History of Kanauj to the Moslem Conquest c16.s1.t5.25

c16.s1.t5.25

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.