History of Kanauj to the Moslem Conquest c16.s1.t5.5

c16.s1.t5.5

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 Next Bhoja revived a grant in the year 843 A. D. in Gurjaratrā-bhūmi (Jodhpur or Marwar) originally made by Vatsarāja and confirmed by Nāgabhaṭa, but which had fallen into desuetude probably during the time of Rāmabhadra, and remained as such in the earlier years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.