History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v2.c29.8

v2.c29.8

It remains to fix the dates of Bappā's birth, his accession to the throne of Chitore and his abdication. The traditional date of his abdication is given as V. Samvat 820 or 763 A. D. This date does not seem to be incompatible with the date which is found in the inscription of Maun Mori at Chitore given by Tod in his history (Appendix Vol. II Tod's Rajastan by Crooke) viz., 770 V. S. or 713 A. D. Maun Mori is supposed to be the last king of the Mori line. The accession of Bappā to the throne of Chitore may be placed between 713 and 763 or somewhere about 730 A. D. It is given by Tod on the basis of Mewad tradition as 728 A.D. (see Tod by Crooke Vol. I p. 285). The Arabs conquered Sind in 712 A. D. and must have made incursions into kingdoms of inner India thereafter. The incursion on Maurya kingdom as stated above must have taken place sometime before 738 the date of the Navasāri inscription and we may safely place Bappā's accession in 740 A. D. and even earlier in 730 A. D. His rule, therefore, may be taken to have lasted 33 years not a long period however. It is difficult to say what his age was when he sat on the throne of Chitore. If he was comparatively young, we may take him about 30 years old and his birth may be assigned to 700 A. D. Now there is a strong traditional belief among the Guhilots of Mewad that Bappā was born in St. 191 a date which Tod says neither the bards nor the reignig prince of Udepur were willing to give up (see Tod by Crooke Vol. I p. 268). How to explain this figure was a riddle before Tod and he solved it by going to the Valabhī era and the sack of Valabhī by the barbarians. Now for both these Tod assigned dates which have been proved wrong from inscriptions. For the latter he assigns A. D. 524 but as a matter of fact we know that the last Śilāditya of Valabhī has left a grant dated 766 A. D. The explanation given by Tod, therefore, fails and we are driven to say that the Guhilot bards stick to a false and fanciful date for the birth of Bappā or we must offer some other explanation. We think we can explain this figure by looking upon it as given in the era of the founding of the Valabhī kingdom by Bhaṭārka, the date of which is 509 A. D. as given in our genealogy of the Valabhī kings (see Vol. I page 250). If we add 191 to this we get 700 A. D. It is not at all strange that the Idar branch of the Valabhī dynasty should have kept up the memory of the kingdom founded by Bhaṭārka as the branch was founded by a son of Guhasena whose date is 565 A. D. The Indian dynasty bards kept up, even keep up now, by calculation of their own, such eras or Samvats by adding the number of years for each reign and thus the memory of St. 191 for Bappā's birth from the foundation of Valabhī rule is not strange.