Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T09:41:49.350Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

I. Some Problems of Ancient Indian History: No. III: The Gurjara Clans.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Extract

I have already expressed my agreement with General Sir A. Cunningham's theory that the emperors of Kanauj were Tomaras. For the evidence, such as it is, I must refer to his Arch. Surv. Reports, vol. i, p. 132 ff. From this theory, in combination with that of Mr. Bhandarkar, it follows, of course, that the Tomaras were a clan of the Gūrjara tribe. It is curious that the Tomaras are hardly ever mentioned in older records. There are, so far as I am aware, only two old inscriptions that name them. One is the Pehewa inscription (E.I. i, 244) of the time of Mahendrapāla (c. 885–910 a.d.), and the other is the Harsha inscription (E.I. ii, 116) of the Chohan Vigraharāja, dated 973 a.d., which would fall into the reign of Vijayapāla (c. 950–975 a.d.). Vigraharāja's great – grandfather Chandana is said to have defeated or slain (hatvā) a Tomara lord (īśa and bhūpa) named Rudrena, and to have been a cause of terror (bhaya-da) to the sovereign (Kṣ itipati). Seeing that Chandana's date would coincide with that of Kshitipāla (alias Mahīpāla, c. 913–945 a.d.), it suggests itself that the term Kṣ itipati may have been chosen on purpose in allusion to Kshitipāla's name, and that the Chohan Chandana may have been one of the chiefs who gave assistance to the Rāshṭ rakūṭa Indra III in his great war with Mahīpāla.

Type
Original Communications
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1905

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

page 3 note 1 I adopt Dr. Fleet's practical suggestion regarding the method of citing the volume on the Gupta Inscriptions, in J.B.A.S., 1904, p. 7, footnote.

page 3 note 2 Bühler has been represented as denying the identity of the two Toramā ṇas. This probably goes too far. What he says is “I am not able to assert that” the two are identical (E.I. i, 239); which may only mean that the identity seemed to him possible, though, for the reasons stated by him, he did not like to state it as a fact.

page 5 note 1 Similarly, in the Badal Pillar inscription, of c. 925 a.d. (E.I. ii, 161, 165), the Hūnas and Gūrjaras are distinguished. But here it may be mere poetical license.

page 5 note 2 I have slightly revised this remark, which, as printed in J.A.S.B., makes no sense.

page 6 note 1 The Diwān's Padhpāl is the Padmapāl of the inscription. Is it a misprint?

page 9 note 1 See Kāthvaṭe's edition of the latter, and Bühler's paper on the former in the Sitzungsberichte of the K. Akademie d. Wiss., vol. cxix, No. vii.

page 11 note 1 It does not seem to have ever been textually published.

page 12 note 1 The spelling of the latter form Cālukya varies with Calukya and Calikya. The form Calukya is used by the earlier, and Cālukya by the later dynasty of the Southern Empire.

page 12 note 2 Might it be connected with the Turkī root chūp, gallop, chāpāul, a plundering raid, a charge of cavalry? See J.A.S.B., extra number for 1878. Perhaps Turkī scholars would tell us.

page 16 note 1 Chandrāyudha cannot, however, be identified with Bhoja I (Ādivarāha), for though the latter's date would suit well enough, he was the most powerful member of the Gūrjara imperial house, and never required Dharmapāla's aid.

page 19 note 1 So in the MSS. and in the Bibliotheca Indica ed., p. 67; but in M. V. Pandia's ed., p. 49, verses 127 ff. The text varies slightly ; the only important difference is in Pandia's ed., line 4, brahmacārī vrata dhāriya, “he kept the brahmacārī vow,” for Brahma tini cālu su-sāriya. That reading can hardly be correct, because it is incongruent with the tenour of the stanza, which intends to describe warriors, not ascetics. Calu is also spelt culū, calū, calu, caluka, Skr. caluka or culuka.

page 21 note 1 Chand also knows the story of Vasishṭa's cow, but according to him the cow was not abducted, but fell into a bottomless cleft of the mount (athāva bila stanza 81) ; also, the loss of the cow has no immediate connection with the creation of the fire-races.

page 26 note 1 There is another point of detail in the later record of 1011 a.d., which, even with the late authority for it, is perhaps not altogether without significance. It is said that Vishṇu Vardhana, after his naturalization, went to the “Chālukya mountain,” and there paid worship to a number of Brahmanical deities (E.I. vi, 352, line 4; Ind. Ant., xiv, 49). This story seems to reflect a variant of Chand Bardāī's legend, which places the origin of the Chālukyas, and of their kindred clans, on Mount Abū, in connection with a solemn Brahmanical ceremony. “The Chālukya mountain” I take to mean the mount which was the ancestral stronghold of the Chālukyas, and the reference may well he to this very Mount Abū.

page 29 note 1 The word in the original is either Rohilla-dvy-aṅka or Rohilladdhy-aṅka pointing to a clan Rohilla or Rohilladdhi. Dvy-anlca, ‘having two marks,’ might indicate that Harichandra belonged by birth to the Rohillas, but by profession, or class, to the ‘Brahmans.’ Compare the term dvi-pakṣa as applied to the southern Chālukyas, Ind. Ant., xiv, 51, line 24.