History of Kanauj to the Moslem Conquest c16.s1.t3: Nāgabhaṭa II

History of Kanauj to the Moslem Conquest c16.s1.t3

Language: English

Nāgabhaṭa II

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According to the list of kings given in inscriptions, which are our chief sources of information for the Pratīhāra dynasty,² Vatsarāja’s successor was his son Nāgabhaṭa by the queen Sundarī-Devī. His earliest known date is (Vikrama) Saṃvat 872 or 815 A. D. (Buckalā inscription), and although we have no evidence to fix the year of his accession, it may tentatively be assumed to have taken place about 805 A. D. It appears that in the beginning he tried to retrieve the fortunes of his family and to avenge the crushing defeat of his father at the hands of the Rāṣṭrakūṭas, but the stars were as unfavourable to him as to his predecessor. For the Sanjan plates of Amoghavarṣa I, dated Saka 793 = 871 A. D., credit Govinda III with “carrying away in battles the fair and unshakable fame of kings Nāgabhaṭa and Candragupta,”¹ and there can scarcely be any doubt that the former represents the son of Vatsarāja.² That the result of the struggle was decisively against Nāgabhaṭa is clear from other records also. The Pathari pillar inscription, for instance, tells us that Karkarāja “caused Nāgāvaloka quickly to turn back,”³ and the vanquished opponent has rightly been identified by Dr. D. R. Bhandarkar with Nāgabhaṭa II. The inscription is dated in V. E. 917 = 861 A. D. in the reign of Parabala,⁴ and assuming that he had a long reign, we may reasonably conclude that his father Karkarāja was a contemporary of Govinda III and possibly also his feudatory, in which capacity he must have helped the latter against Nāgabhaṭa. Again, the Radhanpur inscription says that “the Gurjara in fear (of Govinda III) vanished nobody knew whither, so that even in a dream he might not see battle.”⁵ As the Wani grant of Govinda III does not give us this additional information regarding the defeat of the Gurjara king, we may reasonably place the event between 806-07 A. D., the date of the above grant, and 808 A. D., the year of the Radhanpur record. Govinda III, however, continued to apprehend trouble, as Mālava was now almost the bone of contention between his house and the Pratihāras, and so according to the Baroda plates of Karkarāja, he “for the purpose of protecting Mālava...... caused his (Karkarāja’s) arm to become an excellent door-bar of the country of the lord of the Gurjaras.”¹

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² See Appendix.

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¹ *Ep. Ind.*, XVIII, pp. 245, 253, verse 22.

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² *Ibid.*, p. 240.

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³ *Ibid.*, IX, p. 255, verse 14.

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⁴ The identity of this chief has been the subject of controversy. See Kielhorn, *Ibid.*, IX, p. 51; Fleet, *Dynasties of the Kanarese Districts*, p. 198.

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⁵ *Ep. Ind.*, VI, pp. 244, 250, verse 15. Cf. “Gūrjaro naṣṭaḥ kvāpi bhayāt tathā na samaraṃ svapnepi paśyet yathā.”

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¹ *Ind. Ant.*, XII, pp. 160, 164. ² *Ep. Ind.*, XVIII., pp. 245, 253, verse 23. Cf. “... Svayaṁ eva upanatau ca yasya mahataḥ tau Dharma-Cakrāyudhau ...” ³ *Bom. Gaz.*, Vol. I, pt. II, pp. 402, 409; *Rāṣṭrakūṭas and their Times* (Poona, 1934), pp. 69, 73.

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Nāgabhaṭa’s preliminary attempts thus proved abortive, but success in another direction was not long to come. His Rāṣṭrakūṭa adversary, Govinda III, who had also overrun the north upto the Himālayas, and to whom Cakrāyudha of Kanauj and his liege-lord Dharmapāla had submitted of their own accord², got engrossed towards the close of his reign with internal affairs in order to secure the succession of his son, Amoghavarṣa. And when Govinda III died early in 814 A. D., his young successor was unable to stem the rising tide of serious domestic seditions with the result that the kingdom was soon plunged in anarchy and confusion.³ This freedom of reprisals from the Rāṣṭrakūṭas probably gave to Nāgabhaṭa the opportunity to wage war, as we have seen above, against Cakrāyudha “whose lowly demeanour was manifest from his dependence on others.” The defeat was evidently followed by the annexation of the kingdom, and the transfer of the Pratihāra capital to Kanauj, since Cakrāyudha disappears about this time from the stage of history, and Nāgabhaṭa’s successors for several generations are definitely known to have held their court there. The conquest of Kanauj at once gave to the Pratihāras the supreme power in the north, and Nāgabhaṭa felt himself justified in assuming the full imperial titles—Paramabhaṭṭāraka, Mahārājādhirāja, and Parameśvara—in the Buckalā inscription issued in the year 815 A. D.¹

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¹ *Ep. Ind.*, IX. p. 199 f.

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But though Nāgabhaṭa was now immune from the Rāṣṭrakūṭa danger on account of their internal dissensions and rivalries, Dharmapāla of Bengal, who had raised Cakrāyudha to the throne, took the field against him to avenge his vassal’s deposition. A reminiscence of this struggle is preserved in the Gwalior inscription of Bhoja in terms suggestive of its importance and arduous character. We are told that “having vanquished his enemy, the lord of Vanga, who appeared like a mass of dark, dense cloud in consequence of the crowd of mighty elephants, horses and chariots, Nāgabhaṭa who alone gladdens (the heart of) the three worlds, revealed himself, even as the rising sun, the sole source of manifestation of the three worlds, reveals himself by vanquishing dense and terrible darkness”.² The battle was probably fought at Monghyr, since the Jodhpur inscription of Bāuka, dated in the (Vikrama) year 894 or 837 A. D., informs us that his father Kakka “gained renown by fighting with the Gauḍas at Mudgagiri.”³ From the date of the record it is evident that Kakka must have been a contemporary of Nāgabhaṭa; and as the house of the latter had already risen to ascendancy in Rajputana, we may assume that Kakka proceeded as far as Monghyr only to help his suzerain in a conflict that was to decide the fortunes of the Pratihāras in Kanauj. Perhaps another feudatory chief, who fought against the ruler of Bengal on behalf of Nāgabhaṭa, was Saṃkaragaṇa. The Cātsū inscription of Bālāditya¹ says that he “defeated the king of Gauḍa, a great warrior (bhaṭa), and made the whole world, gained by warfare, subservient to his overlord.”² As well pointed out by Dr. R. C. Majumdar, this Saṃkaragaṇa must have been a contemporary of Nāgabhaṭa about the commencement of the 9th century, since the former was the great-grandson of Dhanika, who is known to have been ruling in 725 A. D.³ Thus having dispersed the dense clouds in the form of the mighty hosts of Dharmapāla the sun of Nāgabhaṭa’s glory shone in the political horizon, and soon its brilliant rays began to permeate and radiate all round. For the Gwalior inscription, which details his subsequent achievements, tells us that the kings of Andhra, Sindhu, Vidarbha and Kalinga succumbed to his youthful energy as moths do unto fire.⁴ The Andhra country lay between the Godāvarī and the Kṛṣṇā; Sindhu denotes the lower course of the Indus; Vidarbha and Kalinga were the ancient designations of the modern provinces of Berar and Orissa. And if these alleged conquests were really in accordance with facts, Nāgabhaṭa’s sphere of suzerainty must have covered all the regions from the east to the west, and from the Himālayas to the Nerbuda, excluding, of course the north-western parts and the Pāla dominions. But there is little reason to accept any such conclusion, for the simile itself used by the poet is significant. We are told that just as moths cannot resist rushing headlong towards the fire, similarly the kings of the countries named were attracted of their own accord towards Nāgabhaṭa—or in other words they sought his powerful aid or alliance against their respective enemies who may be identified with the incoming Moslems in the west, the Rāṣṭrakūṭas in the south, and the Pālas in the east.

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² *Ibid.*, XVIII, pp. 108, 112, verse 10.

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³ *Ibid.*, pp. 96, 98, verse 24.

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¹ *Ep. Ind.*, XII, p. 10 f.

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² *Ibid.*, pp. 14-15, vs. 14-16. See, however, Dr. D. R. Bhandarkar’s remarks (*Ibid.*, p. 12).

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³ *Jour. Dep. Lett.*, X, pp. 40-41, Note. I have followed Dr. R. C. Majumdar’s interpretation.

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⁴ *Ep. Ind.*, XVIII, pp. 108, 112, verse 8.

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Verse eleven in the same record, however, makes more specific mention of his victories, which comprised the “forcible seizure” (hathāpahāraḥ) of the hill-forts of Ānartta or northern Kāṭhiāwāḍ; Mālava or Central India; the Matsyas or eastern Rajputana; the Kirātas, who were perhaps the wild tribes of the Himālayan region;¹ the Turuṣkas, probably designating the earliest Moslem settlements in Western India; and the Vatsas in the territory of Kausambi (Kosam). It is difficult to see how far they represent actual annexations, but making due allowance for any exaggeration we may roughly define the kingdom of Kanauj under Nāgabhaṭa as comprising parts of Rajputana, a large portion of the modern United Provinces and Central India, perhaps northern Kāṭhiāwāḍ, with Kosambi and adjacent territories for its south-eastern limit. That Nāgabhaṭa was a powerful king exercising sway over a number of petty chiefs is also clear from the Harṣa stone inscription of Vigraharāja, dated the Vikrama year 1030 or 973 A. D.,² wherein one of his predecessors, the Cāhamāna Gūvaka I, is described as having obtained honour at the court of Nāgavaloka, which evidently seems a polite way of expressing a feudatory rank. The relevant passage runs as follows:

Linked texts (6)

Vemalūrpāḍu plates of Amma II — Sanskrit
Pṛthvīrājavijaya — Jayānaka, Sanskrit
Chatsu inscription of Baladitya — Sanskrit
Dhiniki grant of King Jāikadeva — Sanskrit
Śevilimeḍu Inscription of the Sixteenth Year — Sanskrit
Mathurā stone inscription of the time of Śoṇḍāsa — Prakrit