History of Kanauj to the Moslem Conquest c16.s1.t5: Mihira-Bhoja (circa 836-885 A. D.)
History of Kanauj to the Moslem Conquest c16.s1.t5
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Mihira-Bhoja (circa 836-885 A. D.)
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After a very short reign lasting for about three years, Rāmabhadra was succeeded by his son Bhoja I, whose mother was queen Appādevī. It was believed that he came to the throne about 840 A. D.⁴ until the recently discovered copper plate at Barah furnished the Vikrama year 893 or 836 A. D. as his earliest date;⁵ and so his accession must be carried back at least four years. He is designated in the inscriptions by various names and titles, the most common being Bhoja. The Gwalior record calls him by the personal name (abhidhāna) Mihira, which is also used, as we shall see below, in one of the Rāṣṭrakūṭa inscriptions. In the Daulatpura inscription, however, he is given the title of Prabhāśa,¹ which means splendour, and perhaps refers to the name Mihira (the sun). Another title assumed by him in the Gwalior Caturbhuj epigraph and in certain coins of base silver was that of "Adivarāha," showing that he posed to identify himself with the boar-incarnation of Viṣṇu, although we are otherwise told that his predilections were towards the worship of the goddess Bhagavatī.
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⁴ Smith, *J. R. A. S.*, 1909, p. 262; Dr. R. C. Majumdar, *Jour. Dept. Lett.*, X, p. 47.
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⁵ *Ep. Ind.*, XIX, pp. 15-19.
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¹ Ibid., V, pp. 212, 213, line 15.
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At the beginning of his career Bhoja appears to have attempted the consolidation of the Pratihāra power, which had received a shock during his father's feeble government. First, he re-established the supremacy of his family in Bundelkhand soon after coming to the throne, for the Barah copper plate, dated in (Vikrama) year 893 or 836 A. D., records his renewal on the old terms of the grant of Valākāgrahāra, lying in the Udumbara-viṣaya of the Kālañjara maṇḍala, which was first sanctioned by Nāgabhaṭa, but had been disturbed in the reign of Rāmabhadra. That Bundelkhand was at this time included in the kingdom of Kanauj is also affirmed by local traditions, which, though confused and discrepant, nevertheless yield this much of historical information that before the rise of the Candellas the country was in the possession of the Pratihāras.² It may further be noted here that until the former became a strong power under Yaśovarman they continued to acknowledge the suzerainty of the latter. Indeed, the Candella inscriptions themselves appear to support this conclusion, as they call the first few princes simply nṛipa, mahipati, or Kṣitipa, and bestow on them only vague conventional praises. Next Bhoja revived a grant in the year 843 A. D. in Gurjaratrā-bhūmi (Jodhpur or Marwar) originally made by Vatsarāja and confirmed by Nāgabhaṭa, but which had fallen into desuetude probably during the time of Rāmabhadra, and remained as such in the earlier years of Bhoja’s reign even. This shows that sometime before the year 843 A. D., he succeeded in restoring his authority over his ancestral desert territories. It is possible that this disturbance was caused by the feudatory Pratihāra family of Mandor, and the Jodhpur inscription dated 837 A. D.¹, which credits Bāuka with certain military achievements in spite of the odds arrayed against him, even lends some colour to this view.
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² J. A. S. B., 1881, pt. I. p. 3 f; LXXI (1902), pt. I, p. 102.
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¹ *Ep. Ind.*, XVIII, pp. 96, 99.
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In the north Bhoja’s suzerainty was certainly acknowledged upto the foot of the Himālayas. This is evident from the Kahla plates of the Vikrama year 1134 or 1077 A. D., discovered in *pargana* Dhuriapur of the Gorakhpur district,² wherein we are told that Guṇāmbodhideva, a chief of the Kālacuri family, obtained some land from Bhojadeva (Bhojadevāpta-bhūmiḥ), whom Dr. Kielhorn has, I suppose, rightly identified with Bhojadeva I of Kanauj.³ For the grant is dated in the year 1077 A. D., and Soḍhadeva, the donor, formed the ninth generation of Guṇāmbodhideva. This fact at the usual rate of 26 years for a generation⁴ will naturally place Guṇāmbodhideva at about 843 A. D. i.e., the time when Bhoja I flourished. A reminiscence of his struggles is also preserved in the Cātsū inscription of Bālā-ditya, which affirms that Harṣarāja Guhila conquered kings in the north, and presented horses to Bhoja.⁵
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² *Ibid.*, VII, pp. 85-93.
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³ *Ibid.*, p. 86, note 4.
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⁴ *Ind. Ant.*, XIII, p. 417.
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⁵ *Ep. Ind.*, XII, p. 15, verse 19. Cf. "Jitvā yaḥ sakalān-udicya-nṛpatīn Bhojaya bhaktyā ca ādau saṁktā-sekata-sindhu laghanavi Śrīvaṁśajān Vājinaḥ."
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(Read *śaktān saikata-sindhu-laṅghana-vidhau.*)
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This Bhoja is in all probability identical with his great Pratihāra namesake, and as a minor chief like Harṣarāja could not have overrun the north on his own account, it is reasonable to assume that he undertook these northerly campaigns only to render assistance to his Kanauj overlord in his ambitious schemes of conquest and consolidation.
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Having thus made himself the dominant power in the *Madhyadeśa*, Bhoja turned to measure swords with the Pālas of Bengal, who under the vigorous rule of king Devapāla had once again launched upon their Imperial schemes, and are even poetically described in the Badal pillar inscription as having, on account of the sagacious policy of the first minister Darbhapāṇi, “made tributary the earth as far as Reva’s parent (the Vindhya hills), whose piles of rocks are moist with the rutting juice of elephants, as far as Gauri’s father (i.e., the Himālayas), the mountain which is whitened by the rays of Īśvara’s moon, and as far as the two oceans whose waters are red with the rising and setting of the sun.”¹ Similarly, verse 15 of the Monghyr grant avers that Devapāla enjoyed the whole region bounded on the north by the Himālayas, in the south by Rāma’s bridge, and by the abodes of Varuṇa and Lakṣmī (i.e., oceans) on the east and west.² Now all these hyperbolic descriptions are no doubt mere bombast, but one thing they certainly indicate that Devapāla did lead some successful military incursions, and thus the presence of two vigorous and masterful personalities in the politics of northern India made a clash inevitable. Soon the war-drum was sounded, and the legions began to move. At first Bhoja appears to have gained some ground, probably on the western frontiers of the Pāla kingdom, with the assistance of his feudatory Guṇāmbodhideva, who, as alleged in the Kahla plates, by a warlike expedition took away the fortune of Gauḍa.¹ Again, verse 18 of the Gwalior inscription, which speaks of Lakṣmī becoming his consort, seems to indicate that Bhoja achieved some victories over Dharma’s (Dharmapāla’s) son.² The former then tried to shatter his rival’s power finally, but Bhoja’s further efforts in this direction met with some reverses, as we are informed in the Badal pillar inscription that king Devapāla “brought low the arrogance of the lord of the Gurjaras” (Kharvikrita Gurjaranātha darpam).³ This exploit is attributed to the good advice of his minister Kedāra Miśra, the grandson of his first minister Darbhapāṇi, which shows that the event must have occurred late in his reign. Now, Devapāla is known to have ruled for a long time, from about 815 to *circa* 855 A. D.,⁴ and it is therefore fair to presume that the “lord of the Gurjaras” referred to in the above inscription is no other than Bhoja I Pratīhāra of Kanauj.
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¹ *Ep. Ind.*, II, pp. 162, 165, verse 5.
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² *Ibid.*, XVIII, p. 305.
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¹ *Ep. Ind.*, VII, pp. 86, 89, verse 9. Cf. “Asi-prakaṭa-prithu-pathenāhṛitā Gauḍalakṣmīḥ.”
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² *Ibid.* XVIII, pp. 109, 113, verse 18.
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³ *Ibid.*, II, pp. 163, 165, verse 13.
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⁴ The Nalanda plate of the year 39 (*Ep. Ind.*, XVIII, pp. 310-27) furnishes his last known regnal year.
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Undaunted by this effective check to his advance eastward, Bhoja next directed his energies towards the south, from which side the Rāṣṭrakūṭas had so often emerged to despoil the smiling fields of Kanauj. The Partabgarh inscription of Mahendrapāla II, discovered in southern Rajputana,⁵ probably contains an allusion to his expeditions in the south-western regions, since we are told therein that a Cāhamāna family of kings was “a source of great pleasure to king Bhojadeva,”⁶ who clearly appears from the context of the passage to be identical with our Bhoja I. Thus with the help of this local Cāhamāna dynasty Bhoja must have overrun southern Rajputana and the tracts round Ujjayinī upto the Narmada river, which had many a time in the past been the field of Rāṣṭrakūṭa operations. Perhaps it was during his time that these parts were definitely assimilated in the Kanauj empire, and as we shall see later on, they continued to be under Mahendrapāla II even, who had stationed one Mādhava as "the great feudatory lord and governor," at Ujjayinī, and another officer Śrīśarman was carrying on the affairs of state at Maṇḍapikā or Maṇḍū.
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⁵ *Ibid.*, XIV, pp. 176-88.
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⁶ *Ibid.*, pp. 180, 184.
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These distant campaigns, which may have been a sort of reconnaissance, brought Bhoja close to the Rāṣṭrakūṭa monarchy, and he therefore resolved to try his strength against the avowed enemies of his house. Fortune was, however, no more favourable to him than to any of his predecessors, for the Bagumra plates inform us that alone Dhruva II, who belonged to the collateral but not independent branch of the Rāṣṭrakūṭas of Mānyakheṭa (Malkhed), "easily put to flight the very strong army of the Gurjaras that was eager (for the fray) and reinforced by his kinsmen."[1] Who was this vanquished Gurjara lord is then specifically revealed in the following line : "Though Mihira was united to fortune and surrounded by crowds of noble kinsmen, though owing to his courage he conquered all the regions of the world, he nevertheless disappeared, his face being covered by the darkness of defeat, after he had looked upon the eminence of Dhārāvarṣa that was greater than his own."[2] This disaster, which reads like a repetition of Harṣa’s rout at the hands of Pulakeśi II, probably did not occur much earlier than the Śaka year 789 or 867 A. D., the date of the Bagumra grant, for none of the earlier Rāṣṭrakūṭa inscriptions mentions it; and moreover Bhoja must have spent a fairly long time after his accession about 836 A. D. in campaigns in other directions so as to deserve the proverbial credit of “having conquered all the regions of the world” in a record of the rival dynasty. What was the cause of this unexpected blow to Bhoja’s arms? Did Dhruva II receive any help from his Mānyakheṭa kinsman and overlord in this conflict? To these questions, of course, no answer can be given in our present state of knowledge. But certain it is that this repulse must have rankled in the mind of Bhoja, and he is therefore represented even in a late inscription of the year 875 A. D. as “wishing to conquer the three worlds.”¹ Indeed, towards the close of his reign he appears to have paid off old scores by compelling Kṛṣṇarāja, identified with Kṛṣṇa II Rāṣṭrakūṭa (875-911 A. D.), to retreat hastily to his own country. Unfortunately, however, the extant portion of this inscription is so fragmentary that it is difficult to draw further any definite conclusions from its evidence.² The Rāṣṭrakūṭa records, on the other hand, indicate otherwise. The Bagumra plates of Indra III dated Śaka *Saṃvat* 836 or 915 A. D., for example, refer to the vivid descriptions, which old men gave, of the courage and heroism of Kṛṣṇa II in his sanguinary wars with the “roaring Gurjara.”³ Another Bagumra inscription of Kṛṣṇa of the feudatory Gujarat family even speaks of his victories gained sometime before Śaka 810 or 888 A. D., the date of the epigraph in Ujjayinī, the veritable cockpit of those times.¹ In the face of these conflicting versions what no doubt seems probable is that the hereditary enemies unsheathed their swords, but their wars were inconclusive and did not prove advantageous to either party.
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¹ *Ind. Ant.*, XII, pp. 184,1 89, verse 38. Cf. "Gūrjara-balam-iti balavat samudyatam vrimhitam ca kulyena, Ekākinaiva vihitam parāṅmukham līlayā yena.
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² *Ibid.*
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¹ Cf. “Śrīmad-ādivarāhena trailokyaṃ vijigīṣuṇā.”
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² Barton Museum (Bhavanagar) fragmentary Pratīhāra inscription, *Ep. Ind.*, XIX, pp. 174-177.
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³ *Ind. Ant.*, XIII, p. 66.
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¹ *Ep. Ind.*, IX, p. 24.
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Sometime during the course of his long reign Bhoja directed his imperialistic gaze towards the north-west also, and is definitely known to have annexed some territories on the eastern side of the river Satlej according to an inscription of the year 882 A. D., discovered at Prithūdaka or Pehoa in the Karnal district of the Panjab, which records the transaction of business at the local horse-fair by certain horse-dealers “in the auspicious and victorious reign of Bhojadeva.”² We have even indications that Bhoja’s arms penetrated farther into the Panjab, for a verse in the *Rājatarangiṇī*³ contains the following statement:
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² *Ep. Ind.*, I, pp. 186, 188.
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³ Vol. I, Bk. V, verse 151, (Stein, p. 206).
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“Hṛitaṃ Bhojādhirājena sa sāmrājyaṃ adāpayat, Pratīhāratayā bhrityibhūte Thakkiyakānvaye,” i.e., “He (*Śaṃkaravarman*) caused to be restored the dominion which had been taken away by the Adhirāja Bhoja, when the Thakkiya family was reduced to the condition of servants by being put to the duty of door-keepers.”⁴ The passage is a little obscure, but one thing is surely clear that at this period the name Bhoja with the title of “Adhirāja” can have reference only to the supreme lord of Kanauj, and that it testifies to the seizure of certain territories from the Thakkiyakas, who must have been settled somewhere in the eastern part of the Panjab.
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⁴ Fleet, *Ind. Ant.*, XV, p. 110, note 31. The verse has been the subject of considerable discussion and different interpretation. See Bühler, *Ep. Ind.*, I, p. 186; Cunningham, *Arch. Surv. Ind. Rep.*, Vol. II (1862-65), p. 225; X, p. 101; Hoernle, *J. R. A. S.*, 1904, p. 649; Hultzsch, *Ep. Ind.*, I, p. 155.
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Further, Dr. H. C. Raychaudhuri has brought to light a piece of evidence, which tends to show that Bhoja’s authority was recognised in Saurāṣṭra or Kāthiāwād.¹ According to the Vastrāpatha Māhātmya, a section in the Prabhāsa Khaṇḍa of the Skanda Purāṇa dealing with the sacred sites of Girnar (Vastrāpatha), there lived in ancient times a righteous king named Bhoja who ruled over Kānyakubja.² Once a Warden of the forests (Vanapāla) reported to him as follows: “Sire! I have seen a woman with the face of a doe roaming with a herd of deer in the forests at Raivataka.” The king felt curious, and collecting his forces he advanced towards Raivataka and encircled the hill with a net. The Balādhyakṣa ultimately succeeded in capturing the deer-maiden, and brought her to Kānyakubja. She then related the story of her previous births, and also dilated upon the sanctity of the waters of the Suvarṇarekhā. The king was so much impressed with what he learnt about Saurāṣṭra that he made up his mind to abdicate in favour of his son and go on a pilgrimage to its holy sites. Much of the story is no doubt absolutely unworthy of credence, but the connection of Bhoja of Kanauj with Saurāṣṭra, as evidenced by the appointment of a Vanapāla (VI, 22 f.) and sending of an army (Ib., 25 f.), appears to be the substratum of truth. Dr. Raychaudhuri even accepts the story of Bhoja’s abdication, and finds confirmation for it in the Ahar stone inscription, whch gives the dates 864-65, 865-66, 867-68, 886, 886-87, 888-89, 902-03, 904-05, although purporting to belong to the reign of Bhoja. But I venture to differ from the views of the learned Professor on this point, since the earliest known date for Mahendrapāla is 893 A. D., and the anomaly presented by the Ahar record can satisfactorily be explained by supposing with Mr. C. D. Chatterjee that “a portion of this inscription was engraved in 259 Harṣa *Saṃvat* = 865-66 A. D. during the administration of Bhoja I and other portions were added later on,” or that “there was a transfer to stone of a copy of all the deeds made on less durable materials, later than 298 H. E. = 904-05 A. D.”¹ Thus under Bhoja the kingdom of Kanauj grew to enormous dimensions, and it may be roughly defined as limited by the Satlej in the north-west; the foot of the Himālayas in the north; the western boundaries of the Pāla dominions in the east; Bundelkhand and the Vatsa territories in the south and south-east; possibly the lower course of the Narmadā and Saurāṣṭra on the south-west, and including the major portion of Rajputana on the west.
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¹ *Ind. Hist. Quart.*, V (1929), pp. 129-133.
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² Cf. “Kānyakubje Mahākṣetre rājā Bhojeti viśrutaḥ, Purā Puṇyayuge Dharmyaḥ prajādharmeṇa śāsati,” (VI, 20). It is worth noting that the past tense is used here, and the *Purāṇa* does not say in the form of a prophecy.
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¹ *Journal of the U. P. Historical Society*, Vol. III, pt. 2, (Sept., 1926), p. 101.
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Sulaiman's account
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Unfortunately no Bāṇa or Yuan Chwang has left a detailed record of how Bhoja organised the defence and internal administration of so vast a country in order to prevent any of its component parts flying asunder, but we have some faint echoes coming from the writings of the Arab traveller Sulaiman, who thus alludes in 851 A. D. to the king of Juzr (Gurjara), identified by scholars with the great Pratihāra ruler of Kanauj : “This king maintains numerous forces, and no other Indian prince has so fine a cavalry. He is unfriendly to the Arabs, still he acknowledges that the king of the Arabs is the greatest of kings. Among the princes of India there is no greater foe of the Muhammadan faith than he. His territories form a tongue of land. He has got riches, and his camels and horses are numerous. Exchanges are carried on in his states with silver (and gold) in dust, and there are said to be mines (of these metals) in the country. There is no country in India more safe from robbers."¹ This brief notice is all that we possess about Bhoja’s government, but it suffices to prove that the country was rich in resources and strong in political power. The king stood forth as the champion of indigenous culture, and maintained large armies so as to ensure the safety of the citizens against both external and internal dangers. The last remark is specially noteworthy, and speaks highly of Bhoja’s administration, since we might recall here that even during the palmy days of Harṣa’s rule, the kingdom continued to be infested by brigands and Yuan Chwang was stripped by them more than once.
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¹ Elliot, History of India, Vol. I, p. 4.
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Coins of Bhoja
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Certain specimens of rude coins, better known to numismatists as the Ādivarāha type, have usually been ascribed to Bhojadeva of Kanauj.² They are minted in alloyed silver, which indicates a period of financial stringency, probably as a result of Bhoja’s numerous wars. The obverse contains the Brāhmī legend “Śrimad ā di varāha,” and below it there are indistinct marks indicative of the Sassanian fire-altar. The reverse exhibits a man with a boar’s head, signifying the boar-incarnation of Viṣṇu, with a solar wheel in front of him. The Siyadoni record mentions them as “Śrimad Ādivarāha dramma,” thus furnishing an additional proof of their descent from the greek *drachma* through Sassanian types.
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² Smith, Cat. Coi. Ind. Mus. (Calcutta), Vol. I, pp. 232, 233, 241, 242; Cunningham, Coins of Med. Ind., pp. 49-50, plate VI, Nos. 20, 21.
Linked texts (4)
- Rājataraṅgiṇī — Kalhaṇa, Sanskrit
- Skandapurāṇa — Vyāsa, Sanskrit
- Chatsu inscription of Baladitya — Sanskrit
- Ahar stone inscription — Sanskrit