History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v2.c29.s1.24

v2.c29.s1.24

According to the bards of the Chāhamānas, the original seat of power of the family was Māhishmatī on the Nerbudda and they enjoyed, it is believed, sovereignty of the whole of India many a time. We may treat this as unhistorical though we actually find the Chauhāns spread over almost the whole of India from the Panjab in the north to Mahārāshtra in the south. Their first historical seat of power was unquestionably Sambhar or the Śākambhari land which was a kingdom to the north of Mewad and which included Ajmer also. This country contained or was reputed to contain 1¼ lakhs of villages and hence was called Sapādalaksha country. (We have already quoted the list of Indian kingdoms with their reputed number of villages given in the Skanda Purāna Kumāri Khanda Chap. 39 (See note p. 40). Dr. Bhandarkar mistaking this Sapādalaksha country for the Siwalik hills country wrongly assigns that place as the original home of the Chāhamānas. The mistake has already been pointed out by Mr. Harbilas Sarda of Ajmer who also pointed out that Ahichchhatra which the Bijolia inscription mentions as the original city of the Chāhamānas was not situated in the Siwalik hills as was propounded by Dr. D. R. Bhandarkar but was Nagaur in Rajputana. On this point we are not quite sure and Ahichchhatra may have been the famous Ahichchhatra of the Pānchāla country mentioned in the Mahābhārata. But this question we have already alluded to in detail elsewhere and we may confine ourselves here to the remark that when the Chāhamānas are called Sapādalakshīya kings they are undoubtedly referred to as the kings of Sambhar or Sayambhar for we also find that they are usually called Sambharī Rais or kings of Sambhar in Prakrit poems and records.