History of Kanauj to the Moslem Conquest c16.s1.t3.1

c16.s1.t3.1

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