History of Kanauj to the Moslem Conquest c16.s1.t1.1

c16.s1.t1.1

There is a late legend in Cand’s Rāso, which groups the Parihāras or Pratihāras³ along with three other Rajput clans—the Cauhan (Cāhamāna), Powār (Paramāra), and Solanki (Caulukya)—as “Agnikula,” deriving their origin from a sacrificial fire-pit (agnikuṇḍa) at Mount Abu. The myth is apparently absurd, but it may well represent, as observed by Crooke, “a rite of purgation by fire, the scene of which was in Southern Rajputana, whereby the impurity of the foreigners was removed and they became fitted to enter the Hindu caste system.”¹ According to this view, therefore, the Pratīhāras were of foreign extraction, and we have further reason to hold that they were a branch of the famous Gurjaras—one of those nomadic Central Asian tribes that poured down into India along with or soon after the Hūṇas through the north-western passes during the period of political ferment following the disruption of the great Gupta Empire.² This seems evident from the Rajor (Rājyapura) stone inscription, dated V. E. 1016 or 959 A. D. in the reign of Mathanadeva, a feudatory of Vijayapāladeva of Kanauj.³ The former is therein explicitly described as belonging to the Gurjara Pratīhāra lineage, since the phrase “Gurjara-Pratīhārānvayaḥ” occurring in it must be interpreted to mean “Pratīhāra clan of the Gurjaras.”⁴ Some scholars, on the other hand, think that the word Gurjara in this expression does not denote the tribe or people of that name but ‘the Gurjara country (Gurjjaratrā-bhūmi).’⁵