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No. 26.]
SANJAN PLATES OF AMOGHAVARSHA I; SAKA-SAMVAT 793. 239
prominent part in this Hiranyagarbha ceremony in Ujjain. And this receives confirmation from a stanza occurring in the Dasavatara cave temple inscription at Ellora. This inscription gives Mahārāja-Sarva as another name apparently for Dantidurga, and claims that in that very Ujjain, in order to enjoy a diversion with other princes, he instituted a mahā-dāna worthy of kings, and poured all kinds of wealth and precious stones on the supplicants. There can, therefore, be no doubt that Dantidurga had gone to Ujjain and performed the Hiranyagarbha ceremony. Secondly, verse 9 of our grant also implies that at Ujjain was then ruling a Gurjara dynasty called Pratihāra. There can be little doubt that this must be the Pratihara dynasty, that became supreme after seizing the throne of Mahodaya. We know for certain from epigraphic records that their capital became Mahodaya or Kanauj from the time of Bhoja I onwards. But we did not know with certitude where they were actually ruling before they became rulers of Kanauj. And it was a mere surmise when some scholars thought that it was Bhilmal or Bhinmal in South Rajputana. Our grant, however, enables us now to say definitely that their original seat of power was Ujjain. It also enables us to interpret properly the third line of the stanza so often quoted from the Jaina Harivansa of Jinasena. We can have no doubt now as to the correctness of Dr. Fleet's translation, which makes Vatsaraja king of Avanti. This Vatsaraja, of course, is the Vatsaraja of the Imperial Pratihara dynasty, and the Jaina Harivamsa may be regarded as strengthening the inference that the Pratihāras were estab lished at Ujjain and not Bhilmal before they transferred their capital to Kanauj. Dantidurga was succeeded by Subhatunga Vallabha (v. 10), that is, Krishna I, who is represented to have seized the Chalukya sovereignty. He was followed by Prabhutavarsha, that is, Govinda II, and the latter by Dhārāvarsha, that is, Dhruva (v. 12). Verse 13 contains no historical information, but the verse following says that Dhruva snatched away the royal parasols of the king of Gauda as he was fleeing between the Ganges and the Jumna. This Gauḍa king, who would be a contemporary of Dhruva, is either Dharmapala or his father Gopala, of the Pala dynasty. From the inscriptions of this family, however, Gōpāla does not seem to have been in any way a powerful prince; and we must, therefore, suppose that Dharmapala was the Gauda prince defeated by Dhruva. But the curious thing about this victory is that he was defeated not in his own country but outside. Does this not show that the Ganda prince had gone outside his dominions, perhaps, to help the king of Kanauj? This agrees with the fact, mentioned in the Baroda plates, that Dhruva seized the territory between the Ganges and the Jumna and thus added the emblems of the two rivers to his imperial insignia. This territory certainly coincides with the Kanauj kingdom, and what appears to have happened is that when, after defeating Vatsaraja, Dhruva was pressing his victories northwards, the Gauda king must have made common cause with the Kanauj sovereign, but that, when the Rashtrakuta prince inflicted a crushing defeat on the latter, he began to pursue the former and encountered him before he was able to reach his dominions. Verse 15 says that Dhruva's fame, which had already spread as far as the extremities of the earth, now extended to the heavens, implying that he died. The next verse furnishes Nirupama as an epithet of Dhruva, and tells us that, as soon as his son Govinda III was crowned king, he re-instated some of the feudatories in their own principalities, and, apparently against the wishes of his councillors, in particular, released the Ganga prince, who, as we know from the records, was imprisoned by his father. This move
1 Arch. Surv. West. Ind., Vol. V, p. 88.
2 Jour. R. As. Soc., 1909, p. 57; Smith's Early His. Ind., p. 378.
Above, Vol. VI, pp. 195-6. Verse 9 of this charter of Amoghavarsha was communicated to Dr. R. C. Majumdar for being utilised in his paper entitled the Gurjara-Pratihāras published in the Jour. Dept. Letters (Cal. Univ.), Vol. X (p. 25 and ff.).
Dr. Majumdar was the first to show that this verse of the Baroda Plates (Ind Ant., Vol. XII, p 159) was to be taken as referring to Dhruva, and not to Govinda III as had been done by Dr. Fleet (Jour. Dept. Letters, Vol. X, p. 35, n. 2).
