History of Kanauj to the Moslem Conquest c9.s1.t5.1

c9.s1.t5.1

It is unfortunate that the records of the Maukharis do not mention the kingdom over which they ruled, and at such a distance of time this omission, coupled with the scantiness of known details about them, causes us a good deal of doubt and difficulty. Saṅkar Pāṇḍurang Pandit was the first to express his scepticism as regards accepting Kanauj as the Maukhari capital;¹ and sharing this diffidence Dr. Vincent Smith remarked that the "assumption is a natural and legitimate inference from Bāṇa’s narrative, but not a necessary one."² He further adds that the Pandit may be right in the view which he "definitely adopted that up to the time that Rājyaśrī’s husband was murdered, Kanauj was the capital of the Mālava kings."³ Elsewhere Smith summarises his views on the Maukhari territories in these words: "These ‘Later Guptas of Magadha’, as they are called by archæologists, shared the rule of that province with another dynasty of Rājās, who had names ending in *varman*, and belonged to a clan called Maukhari. The territorial division between the two dynasties cannot be defined precisely, but the Maukhari dominion in the middle of the sixth century included Oudh. Their relations with one another were sometimes friendly and sometimes hostile, but the few details known are of little importance."⁴