History of Kanauj to the Moslem Conquest c16.s1.t2.23

c16.s1.t2.23

The third king, Devaśakti or Devarāja, younger brother of Kakkuka, seems to have maintained the dignity of the house in tact, although the reference in the Gwalior inscription to the curbing of the movements (gati) of a “multitude of kings” (bhūbhrit) and their powerful allies” (pakṣāḥ) indicates that sometime during his reign the Pratīhāra authority was threatened by external danger. His son and successor Vatsarāja, born of Bhūyikādevī and known to have been ruling in the year 783-84 A. D., was certainly more than a mere name. The Gwalior inscription asserts that “with strong bows as his companion he forcibly wrested (hathād-agrahīt) the empire (sāmrājyam), in battle from the famous Bhaṇḍi clan, hard to be overcome by reason of the rampart made of infuriated elephants.”¹ It is difficult to identify this Bhaṇḍi clan, as history does not record any other Bhaṇḍi except the prince mentioned in the Harṣacarita, but we do not know what happened to him and where he established his authority. A conjecture may, however, be hazarded that the name stands for the Bhaṭṭi clan, whose political importance may best be inferred from the fact mentioned in the Jodhpur inscription that Padminī, the mother of Pratīhāra Bāuka, belonged to it.² We may, therefore, take the passage as an allusion to Vatsarāja’s attainment of the supreme status in Gurjaratrā or Central Rajputana, which is to some extent confirmed by the Osia and Daulatpura inscriptions. The former is engraved in the porch of a Jain temple and speaks of it as existing in the time of Vatsarāja,³ and according to the latter charter he granted the village of Sivā in the Deṇḍavānaka viṣaya (modern Didwāna) of the Gurjaratrā bhūmi to the Bhaṭṭavāsudeva.⁴