Political History of Northern India

Author(s): Gulabchandra Chaudhary
Publisher: Sohanlal Jain Dharm Pracharak Samiti Amrutsar

Page 75

THE DYNASTIES OF MADHYADESA
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Devapāla. He was succeeded by Mahendrapāla II whose short reign could be placed between 940 and 948 A.D. The celebrated author Somadeva was his contemporary. He refers to him by name in the opening and concluding verses of the first chapter of his monumental work Yaśastilaka Campul and at his instance composed the Nitiväkyämyta as is declared in some anonymous commentary. It is said that before this he had composed a work named Trivarga-Mahendra-Mālatīsañjalpa, dealing with Dharma Artha and Käma perhaps in the form of dialogue between king Mahendra and charioteer Mālati. Nothing more is known about this king from the Jain sources in the present state of our knowledge.
DEVAPĀLA: Mahendrapāla II was succeeded by Devapāla in c. 948 A.D. About Devapāla we infer from an unpublished, damaged and fragmentary inscription in a small Jain temple at Ahār near Udaipur that he was killed by the Guhilota Allața in a fight. Nothing further is known about him from the Jain sources.'
RĀJYAPĀLA: In the third generation of Mahīpāla alias Vināyakapāla, appears, among several successors, one Rājyapāla. A Jain inscription from Dubkunda, dated V.E. 1145 (A.D. 1088) of the reign of the Kacchapaghāta Vikramasimha, refers to one Rājyapāla. We learn from it that Vikramasimha's grand-father Arjuna, "being anxious to serve the illustrious Vidyadharadeva, had fiercely slain in a great battle the illustrious Rājyapāla with many showers of arrows that pierced his neckbone." The event is probably referred to in the Mahobă inscription which represents Vidyādhara as having caused the destruction of the king of Kanauj." These two statements when jointly defined, tell us undoubtedly that this Rājyapāla was the Gurjara Pratīhāra, king of Kanauj, whose name has been spelt by Arab historians as Rājaybāl. Thus Rajyapāla was a contemporary of the Candella Vidyadhara and the Kacchapaghāța Arjuna. The date of his accession given by the historians is 1018 A.D.
1 Kāvyamāla (N.S.P.) No. 70, 1901. 2 Rāghavan, NIA., vi, pp. 67-9. 3 Pt. Premi, Jain Sahitya aur Itihasa, 2nd ed., p. 178. 4 See infra p. 219. Chapter on the Guhilotas. 5 EI., II, pp. 233-237. line 12.; See infra on the Kacchapaghatas :
विद्याधरदेवकार्यनिरतः श्रीराज्यपालं हठात्।
कण्ठास्यच्छिदनेकबाणनिवर्हत्वा महत्याहवे ॥ • Ibid., I, pp. 219, 222, V. 22: fareftFTTTT ? DNNI., Pt. I, p. 598.