Early Medieval India (Rajputs, Palas, Pratiharas, Rashtrakutas)

Harsha of Kannauj died in 647 CE without an heir, and the last great empire of ancient north India fell apart within a single generation. What followed is called the early medieval period. Instead of one emperor, the map filled up with many strong regional kings, and the three biggest of them kept fighting over one city: Kannauj.

Why was Kannauj worth fighting for? It stood on the fertile Ganga-Yamuna Doab, controlled the river and land routes of the north, and had been Harsha's capital. In those centuries, whoever held Kannauj was seen as the overlord of northern India, in the way Delhi would be seen later. This contest is the Tripartite Struggle (Tripartite = three-sided), fought roughly from the 8th to the 10th century between the Gurjara-Pratiharas, the Palas and the Rashtrakutas.

Notice the pattern: the Pratiharas and Palas were neighbours who fought over the Doab, while the Rashtrakutas were the outsiders who struck from the Deccan, won a battle, plundered, and went home. No one won for good. All three were drained of men and money, and that exhaustion left north-western India open when the Turks arrived.

Now let us meet the three heroes of the struggle one by one. Think of them as three different kinds of kingdom: the Pratiharas were a warrior shield of the west, the Palas were patrons of Buddhism and learning in the east, and the Rashtrakutas were a rich Deccan empire that built wonders in stone.

Pratiharas. Nagabhata I blocked the Arab armies that pushed in from Sindh, and the Gwalior inscription (a Sanskrit prashasti) praises his victories. The family's real glory came with Mihira Bhoja, who ruled for about fifty years, won back Kannauj, and held an empire from the Sutlej region to the Bengal border. He took the title Adivaraha (the first Varaha, the boar incarnation of Vishnu), and silver coins called Adivaraha drammas carry it. The Arab merchant Sulaiman (c. 851) praised the Pratihara king as a great enemy of Arabs, with the best cavalry in India. Under Mahendrapala I the court poet Rajasekhara wrote Karpuramanjari and Kavyamimamsa.

Palas. Bengal had fallen into matsyanyaya (the law of the fishes, where the big fish eat the small ones), so the chiefs chose Gopala as king around 750 CE. His son Dharmapala (c. 770-810) extended Pala power over Bihar and, for a time, Kannauj, and founded the monastery-university of Vikramashila (Bhagalpur, Bihar) and the great monastery at Somapura (Paharpur), now in Bangladesh. Devapala (c. 810-850) ruled from Mudgagiri (Munger); the Sailendra king Balaputradeva of Suvarnadvipa (Sumatra) built a monastery at Nalanda with his help. Under Pala patronage, Buddhist scholars like Atisha Dipankara carried Buddhism to Tibet. Later kings were Mahipala I (who revived the dynasty) and Ramapala, whose life is told in Ramacharita by Sandhyakar Nandi. The Senas finally replaced the Palas in Bengal.

Rashtrakutas. Dantidurga overthrew his Chalukya overlord (the Chalukyas of Badami) and founded the line around the mid-8th century. His uncle Krishna I (c. 756-774) carved the monolithic Kailasa temple at Ellora. Dhruva and Govinda III took the army north to Kannauj. Amoghavarsha I (c. 814-878), also known as Nrupatunga, ruled for over sixty years, shifted the capital to Manyakheta, was a Jain by faith, and is credited with the first Kannada work on poetics, Kavirajamarga. Krishna III defeated the Cholas at Takkolam (949 CE) and held the south up to Rameswaram. The empire ended when the Chalukya Tailapa II overthrew the last king around 973 CE.

From roughly the 8th century a new word fills our sources: Rajput. These were warrior clans who held land, built forts and claimed Kshatriya status. When the Pratihara empire broke up, its governors and chiefs became kings in their own right, and north India turned into a patchwork of Rajput kingdoms, each proud, each independent, and each fighting the next one.

Do not memorise the theories as three rival 'answers'. The easy way: Rajput society was mixed and rising. Some clans were old Kshatriyas, some were tribal chiefs or foreign groups who got land, military power and Kshatriya rank through service to kings. That is why different books give different origins.

Chauhans (Chahamanas). They began as feudatories of the Pratiharas at Shakambhari and later made Ajmer (Ajayameru) their capital. Vigraharaja IV (Visaladeva) captured Delhi from the Tomaras and was a poet-king whose Sanskrit play Harikeli is carved on slabs at Ajmer's Adhai-din-ka-Jhonpra, which was once his college. Prithviraj III (c. 1177-1192) was the last great Chauhan. In the west the Chauhans were blocked by the Chalukyas of Gujarat, and in the east by the Gahadavalas, so they never had friends on either side when Ghori came.

Paramaras of Malwa. Their capital was Dhara. Bhoja (c. 1010-1055) is the most celebrated: he was a warrior but even more a patron and author, credited with books on poetics, architecture and medicine, and founded the town of Bhojpur with a large lake. Chandelas of Bundelkhand. The Chandelas were great builders. Under Dhanga and Vidyadhara (who stood up to Mahmud of Ghazni) they raised the Khajuraho temples (c. 950-1050), in the Nagara style. The Kandariya Mahadeva temple is the largest and finest. Chaulukyas (Solankis) of Gujarat. From Anahilavada, Bhima I saw Somnath sacked by Mahmud (1025-26) and rebuilt it; the Sun temple at Modhera (1026-27) and the Jain Dilwara temples at Mount Abu (built by Vimala Shah, 1031) belong to their age. Jayasimha Siddharaja and Kumarapala (who became a Jain under Hemachandra) are the other famous rulers. In 1178 the Solanki army, led by the young Mularaja II's mother Naiki Devi, beat Muhammad Ghori near Mount Abu.

Gahadavalas, Senas and Kashmir. The Gahadavalas held Kannauj and Varanasi; Jayachandra was their last great king and was beaten by Ghori at Chandawar in 1194. In Bengal the Senas replaced the Palas: Lakshmanasena was the court-patron of the poet Jayadeva (Gitagovinda) and lost Nadia to Bakhtiyar Khalji around 1204. In Kashmir the Karkotas produced Lalitaditya Muktapida (c. 724-760), a conqueror who defeated Yashovarman of Kannauj and built the Martanda Sun temple.

Three waves of Muslim rulers came to India from the north-west in this age. The Arabs came by sea and by the Makran road in 711-712 and stopped at Sindh. The Ghaznavids under Mahmud came to plunder, raid after raid. The Ghurids under Muhammad Ghori came to stay, and their victory at Tarain opened the road to Delhi. Keep this three-step ladder in mind: Arabs (settle in Sindh), Mahmud (loot), Ghori (rule).

The Arab conquest of Sindh (711-712). The immediate cause was that pirates near Debal (a port in Sindh) seized Arab ships carrying gifts and Muslim women from Ceylon. The Umayyad governor of Iraq, Hajjaj, sent his young nephew and son-in-law Muhammad bin Qasim. He took Debal, crossed the Indus, and defeated Raja Dahir, the Brahmin king of Sindh (from the Chach dynasty), in the battle of Raor (Rawar) in 712. He then captured Brahmanabad and Multan. We know the story mainly from the Chachnama, a Persian work (a later translation of an older Arabic text). Bin Qasim was recalled in 715 and died soon after, and the Arabs held only Sindh and Multan, split into small emirates. Nagabhata I and the Chalukyas of Gujarat stopped them from going further.

The Arab conquest looks big but changed little on the ground: it remained confined to Sindh and Multan. Its lasting effect was on ideas and trade. Indian works on mathematics, astronomy and medicine (for example the Brahmasiddhanta and Charaka's medicine) were translated into Arabic in Baghdad, and the Indian numerals later reached Europe as 'Arabic numerals'.

The Ghaznavids and Mahmud. Alptigin, a Turkish slave-general of the Samanids, founded the state at Ghazni (in Afghanistan); his slave-son-in-law Sabuktigin (977-997) fought the Hindu Shahi king Jayapala of Punjab and Kabul valley. Mahmud (998-1030) is the one who turned raiding into an annual habit. He raided India 17 times between 1000 and 1027 CE, with one aim above all: plunder the gold stored in temples and cities, which paid for his armies in Central Asia. He did not try to build an empire in India, only annexed Punjab and Multan. He was also the first ruler to take the title Sultan. His court was filled with scholars: Al-Biruni, the poet Firdausi (Shahnama), and the historian Utbi (Kitab-i-Yamini).

Muhammad Ghori and Tarain. Muizzuddin Muhammad bin Sam of Ghur began by attacking Multan and Uch (1175), but his advance into Gujarat was beaten near Mount Abu in 1178. He then moved through Punjab, ended the Ghaznavids at Lahore (1186) and took Bhatinda (Tabarhind) in 1189. That brought him face to face with Prithviraj III Chauhan. In the First Battle of Tarain (1191), near Taraori in Haryana, Prithviraj won. The next year Ghori came back with a better-planned cavalry army, and in the Second Battle of Tarain (1192) he won decisively, captured Prithviraj and opened the way to Delhi and Ajmer. This is the real start of Turkish rule in north India.

Early medieval India was not only an age of wars. In courts, monasteries and temples, writers and scholars were busy. Two works stand out for exams: Al-Biruni's Kitab-ul-Hind, written by a foreign scholar who wanted to understand India, and Kalhana's Rajatarangini, written by an Indian who wanted to record Kashmir's history. Around them there is a rich list of poets, grammarians and mathematicians.

What Al-Biruni noticed. He admired India's astronomy and mathematics, translated works between Sanskrit and Arabic, and described the Indian caste system and its rules in detail. He also observed, with some surprise, that Indians believed no country was as good as theirs and no learning as deep, and saw this as a reason they were slow to learn from outsiders. Because he explained what he saw and compared it with Greek ideas, historians still use his book as a rich source.

Society and economy. Kings gave villages to Brahmanas, temples and officers through land grants (agrahara, devadana), and the receivers collected the revenue. This is why historians speak of early medieval feudalism: power spread to local lords (samantas) and temple-centres, trade and coin use thinned out in many regions, and temples became centres of wealth, learning and art. Education was in the hands of Brahmana teachers, temple schools (ghatika) and Buddhist or Jain monasteries.

The Gupta age (c. 4th-6th century) is where temple building began (Deogarh, Bhitargaon). The early medieval centuries are where temples became huge: separate Nagara, Dravida and Vesara styles grew, and temples held land, money and learned men. That is why this age is called the great age of temple architecture.