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The Indian Analyst
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South Indian Inscriptions |
THE EARLY GURJARAS the defeat of the Haihayas must have occurred before 687 A. C. Thereafter, we do not hear of the Haihayas till the 8th century A. C., except in connection with the marriages of the princesses of the family with the scions of the Eastern and Western Chālukya dynasties.1 The Haihayas, therefore, seem to have remained loyal to their overlords, the Chālukyas, until the latterâs overthrow by the Rāshtrakūtas. The rise of the Rāshtrakūtas led to a change in the political fortune of the Haihayas or Kalachuris, to which we shall turn in a subsequent section. THE EARLY GURJARAS Several inscriptions2 of the Gurjaras, all of them on copper-plates, dated in the Kalachuri era have been discovered in Western India between the Kīm and the Mahī. They range in dates from K. 380 to K. 486. This country was under the direct rule of the Kalachuris till K. 361 at least; for, in that year Buddharāja made the grant of a village in the Broach District.3 After the overthrow of the Kalachuris, Pulakēśin II extended the northern limit of his empire to the Kim, adding to it the provinces of Konkan, the three Maharashtras and southern Gujarat. Just about that time Harsha, the mighty ruler of Kanauj, was making extensive conquests in the north, and countries far and near were submitting to him. It must have seemed very likely that he would soon press to the south. Pulakēśin, therefore, wisely decided to create a buffer state in Central Gujarat under Dadda II of the Gurjara race, who had probably acquired already some portion of it during the hostilities of the Kalachuris and the Chālukyas in the south. Dadda II on his part was only too glad to acknowledge the suzerainty and get the support of his powerful southern neighbour. The Aihōlē inscription4 tells us that the king of Lāta, Who was none other than this Dadda, as well as the Mālava and the Gurjara, being impressed by Pulakēśin’s valour, became, as it were, teachers of how feudatories subdued by force ought to behave. The grants of Dada II are the earliest Gurjara records so far discovered in Gujarat. Keilhorn has shown that both in their eulogistic formal parts they were drafted on the model of the earlier Kalachuri grants, and from this he rightly conjectured that âthe family of these chiefs(i.e., the Gurjaras) rose to independence only after the time of the Katachchuri Buddharāja.â5
The Kairā grants of Dadda II mention two earlier princes of the dynasty, viz., his
grandfather Dadda I and father Jayabhata I alias Vītarāga. The former, who is styled
Sāmanta, was only a feudal lord. As regards the suzerain to whom he owed allegiance,
Fleet conjectured that he and also his son Jayabhata I must have been vassals of the
Katachchuri king Buddharāja.6 As the known dates of Dadda II range from K. 380 to
K. 392, he probably flourished from circa K. 370 to K. 395. His grandfather Dadda I
must, therefore, be referred to the period from circa K 320 to K. 345 or from 570
A. C. to 595 A. C. The contemporary Kalachuri emperors were Krishnarāja and his son
Sankaragana,7 and not Buddharāja. It is again doubtful if Dadda I was at all ruling in
Gujarat. From a copper-plate found at Sankhēdā8 we learn that Nirihullaka was ruling
over the lower Narmadā valley, later on the heart of the Gurjara kingdom, as a feudatory
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