Regional Kingdoms of Medieval India

A recurring trap in this chapter is treating "Chalukya" and "Chaulukya" as the same dynasty. They are not: the Chalukyas of Badami and later Kalyani ruled the Deccan from the sixth century, while the Chaulukyas, also called the Solankis, were a separate, much later dynasty that governed Gujarat from around 940 CE and used "Chaulukya" as a self-designation entirely distinct from their Deccan namesakes. A second, equally common confusion is assigning the wrong dynasty to the wrong UNESCO monument: Ellora's rock-cut Kailasa temple belongs to the Rashtrakutas of the Deccan, not the Chandelas, while the sculpted temple complex at Khajuraho belongs to the Chandelas of Bundelkhand, not the Rashtrakutas. A third is the "tripartite struggle" for control of Kannauj, fought over roughly a century among the Gurjara-Pratiharas, the Rashtrakutas and the Palas of Bengal, whose participants and outcome get mixed up easily. Keeping these dynasties straight, who ruled where, who built what, and who fought whom, is what this chapter actually tests.

The Vijayanagara Empire: Sources, Administration and Decline, covered elsewhere on this site, is a later, specifically southern empire, founded only in 1336 after the Delhi Sultanate was already established; the dynasties below are earlier, and mostly northern or Deccan, powers whose rise and fall predate that later empire.

The Gurjara-Pratiharas: northern India's frontier power

The Gurjara-Pratiharas ruled in two separate lines. One, descended from a chief named Harichandra, governed at Mandor in Marwar, near present-day Jodhpur, from around the sixth to the ninth century. The better-known line, founded by Nagabhata I in the eighth century, ruled first from Ujjain and later shifted its capital to Kannauj, holding power there into the eleventh century.

Nagabhata I's reign fell in the same decades that Arab forces, having conquered Sindh in 712 under Muhammad bin Qasim, tried to push further east into Rajasthan and Gujarat. The Pratiharas, along with other regional powers of the period, checked these advances and kept Arab control confined largely to Sindh itself, a frontier role that let later Pratihara rulers build a genuinely large north Indian empire behind it.

Vatsaraja, attested as ruling by 783, extended Pratihara power but was defeated by the Rashtrakutas of the Deccan, an early round in what became the three-way contest for Kannauj. His successor Nagabhata II captured Kannauj itself and made it the Pratihara capital by around 816, a position the dynasty then defended against repeated challenges from both the Rashtrakutas to the south and the Palas of Bengal to the east, the tripartite struggle referred to above.

The dynasty's peak came under Mihira Bhoja (also called Bhoja I), who came to the throne around 836. Under him Pratihara territory stretched from the Himalayan foothills in the north to the Narmada river in the south, and from the Ganges valley in the east to Sindh in the west, briefly rivalling the old Gupta empire in extent. His successor Mahendrapala (reigned roughly 890 to 910) held this peak, extending Pratihara influence from Gujarat to northern Bengal.

After Mahendrapala's death the empire came apart quickly: internal succession disputes combined with a damaging raid by the Rashtrakuta king Indra III left the Pratiharas, by the close of the tenth century, controlling little beyond the Gangetic doab around Kannauj. Their last significant ruler, Rajyapala, was driven out of Kannauj in 1018 by Mahmud of Ghazni, and several Pratihara feudatories, the Chandelas among them, who had already been rulers in all but name for decades, became fully independent.

The Rashtrakutas: the Deccan and the Kailasa temple

The Rashtrakutas rose to power in the Deccan in the mid-eighth century, when Dantidurga overthrew the Chalukya ruler Kirtivarman II and took control of the region around Lattalur, modern Latur in Maharashtra. Under Dantidurga's uncle and successor, Krishna I, who reigned from roughly 756 to 773, the Rashtrakutas commissioned the single most spectacular monument built anywhere in early medieval India: the rock-cut Kailasa temple at Ellora.

The Kailasa temple, Cave 16 of the Ellora complex, was not built up from a foundation in the usual way. Construction, begun in Krishna I's reign, proceeded by carving the entire structure downward out of a basaltic hillside, removing an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 tons of solid rock in the process. The finished temple measures roughly 164 feet long, 108 feet wide and 100 feet high across four storeys, and its courtyard, halls and elaborately carved monolithic sculpture, including a large panel of the demon king Ravana shaking Mount Kailasa, still stand as one of the most technically ambitious works of rock-cut architecture anywhere in the world. The wider Ellora complex, 34 Buddhist, Hindu and Jain caves cut into the same cliff face across a period running roughly from AD 600 to 1000, was inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List in 1983, cited for the spirit of religious tolerance its neighbouring Buddhist, Hindu and Jain sanctuaries represent.

Later Rashtrakuta rulers kept the dynasty at the centre of Deccan, and even north Indian, politics. Amoghavarsha I (reigned roughly 814 to 878) was a patron of Kannada literature and part-author of the Kavirajamarga, the earliest surviving Kannada work on poetics. Dhruva I fought the Pallavas of Kanchi in the south and, further north, defeated both the king of Bengal and the Pratihara ruler as they contended for Kannauj, Rashtrakuta involvement in the very tripartite struggle described above. Indra III captured Kannauj outright on coming to the throne in 914, and Krishna III pushed Rashtrakuta power deep into Tamil country, occupying Kanchipuram in the late 940s. The dynasty's reach in this period was wide enough that a contemporary Muslim traveller reportedly named the Rashtrakuta king one of the four great rulers of the world, alongside the Caliph and the emperors of Byzantium and China. Rashtrakuta power collapsed quickly after 972, when the capital was sacked under the ineffective Khottiga Amoghavarsha IV, and by about 975 the Chalukyas, restored under Taila I, had retaken the Deccan.

The Chandelas: Bundelkhand and Khajuraho

The Chandelas governed Jejakabhukti (also called Jijhoti), a realm centred on the Bundelkhand region that, at its height between the ninth and eleventh centuries, covered much of what is now Madhya Pradesh. They began as Pratihara feudatories and only gradually asserted full independence as Pratihara central authority weakened through the tenth century.

Yashovarman (reigned roughly 925 to 950), while still formally acknowledging Pratihara overlordship, effectively established the Chandelas as a sovereign power in their own right, capturing the strategically important fort of Kalanjara and commissioning the Lakshmana temple at Khajuraho. His son Dhanga (reigned from about 950 to the end of the century) completed the break with Pratihara suzerainty and continued the dynasty's temple-building programme, associated with the Vishvanatha temple among others.

Khajuraho itself, one of the Chandela capitals, held around 85 temples built by successive rulers over roughly a century, from about 950 to 1050, the exact span UNESCO's own description of the site identifies as the Chandela dynasty's apogee. Only about 20 to 22 of these temples survive today, divided into western, eastern and southern groups, and mixing Hindu (Shaiva and Vaishnava) and Jain dedications. The best known, the Kandariya Mahadeva temple in the western group, was built around 1000 CE and rises roughly 102 feet, its walls and porches carrying the elaborate figural sculpture that made Khajuraho famous well beyond India. The Khajuraho Group of Monuments was inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List in 1986.

By the late eleventh century Chandela power was in decline, and the dynasty relocated its focus to hill forts away from the original capital. Khajuraho itself kept some religious importance into the fourteenth century but was afterward largely forgotten, its remoteness likely sparing it the destruction inflicted on more accessible temple sites elsewhere. It was rediscovered for the modern world only in 1838, when a British army officer, Captain T.S. Burt, was led to the site while surveying the region.

The Paramaras of Malwa

The Paramaras began as feudatories of the Rashtrakutas, ruling the Malwa region in west-central India from a capital at Dhara, modern Dhar, and, like the Pratiharas and the Chaulukyas discussed below, later claimed Rajput status through a legendary Agnikula (fire lineage) origin.

The dynasty's dominant figure was Bhoja, who ruled from around 1010 to 1055 and took the imperial-style titles Parama Bhattaraka, Maharajadhiraja and Parameshvara. Bhoja is remembered above all as a scholar-king: he founded the Bhojshala at Dhar, a centre for Sanskrit learning that drew students from across India, and is credited as author, or at least patron and namesake, of the Samarangana Sutradhara, a Sanskrit treatise covering architecture, town planning and mechanical devices that remains a key source for how early medieval Indian builders thought about their craft. Tradition also credits him with founding the town of Bhojpur and its Shaivite temple there, which houses a 7.5-foot linga, though later scholarship dates the surviving temple structure itself to the twelfth or thirteenth century rather than to Bhoja's own reign, a caution worth holding against the more sweeping claims some popular accounts make for him.

Paramara power did not survive Bhoja by long. An attack by the Chaulukyas of Gujarat weakened the dynasty in 1143, and although it was later re-established, it never regained its earlier strength, coming under pressure from the Yadavas of the Deccan before the Delhi Sultanate finally conquered the Paramaras in 1305.

Gujarat's regional dynasty and trade networks

Gujarat in this period was governed by the Chaulukyas, also known as the Solankis, a dynasty distinct from the Deccan Chalukyas despite the near-identical name, a distinction worth holding onto carefully since the two are easy to conflate in a rushed reading. Mularaja, who ruled from around 941 to 996, displaced the last ruler of the earlier Chavda dynasty and founded an independent kingdom centred on Anahilapataka, modern Patan, which he made his capital around 940 to 941. The Chaulukyas were one of four dynasties, alongside the Pratiharas, Paramaras and Chauhans, that claimed descent from the legendary Agnikula lineage.

The kingdom had three distinct branches: one based at Anahilapataka itself, one further east toward the Malava-Cedi region, and a third centred on Bhrigukaccha, modern Bharuch, and the Lata region along the coast, the branch that put the Chaulukyas directly in charge of Gujarat's maritime trade. Bharuch, known to Greek and Roman traders many centuries earlier as Barygaza, and the port of Khambhat (Cambay) further north, connected Gujarat's inland marts to the wider Indian Ocean trading world, carrying goods to and from the Arabian coast, East Africa and Southeast Asia. This coastal trading role is exactly what the "Regional Kingdoms and Trade" angle on this chapter is testing.

That prosperity also made Gujarat a target. Early in the reign of Bhima I (1022 to 1064), the Ghaznavid ruler Mahmud of Ghazni raided Gujarat and sacked the Somnath temple in 1025, one of the most destructive of his many raids into India, though Chaulukya power itself survived the episode. The dynasty's later high point came under Kumarapala (reigned roughly 1143 to 1172), who consolidated the kingdom, converted to Jainism, and patronised the celebrated Jain scholar Hemachandra at his court, a reminder that Jain merchants, ministers and scholars were central to Chaulukya administration and to Gujarat's trading economy more broadly. Chaulukya rule in Gujarat lasted into the early fourteenth century, when the kingdom was finally absorbed into the Delhi Sultanate.

Quick revision points

• Gurjara-Pratiharas: two lines, Harichandra's at Mandor (6th to 9th century) and Nagabhata I's at Ujjain then Kannauj (8th to 11th century). Nagabhata I checked early Arab advances from Sindh; Nagabhata II captured Kannauj (c. 816); Mihira Bhoja (from c. 836) and Mahendrapala (c. 890 to 910) marked the peak. Last significant ruler Rajyapala driven from Kannauj in 1018 by Mahmud of Ghazni.
• Rashtrakutas: Deccan power, c. 755 to 975, based near Lattalur (Latur). Dantidurga founded the dynasty by defeating the Chalukyas; his uncle Krishna I (c. 756 to 773) commissioned the rock-cut Kailasa temple at Ellora (Cave 16). Amoghavarsha I authored part of the Kavirajamarga. Ended around 975 when the Chalukyas, restored under Taila I, retook the Deccan.
• Ellora Caves: 34 Buddhist, Hindu and Jain caves, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1983. The Kailasa temple was carved downward from a single basaltic rock face, with an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 tons of rock removed.
• Chandelas: ruled Jejakabhukti (Bundelkhand). Yashovarman (c. 925 to 950) commissioned the Lakshmana temple; Dhanga (c. 950 onward) achieved full sovereignty. Khajuraho's roughly 85 temples were built c. 950 to 1050; about 20 to 22 survive, including the Kandariya Mahadeva (c. 1000 CE). A UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1986; rediscovered in 1838 by Captain T.S. Burt.
• Paramaras of Malwa: Rashtrakuta feudatories, capital at Dhara. Raja Bhoja (c. 1010 to 1055) founded the Bhojshala at Dhar and is credited with the Samarangana Sutradhara. Weakened by a Chaulukya attack in 1143; conquered by the Delhi Sultanate in 1305.
• Gujarat's Chaulukyas (Solankis): distinct from the Deccan Chalukyas. Founded by Mularaja (c. 941 to 996), capital at Anahilapataka (Patan). Coastal branch centred on Bharuch and Khambhat, linking Gujarat to Indian Ocean trade. Bhima I (1022 to 1064) saw Mahmud of Ghazni sack the Somnath temple in 1025. Kumarapala (c. 1143 to 1172) patronised the Jain scholar Hemachandra.
• Exam trap: Chalukya (Deccan, from the 6th century) and Chaulukya/Solanki (Gujarat, from the 10th century) are different dynasties despite the near-identical name.

Once the four dynasties are separated by region and period, and the Kailasa-Khajuraho and Chalukya-Chaulukya pairs stop getting mixed up, the rest of this chapter's ruler-and-monument questions fall into place easily.