History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v1.c18.s3.5

v1.c18.s3.5

Who succeeded Harsha? As we have said above, it must have been some Varmā king of the Maukhari line. There is not the least doubt that about the end of the 7th century there was a Varmā king named Yaśovarman on the throne of Kanauj and he held extensive sway and had great power. He was a great patron of letters and he had at his court the celebrated poets Bhavabhūti and Vākpatirāj. In the Gaudavaho, a Prakrit poem by Vākpatirāj in praise of his exploit in conquering a Gauda king we are told that he was a Somavamśi Kshatriya. The Maukhari Varmās, we have already remarked, were probably lunar line Kshatriyas. This Yaśovarman aimed at the suzerainty of the whole of Northern India like Harsha and began his digvijaya by conquering the Gauda king who was as we have also seen before, a hereditary enemy of the Varmās of Kanauj. Whether this Ganda king was a Gupta, what city he ruled in and how he was killed we are not told in the Gaudavaho. Probably the poem as we have it is only an introductory chapter to a bigger poem which the poet intended to write. But the later reverses of Yaśovarman put a stop to the composition of this greater work. For we know from contemporary records that Yaśovarman was certainly defeated by the Kashmir king Muktāpida Lalitāditya who also aspired to the empire of India, and that Yaśovarman was also *very probably* defeated by a Chālukya king of the Deccan. The story of Lalitāditya’s conquest of Yaśovarman we have already detailed in the history of Kashmir and we may merely refer to the fact that this defeat must have happened about the close of the 7th century, only a few years after the accession of Lalitāditya in 697 A. D. i. e. about 700 A. D., notwithstanding the difficulty created by Chinese accounts which we have already discussed in a note. The defeat of Yaśovarman by a Chālukya king must have happened before this event as we now go on to relate. Here it must first be stated by way of closing the previous history, that Yaśovarman must have conquered the Gauda king about 680 or 690 A. D. at the latest and must therefore have come to the throne in about 675 A. D. Between Harsha’s death in 647 and Yaśovarman’s accession i. e. between 647 and 675 A. D. two kings of the Varmā line must have reigned. Who they were history has not yet discovered for no inscriptions have yet been found which throw a light on this point. But Yaśovarman’s power and ambition seem consistent with the usual course of history wherein we usually find the third king in a new line rising to the greatest glory (witness Pulakeshin II, Akbar, Nana Saheb Peshwa, Lalitāditya himself and many others.)