History of Kanauj to the Moslem Conquest c17.s2.36

c17.s2.36

There are indications that the closing years of Mahīpāla were again disturbed by a renewal of the Rāṣṭrakūṭa attacks on northern India. For the Deoli and Karhad plates of Kṛṣṇa III, while eulogising his achievements in the usual style of inflated panegyric specifically inform us that “on hearing of the conquest of all the strongholds in the southern regions simply by means of his angry glance, the hope about Kālañjara and Citrakūṭa vanished from the heart of the Gurjara.”[²] A critical study of the Deoli plates shows that Kṛṣṇa III undertook these expeditions sometime before Śaka 862 or 940 A. D., the date of the inscription, and while he was still a mere crown-prince or Kumāra. Accordingly we can be certain that the term Gurjara in this passage signifies Mahīpāla. It has been suggested that Kṛṣṇa III was successful in occupying Kālañjara and Citrakūṭa. This may perhaps be true, although all we learn from our Rāṣṭrakūṭa version of the incursion is that hearing of the triumphant progress of Kṛṣṇa III’s arms, the Gurjara ruler became so panic-stricken as to lose all hopes of the defence and safety of two of his most strategic strongholds. That Kṛṣṇa III’s claims of conquests in northern India are not a mere vaunt is no doubt clear from the discovery of a Kanarese praśasti inscribed on a stone slab at Jura in the Maihar state of the Baghelkhand Agency.¹ But it is significant that he assumes the full imperial titles of Paramabhaṭṭāraka, Mahārājādhirāja, and Parameśvara in this record, and the suspicion cannot, therefore, be entirely avoided that the credit for actual occupation of any territory in the north belongs to the subsequent career of Kṛṣṇa III, who, as king, may have led a second expedition when the power of the Pratihāras was distinctly on the wane.