History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v1.c14.6

v1.c14.6

Some time about 650 A.D. (so it may approximately be taken) Sāhasī fell ill and died without issue. And his kingdom was seized by Sāhasī's minister Chacha, a Brahmin, and an ambitious, energetic and unscrupulous man. The Chacha-nāma relates that he did so with the assistance, nay, by the instigation of Sāhasī's queen who had fallen in love with him. They kept the death of the king a secret, enticed the turbulant nobles and relatives of the king who were likely to oppose them to the palace and imprisoned them. Then as by an order of the sick king, the government was publicly entrusted to Chacha whose authority was already well established. Chacha made many nobles his partisans by giving them estates of the imprisoned Sardars and when he had a strong party in his favour, he announced the king's death and his own assumption of the crown. He strengthened his position further by marrying the guilty queen of Sāhasī and thus established his own dynasty in the kingdom on a firm basis.