Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India c23.17

c23.17

reign of king Lalitāditya (c. 730-66 A.D), the Śāhi-mukhyas, or chiefs belonging to the Śāhi family, were employed in the Kashmir administration as *Mahāpratihāra*, *Mahāsāndhivigrahika*, *Mahāsvaśālika*, *Mahābhāṇḍāgārika* and *Mahāsādhanika*, the *pañca-mahāśabda* later conferred by king Lalitāditya on a single official named Mitraśarman whom he seems to have made his viceroy at Kanauj after having subdued king Yaśovarman. Of the Later Śāhis, described as Brāhmaṇa by Al-Bīrūnī, Kalhaṇa mentions Lalliya's successor and his son Kamaluka Toramāṇa (no doubt the same as Kamlū of Al-Bīrūnī, and Kamlū Rāy of Hindustan mentioned by other Arab writers), a contemporary of 'Amr ibn Layth who ruled in the Khorasan-Kabul region about the last two decades of the ninth century A.D. Kamaluka is said to have been raised to the throne about 902-04 A.D. by a Kashmirian general. Kalhaṇa also speaks of the Śāhi kings Bhīma and Thakkana. The former, who was the maternal grandfather of Diddā, queen of the Kashmirian king Kṣemagupta (950-58 A.D.), built a temple of Viṣṇu in Kashmir during Kṣemagupta's rule. A general of the Kashmirian king Abhimanyu (958-72 A.D.) is said to have defeated the Śāhi king Thakkana who may have been the grandfather of Jayapāla. The latest Śāhi king mentioned by Kalhaṇa is Trilocanapāla (1013-21 A.D.) whose struggle with the Hammira, *i.e.* Sulṭān Mahmūd of Ghaznī, is also described. Then, after having referred to the final collapse of Śāhi rule in another context, the Kashmirian author says that even in his days, *i.e.* in the middle of the 12th century A.D., ‘the appellation Śāhi throws its lustre on a numberless host of Kṣatriyas abroad, who trace their origin to that royal family’,¹