History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v3.c34.s5.3

Language: English

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But the strongest reason which appears to prove to our mind conclusively, that Gāhadavāla was not the clan name of the family, is that this name does not appear in the list of the 36 royal clans of India accepted throughout the Rajput world. When this list was made and the number 36 fixed can be surmised with tolerable certainty. We have already shown in Volume II (p. 22) that Kalhaṇa who wrote his Rājatarangiṇī in 1154 A. D. mentions the number 36 of the royal clans of Rajputs. The list must have been made before this date. Secondly as the list contains the name of the Kachhawāhas who came to the front about the end of the 10th century, it is clear that the enumeration was made in the 11th century A. D. Why such an enumeration was made we shall have to discuss later on when describing the social condition of India in this sub-period; but we may state here that while in the preceding sub-period (800-1000) caste was fluid and intermarriages between the Indian castes on Anuloma basis took place (Vol. II p. 179), such intermarriages ceased in the third sub-period (1000-1200) and every caste began to consolidate itself and introduced rigid rules of marriage. It was natural that the Rajputs also should consolidate their sub-caste at this time and we are, therefore, doubly sure that this enumeration of 36 clans was made during the 11th century. Nay we even surmise from the very interesting verse noted later on in one of these inscriptions of Govindachandra (I. A. XVII p.

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15 made as Yuvaraja, which contains more popular ideas than any other inscription quoted in the appendix), that the consolidation of the solar and lunar race Kshatriya clans must have taken place in the orthodox revival under Chandra the first Gāhadavāla king. Now as the enumeration of 36 families was made at this time, if Gāhadavāla had been a clan name, it would most assuredly have been enumerated in the list separately. The supposition may be made that the enumeration was made before the rise of the Gāhadavālas of Kanauj, say, in the first half of the 11th century and it is hence that the name Gāhadavāla does not appear in the list. But surely Chanda Bardāi recited the names of the 36 royal families at the time of Prithvīrāja and Jaichand when the Gāhadavālas were in their glory, and most assuredly the name could not have been omitted from this list of Chand. It was impossible that such a powerful Rajput family as that of Jaichand should have been omitted by Chand when even minor families found mention in the list. We bold this list in the Rāsā to be the oldest we have (Vol. II p. 22); but supposing that the Rāsā is a fabrication throughout of the sixteenth century A. D. (we think it is an amplification of an original nucleus made about that time) and that Gaharwars being not considered good Rajputs were omitted in the list of 36, we have still two other lists, viz.

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the Jain list and the Kumārapāla-charita lists given by Tod which are very old but later than the rise of the Gāhadavālas, as the date of Kumārapāla, we have seen, is 1143-1173 and Kumārapāla-charita must be necessarily later. But these lists also do not mention the Gaharwars as a separate clan. In the days of Jaichand and at least a century or two later the Gāhadavālas must have been famous in India and their name could not have been omitted from the lists, which again had ample opportunity to mention their name as the names enumerated therein fall short of 36, the accepted number. Indeed in the Rambhā-manjarī drama by Nayachandra dated about 1400 A. D. in which Jaichand is the hero, in the very first epithet applied to him by the Sūtradhāra we have a reference to this list. Jaichand is said to be the forehead ornament of the 36 royal clans* of Ikshvākuvaṃśa. It is, therefore, certain that Gāhadavāla was not the name of a clan but of a family based on the town of residence. To what principal clan did these Gāhadavāla kings belong? Very probably to the Rathod clan whose name is included in the list of 36. There is, in our view, a strong indication of this in the Badaun Rāshṭrakūṭa inscription the date of which has not been ascertained but which certainly is anterior to the fall of Jaichand; as it mentions that one king of the line, Madanapāla, made incursions of Hamīra impossible (See E. I. I, p. 64).

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Now this inscription opens with† the expression "protected by the arms of the kings belonging to the famous and Akhila (all-pervading) Rāshṭrakūṭa clan". This suggests that the Rāshṭrakūṭa kula consisted of many branches and they protected or reigned over the whole of Pānchāla which included Kanauj. Indeed the kingdom of Kanauj was always known as the kingdom of Pānchāla (Al-Beruni states that Kanauj was famous for Pāṇḍavas meaning the Pānchālas who were their foremost supporters and Draupadi belonged to their country). The word Akhila in this verse would be meaningless if it did not refer to the other Rāshṭrakūṭa branches ruling in Pānchāla itself. This is a very old authority dating from before the last days of Jaichand to hold that Jaichand was also a Rathod as he is everywhere represented to be in later history. And there is no other family among the 36 clans to which the Gāhadavālas have been assigned as a branch in any tradition or record and we may conclude that the Gaharwars of U P. and the Rathods of Jodhpur are one clan viz. Rāṣṭrakūṭa.