North Indian Inscriptions

RECORDS OF THE SOMAVAMSI KINGS OF KATAK.

“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.¹ But, as far as the published accounts go, the annals contain no mention of the Yavanas after the supposed time of Yayâti-Kêsari. The story of Raktabâhu 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 Orissa by the Musalmâns 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 Musalmâns : Bhôjadêva of Mâlwa, 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 Maḥmûd of Ghaznî, who in A.D. 1022 and 1023 penetrated as far as the territories of Kâliñjar in Bundêlkhaṇḍ, and in A.D. 1024 invaded Gujarât ; and, in fact, the Udêpur praśasti claims that Bhôjadêva conquered the Turushkas, i.e. the Musalmâns (Ep. Ind. Vol. I. pp. 230, 231, 238) : but there is no other foreign power with which he can have come in collision. And this being so clear, I will quote here certain facts which make it, if possible, still more evident that the terms Yavana, as used in the annals, was intended to denote the Musalmâns : as already stated (page 326 above, note 3), in the Chitôrgaḍh inscription of A.D. 1428 or 1429, Fîrûz Shâh or Fîrûz-ud-dîn Taghlaq, king of Delhi (A.D. 1351 to1388), is called “the Yavana king Pêrôja” (Ep. Ind. Vol. II. p. 410) ; Sir William Hunter has mentioned an inscription of A.D. 1516, in Orissa, which “applies the word distinctively to the Muḥammadans” (Orissa, Vol. I. p. 224), and has also told us that “in the modern vernaculars it signifies Arabian, Turkish, or Mughul” (ibid.) ; and Mr. Stirling tells us that the Paṇḍits whom he employed to translate the materials that he used, always rendered ‘Yavana’ by ‘Moghal’ (Asiatic Reasearches, Vol. XV. p. 259).

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To revert to the annals,— the statements about the city of Delhi and certain Khâns, made in connection with Vajradêva (allotted to B.C. 538 to 421) and Narasiṁhadêva (B.C. 421 to 306), point distinctly, not only to Musalmâns, but to Musalmâns established at Delhi ; and the Musalmâns did not permanently advance as far as Delhi till A.D. 1193, when Shihâb-ud-dîn Muḥammad Ghôrî conquered the whole of the Panjâb and a good deal more of Northern India. It was this conquest which paved the way for the conquest of Orissa. Bakhtiyâr Khiljî, a general of Muḥammad Ghôrî or of his viceroy Qutb-ud-dîn, invaded Bengal and conquered it in A.D. 1203, There was thus established in Bengal a branch of the Musalmân 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 Sulaimân, 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 Raktabâhu,— a perfectly correct Sanskṛit word, but one which is most improbable, if not absolutely inadmissible, as a historical name,— is a perversion of the first name of Bakhtiyâr Khiljî ; and that the name of ‘Imarût 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 Yavana invasions which were repulsed, so the annals say, by Vajradêva and his successors, and the successful invasion by the Yavanas in the time of Śôbhanadêva, 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.
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......¹ See Ind. Ant. Vol. XVII. p. 60, where Mr. Howorth has suggested that the pirates in question may have been Malaya from Java.