assume that he came of some celebrated Kṣatriya family. Cunningham thought that he was a descendant of the Maukharis, and the common termination—varman—of their names even lends some colour to this view.³ Besides, they had ruled over Kanauj before the epoch of Harṣa, and it is possible that after the suppression of the usurper the kingdom was restored to some unrecorded member of this house, from whom it devolved on Yaśovarman. There is indeed a mention of a Bhogavarman, “the crest-jewel of the illustrious varmans of the valorous Maukhari race,” who was contemporary with Adityasena of Magadha and Sivadeva II of Nepal—being the son-in-law of the former and father-in-law of the latter—, in one of the Nepalese inscriptions,¹ but unfortunately it does not make it clear whether he had any connection with Kanauj. The late Jain work *Bappabhaṭṭasūricarita*, on the other hand, represents Yaśovarman as “the illustrious ruler of Kānyakubja, who was the head-jewel of the famous dynasty of Candragupta, by whom was made illustrious the already illustrious family of the Mauryas.”² It is interesting to add that the *Prabhāvaka-carita* (13th or 14th century A. D.) also describes Yaśovarman as having descended from, and been a bright ornament in the family of Candragupta.³ But the kings of the Maurya dynasty did not take names ending in—*varman*, and we have no other evidence to corroborate the Jain statement. Even the Nalanda stone inscription, which most probably belongs to the time of our Kanauj monarch, does not afford us any clue on this point. Thus in the absence of any positive proofs it is better not to credit Yaśovarman with any well-known ancestry, and for the present to let him stand isolated and unconnected.