History of Kanauj to the Moslem Conquest c16.s1.t2.16

c16.s1.t2.16

The inscriptions give us some glimpses of the doings of the Pratihāras in their homelands, which brought them into prominence and ultimately enabled Nāgabhata II to subjugate the kingdom of Kanauj. The family began well under Nāgabhata, who is credited in the Gwalior inscription with "having crushed the large armies of the powerful Mleccha king, the destroyer of virtue."¹ Evidently we have here a reference to his successful stand against the vanguards of Islam that were at this time sweeping down the western borders of India. This conclusion is also in accordance with the information supplied by Al Bilādūri, who after mentioning the different regions overrun by the Arabs in India says : "They made incursions against Uzain and they attacked Baharīmad and burnt its suburbs. Junaid conquered Al Bailaman and Jurz."² It is thus clear that the Arabs could not make any headway against Ujjain, for whereas Junaid, who was governor of Sind under Khalif Hishām (724-743 A. D.) subdued other places, he is represented to have simply carried on raids in the direction of Ujjain. During the time of his weak and incompetent successor, Tamim, the Arabs even “retired from several parts of India and left some of their positions,”¹ and this decline in their power may have in no small measure been due to the vigorous drive of Indian rulers like that of Ujjain. Perhaps it was in the course of these fights that Nāgabhaṭa carried his arms as far as Bhrigukaccha or Broach, where the Cāhamāna feudatory Bhartrivaddha II is recorded in V. E. 813 = 756 A. D. to have made a grant of the village Arjunadevigrāma situate in the Akrūreśvara viṣaya (Anklesvar Taluka) to the Brahman Bhaṭṭabhūṭa “in the reign of increasing victory of the illustrious Nāgāvaloka,”² who is in all likelihood no other than the founder of the Pratīhāra line.³