History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v3.c34.s6.4

v3.c34.s6.4

Notwithstanding this ambiguity, there are indications that the Rathods alias Gāhadavālas came from the Deccan. In the first place, the word Rāshṭrakūṭa as the name of an officer is found in southern inscriptions only. In fact the word Rāṣṭra as denoting a kingdom or province is found in the Deccan only (see the Malla Rāṣṭra, Gopa Rāṣṭra and Pandu Rāṣṭra of the Mahābhārata and Rāṣṭrika of Aśoka inscriptions). Secondly, the tradition at Jodhpur is that the family goddess idol was brought from the Deccan by a Rathod prince named Khes (ancestor of the Jodhpur family) and is called by the Deccani name Nāganechi. Thirdly, it is strange to discover a Marathi passage in the Rambhā-manjarī Nātikā of Nayachandra Sūri who wrote this drama about 200 years after Jaichand who is the hero. The customary eulogy of Vaitālikas in the beginning of the first act in which the praises of Jaichand are sung is, strangely enough, in Marathi, though nearly the whole of the drama is in the courtly Mahārāṣṭri or Śauraseni Prakrit. This passage is worth quoting and we do it below.* It may indicate that Nayachandra was a Jain pandit from the Deccan; but it is more indicative of the probability that the family bards of Jaichand must have belonged to the Deccan and that it was customary to sing these praises in Marathi. The Gāhadavāla family thus seems to have come from the Deccan and the tradition was still current in Nayachandra Sūri's time. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, the Kshatriyas of the south and north were not differentiated and the Deccan Gāhadavālas were indeed looked upon as best Rajputs, as the very first epithet of Jaichand in this drama proves. This Deccan Rāṣṭrakūta clan seems to have spread over the whole of Northern India from Badaun to Mithila as inscriptions of the 11th century A. D. prove, and one branch of it which conquered Kanauj was called Gāhadavāla. We must indeed state here that these Rāṣṭrakūtas of the Deccan must have come there from the north originally, as all Kshatriyas or Aryans came to the Deccan from the north-west. We even find the name Rāṣṭrika in the north in an edict of Aśoka, and the Rāṣṭrakūtas must have come to the Deccan from the Panjab originally.