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EPIGRAPHIA INDICA,
[VOL. XVIII.
their kingdom with the one described by Hiuen Tsiang. Nay, I believe that we are even able to identify the king whose court was visited by the pilgrim. "The king" says he " is of the Kshatriya caste. He is just 20 years old. He is distinguished for wisdom, and he is courageous. He is a deep believer in the law of Buddha and highly honours men of distinguished ability." Now, as the pilgrim visited the kingdom abont hundred years after the foundation of the dynasty we may reasonably expect four generations of kings to have passed away during that period and the young king may be looked upon as belonging to the fifth. On referring to the dynastic list we find king Tata occupying this position. Verses 14-15 inform us that king Tata, considering the life to be evanescent as lightning, abdicated in favour of his younger brother and himself retired to a hermitage, practising there the rites of true religion. The curious confirmation about the religious fervour of the king, who may be held on other grounds to have been contemporary with the pilgrim, gives rise to a strong presumption about the correctness of our identification.1
The Gurjaras, after their settlement in Rajputana and Broach, had to fight for their supremacy with Prabhakaravardhana of Thaneswar who seems to have headed the native resistance against the invading hordes of the Hñuas and the Gurjaras. We have already referred to the wars of Prabhakaravardhana against the Gurjaras. The poetical language of Banabhaṭṭa may be taken to imply that the further advance of the Gurjaras was stayed in the north. The struggle was not, however, a decisive one, and seems to have been continued till the time of Harshavardhana. The feudatory Dadda II of Broach is said to have protected a lord of Valabhi against the Kanauj Emperor, and surprise has justly been expressed how a small state like Broach could withstand the force of the mighty emperor. Every thing however appears quite clear if we admit Broach to have been a feudatory state of the dynasty of Harichandra and remember its hereditary enmity with the royal house of Thaneswar. That the Gurjaras were not worsted in their struggle with the kings of Thaneswar appears quite clearly from the fact that they retained their independence, as Hiuen Tsiang informs us, till at least a late period in the reign of Harshavardhana. The struggle between Dadda-II and the rulers of Kanauj incidentally referred to in inscriptions, may thus be looked upon as part and parcel of the great and long-drawn battle between the two powers.
The extension of the Gurjara power to the south brought it into conflict with the rising power of the Chalukyas. It is recorded in the Aihole Inscription that the Chalukya hero Pulakesi II (611 to 640 A.D.) defeated the Latas, Malavas and Gurjaras. The Gurjaras here must be taken to refer to the Pratthara dynasty under consideration, for it cannot denote the feudatory line founded by Dadda as it is included under the Latas. The mention of the Gurjaras along with the Latas and the Malavas clearly shows that they occupied a territory contiguous to these two provinces and the kingdom of the Pratihära line under consideration exactly corresponds to this. The struggle between the two powers must have been of long duration; for during the reign of the successor of Pulakesi, a branch of the Chalukya dynasty was founded in southern Gujarat, and this was evidently to keep in check the powerful Gurjaras in the north.
1 It has been urged by Bühler (Ind. Ant. Vol. XVII, p. 192) and V. A. Smith (J. R. 4. S. 1907, p. 923) that the kingdom visited by Hiwen Tsiang was that of Bhillamale, ruled over by the Chapa dynasty. Professor D. R. Bhandarkar has pointed out several drawbacks in this explanation (J. Bo. Br. R. 4. S. Vol. XXI, p. 417). It will suffice here to point out that the identification of Pi-lo-mo-lo with Bhillamala is far from satisfactory, in view of its distance from Valabhi as given by Hiuen Tsiang. Again, the Chapotkatas or the Chapas are clearly distinguished from the Gurjaras in the Nansäri grant of the Gujarat Chalukya Pulakesiraja (Kielhorn's Northern List No. 404) and the Chapa kingdom cannot, therefore, be identified with the Gurjara kingdom visited by Hinen Tsiang.
Ep. Ind. Vol, VI, p 6
