History of Kanauj to the Moslem Conquest c17.s5.12

c17.s5.12

To turn to Vijayapāla, it is difficult to ascertain the exact limits of his reign, but we know that he must have come to the throne about 959 A. D., and ceased to rule long before 1019 A. D., when his successor Rājyapāla was killed in battle. Thus the period between 959 and 1019 A. D. covers two reigns; and if we, therefore, assign thirty years to each—leaving a slight margin for error—the date of Vijayapāla’s death would fall sometime about the year 988-89 A. D. The gradual process of decline, which began in the time of Devapāla with the rise of the Candellas, continued steadily under Vijayapāla’s rule, so that when the sceptre dropped from his hand, the mighty kingdom of the Pratīhāras had become a ghost of its former self, and on its ruins new states had appeared. Among the earliest defections was that of the south-western province of Saurāṣṭra (Kāthiāwāḍ), which along with Gujarat came under the Solanki or Caulukya dynasty founded by Mūlarāja at Anhilwāḍ (Anhilla-pāṭaka) about the middle of the tenth century A. D.² The Kādi plates³ and the Gujarat chronicles describe him as a son of Mahārājādhirāja Rāji, and we may, therefore, suppose that Mūlarāja was not a mere upstart adventurer, but belonged to some notable family.¹ The Kādi inscription also states that he acquired the Sāraswata-maṇḍala by the prowess of his arms.² The Vaḍnagar praśasti³ further informs us that Mūlarāja “made the fortune of the kingdom of the Cāpoṭkaṭa princes, whom he took captive at will, an object of enjoyment for the multitude of the learned, of his relatives” etc., which shows that he must have aggrandised himself in southern Rajputana—the homelands of the opponents named. In northern Rajputana also the authority of the Pratīhāras must have been only nominal, for Mathanadeva, son of Sāvaṭa of the Gurjara-Pratīhāra lineage (Gurjara-Pratīhārānvayaḥ), adopts the imperial titles of Mahārājādhirāja and Parameśvara in the Rajor inscription discovered among the ruins of Parnagar in the Alwar state, while in the same breath he represents himself as a feudatory of Vijayapāla.⁴