History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v3.c34.16

v3.c34.16

In our second volume we gave the line of Mewad kings from Bappā to Śaktikumāra from the Ātpura inscription dated V. E. 1034 or A. D. 977. We will give in this volume the continuation of that line upto 1200 A. D. The mistake of the Pṛithvīrāja Rāsā in making Samarasinha a contemporary of Pṛithvīrāja III of Ajmer and Delhi has now been admitted on all hands; for Samarasinha's inscriptions plainly show him to belong to the end of the thirteenth century A. D. Unfortunately the Rāsā story has been accepted by bards in all Rajput states and has, therefore, vitiated their genealogies. We can in fact almost determine when this Rāsā vertion arose by comparing the various inscriptions relating to the Guhilots of Mewad themselves and the genealogies given therein. We have several such inscriptions (See Bhāvnagar Insc.). The first of them is the Abu Achaleśvara inscription dated St. 1342 ( 1285 A. D. ) and it gives a great many details. Then comes the Rāṇapurā ( Bāṇapurā ) inscription in Jodhpur territory dated 1496 (A. D. 1439 ) which tersely gives the whole genealogy from Bappā. Lastly comes the Rāyasāgara inscription dated St. 1732 (A. D. 1675) which first gives the Rāsā story that Samarasinha was married to Pṛithā sister of Pṛithvīrāja and died along with him in his last battle with Shihabuddin Ghori. The inscription distinctly refers to the Rāsā itself and has necessarily to distort the genealogy given in the preceding two inscriptions wherein Samarasinha is given as a son of Tejahsinha who was a son of Jaitrasimha in whose time the first conflict of Mewad with the Turks took place in about 1216 A. D. as distinctly mentioned in the Abu inscription, Jaitrasimha being described as a very Agastya to the ocean of the army of the Turks.[*] Of this conflict we will speak later on; but this suffices to show that even Jaitrasimha, grand-father of Samarasinha, was not a contemporary of Pṛithvīrāja. We will, therefore, ignore the Pṛithvīrāja Rāsā account which obviously arose after the Rāṇapurā inscription dated 1439 A. D. and before the Rāyasāgara inscription dated 1675 A. D. and will give the genealogy of the Guhilots of Mewad in this sub-period from Abu and Bāṇapurā inscriptions and as accepted by Pandit Gaurishankar in his Hindi edition of Tod's Rajāstan. We have got a short inscription of Vijayasinha, one of these kings, dated St. 1164 ( A. D. 1107 ) and later, of Jaitrasinha dated St. 1270 ( A. D. 1213 ). Starting from Śaktikumāra, the last king mentioned in the Ātpurā inscription dated A. D. 977, we have, upto Vijayasinha, 10 kings and the average comes to (1107-977)/10 = 130/10 = 13 years and from Śaktikumāra to Jaitrasinha we have 19 kings giving an average of (1213-977)/19 = 236/19 = 12 8/19 years. This shows that the average for the Guhilot kings is still shorter than that for other families. We will use 13 and 12 years as average for this portion of the Guhilot genealogy and assign probable dates, with remarks for individual kings from Gaurishankar and other sources.