History of Kanauj to the Moslem Conquest c17.s2.9

c17.s2.9

We do not know when Mahīpāla effected his *Coup d'etat*, but as the Haddala grant of his feudatory Dharaṇīvarāha³ mentions him as ruling in Śaka *saṃvat* 836 or 914 A. D., his accession may be approximately fixed in the year 912 A. D. At the very beginning of his career Mahīpāla was seriously menaced by the war-fever of the Rāṣṭrakūṭas, the hereditary enemies of his house; and the effects of their renewed activity seem to have been for the time disastrous to the prosperity of Kanauj, for we are told in the Cambay plates of Govinda IV that Indra III “completely devastated (nirmmūlam unmūlitam) that hostile city of Mahodaya, which is even today greatly renowned among men by the name of Kuśasthala.”⁴ A close perusal of the record further reveals that the invader’s line of march lay through Ujjain where “the courtyard (of the temple of the god) Kālapriya (became) uneven by the strokes of the tusks of his rutting elephants,” and across the valley of the “unfathomable Jumnā which rivals the sea.”¹ Thus if the region of Ujjain continued to remain under Kanauj during the disturbed reign of Bhoja II—and there is nothing to prove that it did not—this campaign must have caused its loss, although, as we shall see below, it was only temporary. In his expedition against Kanauj, Indra III was probably accompanied by his feudatory chief Narasimha Cālukya, who, according to the *Vikramārjunavijaya* or *Pampabhārata* written by the Kanarese poet Pampa under the patronage of Arikeśarin Cālukya, is said to have “plucked from the Ghūrjararāja’s arms the goddess of victory, whom, though desirous of keeping he had held too loosely. Mahīpāla fled as if struck by thunder-bolts, staying neither to eat, nor rest, nor pick himself up; while Narasimha pursuing bathed his horses at the junction of the Ganges.”² The reference to the confluence of the Ganges shows that the army overran the greater part of modern United Provinces, and advanced as far east as Prayāga. Some scholars on the other hand take the junction of the Ganges to be with the sea and not with the Jumnā, but this view is obviously wrong, for Mahīpāla’s dominions did not extend upto the seashore, and there is no evidence that Indra III’s expedition brought him into conflict with his Pāla contemporary, Rājyapāla. Was its success, therefore, due to the unsettled state of Kanauj, as a result of the troubles which had culminated in Mahīpāla’s accession? At any rate the date of the raid raises a strong presumption in favour of this hypothesis. The Nausari grant specifies 915 A. D. as the year of Indra III’s coronation,³ and his successor is known from the Daṇḍapur (Dhārwāḍ district) inscription to have been ruling in 918 A. D.¹ Hence we may feel certain that the Rāṣṭrakūṭa attack must have taken place sometime between the years 916 and 917 A. D. i.e., just a few years after the civil turmoil in Kanauj. As regards the results of the conflict, Dr. R. C. Majumdar is of opinion that “Mahīpāla fled from his capital, hotly pursued by his enemies,” and that later on Harṣadeva Candella assisted the Imperial ruler “to re-establish his authority over the shattered kingdom.”² For the latter part of the statement, however, I am unable to find any evidence, since the passage in the Khajuraho inscription discussed above, on which the learned Professor evidently bases his conclusion, does not refer to Mahīpāla’s restoration, but merely to his accession to the throne with the help of the Candella prince. Besides, we even know from the Asni inscription that Mahīpāla was ruling in (Vikrama) year 974 = 917 A. D., and his authority was recognised so far from the capital as the modern district of Fatehpur.³