History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v3.c34.5.1

v3.c34.5.1

The first king Durlabha is said in the Harsha stone inscription to be a brother of the preceding king Vigraharāja who certainly was a great king. If we identify him with the Dhundā Dānava Visala of the Prithvīrāja Rāsā wherein the absurd legend is given of his becoming a demon and devastating Ajmer, we shall not be far wrong. But as said before, it is not possible to take the Rāsā for history, at least for the ancestors of Prithvīrāja III; and we have to abandon the task of identifying Rāsā kings with kings mentioned in inscriptions. For, further, we find that this demon is said to have lived for 300 years before Prithvīrāja and yet his son is said to be Sārangadeva a name not to be found in the inscription genealogies and his son was Arnorāja. But Arnorāja from inscriptions appears to be a great-grandson of the next Visāla or Vigraha III whose probable date of accession is 1063 A. D. and who thus preceded Prithvīrāja III by about a hundred years only. Giving up the Rāsā, therefore, we may note that Vākpati was the king of Sāmbhar from A. D. 1003 and hence a contemporary of Mahmud of Ghazni.* But the Chāhamānas do not appear to have had any conflict with the Turks of Ghazni during Mahmud's time as Mahmud did not come to Ajmer. And Ajmer was not the capital of the Chāhamānas in 1000 A. D.