Epigraphia Indica Vol 03

SR No.: 032557
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Jas Burgess
Publisher: Archaeological Survey of India
Publication Year: 1894
Total Pages: 472
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 25 MB

Page 408

No. 47.)
RECORDS OF THE SOMAVAMSI KINGS OF KATAK.
339
"Indus reproduced upon the Ganges, with the continuation of Nearchus' exploratory armament "along the coast to the west of the river mouth" (Orissa, Vol. I. p. 216). And it seems to have been magnified somewhere else into a whole series of attacks by sea-pirates, continued during the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries A.D. But, as far as the published accounts go, the annals contain no mention of the Yavanas after the supposed time of Yayâti-Kësari. The story of Raktabahu is the only one that includes an attack by way of the sea. And there is no doubt, whether an invasion was really made by sea or not, that it simply embodies the conquest of Orisss by the Musalmåns in the thirteenth century A.D., mixed up with the vague memory of the Early Gupta kings. That the Yavanas of the period A.D. 328 to 474 can be none but the Early Guptas, we have already seen. The Yavanas of the next preceding mention (allotted to B.C. 184 to 57) are indisputably the Musalmans: Bhỏjadêva of Malwa, who is really the king who is thus antedated by about twelve centuries (real dates, A.D. 1021-22 and 1042-43), may easily have come in hostile contact with Mahmûd of Ghazni, who in A.D. 1022 and 1023 penetrated as far as the territories of Kåliñjar in Bundólkhand, and in A.D. 1024 invaded Gujarat ; and, in fact, the Udêpar prasasti claims that Bhôjadêya conquured the Tarushkas, 1.6, the Musalmans (Ep. Ind. Vol. I. pp. 230, 231, 238): but there is no other foreign power with which he can have oome in collision. And this being so clear, I will quote here certain facts which make it, if possible, still more evident that the term Yavana, as used in the annals, was intended to denote the Musalmans: as already stated (page 326 above, note 3), in the Chitorgadh inscription of A.D. 1428 or 1429, Firûz Shah or Firuz-ud-din Taghlag, king of Delhi (A.D. 1351 to 1388), is called “the Yavana king Pôroja" (Ep. Ind. Vol. II. p. 410); Sir William Hanter has mentioned an inscription of A.D. 1516, in Orissa, which "applies the word distinctively to the Muhammadans" (Orissa, Vol. I. p. 224), and has also told us that "in the modern vernaculars it signifies Arabian, Turkigb, or Mughul" (ibid.); and Mr. Stirling tells us that the Pandits whom he employed to translate the materials that he used, always rendered 'Yavana' by Moghal' (Asiatio Researches, Vol. XV. p. 259). To revert to the annals,- the statements about the city of Delhi and certain Khans, made in connection with Vajradeva (allotted to B.C. 538 to 421) and Narasimhadova (B.O. 421 to 306), point distinctly, not only to Musalmans, but to Musalmång established at Delhi; and the Musalmans did not permanently advance as far as Delhi till A.D. 1193, when Shihab-ud-din Muhammad Ghort conquered the whole of the Panjab and a good deal more of Northern India. It was this conquest which paved the way for the conquest of Orissa. Bakhtiyar Khilji, a general of Muhammad Ghort or of his viceroy Qutb-ud-din, invaded Bengal and conquered it in A.D. 1203, There was the established in Bengal a branch of the Musalman power, which from A.D. 1212 onwards made constant raids into Orissa, with more or less success, but without any permanent results. And finally, in A.D. 1567-68 Sulaiman, king of Bengal, attacked and defeated the last independent king of Orissa, and practically subjugated the province. It seems to me that the name of Raktabdhu,- a perfectly correct Sanskrit word, but one which is most improbable, if not absolutely inadmissible, as a historical name,- is a perversion of the first name of Bakhtiyâr Khilia : and that the name of Imardt or Himarat Khân,' which is connected with the Yavanas whom Vajradêva is said to have repulsed, may enable us hereafter to locate exactly the invasion which is allotted to the period B.C. 538 to 421. But, however the case may be on these two points, there can be no substantial doubt that the Yavans invasions which were repulsed, so the annals say, by Vajradáve and his successors, and the successful invasion by the Yavanas in the time of sábhanedeva, are (mixed up with the Early Gupta rule) simply the raids into Orissa by the Musalmâns in the thirteenth and following centuries, and the ultimate conquest of the country by them in the sixteenth century, A. D.
See Ind. Ant. Vol. XVII. p. 60, where Mr. Howorth has suggested that the pirates in question may have been Malaga from JATA.
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