History of Kanauj to the Moslem Conquest c17.s2.1

c17.s2.1

The enthronement of his step-brother Bhoja II was naturally unacceptable to Mahīpāla; he therefore sought the support of the Candella king Harṣadeva as a counterpoise to the alliance between his rival and the Cedi ruler Kokalla I. The Candella chief, who probably still recognised the supremacy of Kanauj, at once took up his cause, and according to the Khajuraho inscription No. I signalised his intervention in imperial affairs by placing Kṣitipāla on the throne, which thus increased the power and prestige of his own house.¹ This Kṣitipāla has been identified on all hands with Mahīpāla, and the fact that the two terms Kṣiti and Mahī are synonymous no doubt goes far to confirm this identification. But it appears from a comparison of the Siyadoni and Khajuraho inscriptions that Mahīpāla was known by other names as well. In the former Kṣitipāla is said to have had a son named Devapāla, who was ruling in 948-49 A. D., while in the latter we are told that the Candella Yaśovarman received an image of Vaikuṇṭha from one Devapāla, son of Herambapāla. As Yaśovarman’s reign closed about the year 954 A.D., it is reasonable to hold that the two Devapālas were identical, and consequently in all likelihood the names of their fathers Kṣitipāla and Herambapāla also refer to one and the same person.² Mahāmahopādhyāya Pandit Gaurī-shankar Ojha, on the other hand, does not accept the identity of the two Devapālas, as in the Khajuraho inscription Devapāla is given the epithet of Hayapati, and it was “never the accepted title of the Pratīhāra kings of Mahodaya, and is not met with in their inscriptions.”¹ This need not, however, be an insuperable objection in view of the fact that the Pratīhāras of Kanauj were then widely noted for their cavalry. Thus, Sulaiman, the Arab traveller, referring to Bhoja says that “no other prince has so fine a cavalry”.² Again, according to the Cātsū inscription Harṣarāja presented horses to Bhoja, perhaps because of the latter’s fondness for them. Similarly the Gwalior epigraph speaks of the “best cavalry” in charge of the feudatories of Rāmabhadra. The occurrence of the term *Hayapati* in an inscription of another dynasty, therefore, probably indicates that the Pratīhāras continued to enjoy among their contemporaries a reputation for maintaining an excellent cavalry, and as such were regarded “lords of horses” *par excellence*, although they did not, like the Gāhaḍavālas who used the epithet *Aśvapati*, adopt it as an official title in their records. Another name of Mahīpāla seems to have been Vināyakapāla, which is used in the Bengal Asiatic Society’s plate.³ The identity of the two is probable on the ground that the two terms Vināyaka and Heramba are synonymous, both being names of Gaṇapati,⁴ and also because the record describes Vināyakapāla as “begotten on Mahīdevī and who meditated on the feet of his father Mahendrapāla and his brother Bhojadeva.” If, however, we assume that the names Vināyakapāla and Mahīpāla represent two distinct persons, there is nothing in the absence of any evidence regarding a fratricidal war to explain the circumstance why the plate mentions one brother and omits all reference to another. Further, it need not militate against the above identification that in the earlier inscriptions and in the writings of Rājaśekhara the name Mahīpāla is uniformly given, whereas Vināyakapāla occurs for the first time in a late inscription of the year 931 A. D. There is no such overlapping even in the known dates of Mahīpāla and Kṣitipāla, but this does not prevent scholars from accepting that the two names denoted the same person. Thus Mahīpāla may be regarded as having borne at least three other names—Kṣitipāla, Vināyakapāla, and Herambapāla;¹ this multiplicity of nomenclature was obviously due to the Hindu love for synonyms, which, as well remarked by Colonel Tod, “in the east is very destructive to history.”²