THE REGIONAL KINGDOMS OF EARLY MEDIEVAL INDIAcaptured Kanauj and held court there and many kings ‘bowed down before
him with trembling crowns and showered their praise upon him’, as it is
proclaimed in one of his inscriptions.
But soon Vatsaraja’s son, Nagabhata, restored the glory of the Gurjara
Pratiharas, recaptured Kanauj and then proceeded to vanquish
Dharmapala. This victory made the new Rashtrakuta king, Govinda III,
very jealous. He pounced upon Nagabhata who had to flee to the desert of
Rajasthan while Dharmapala quickly annexed Kanauj once more. In the
following generation of rulers, Dharmapala’s son Devapala (c. 821–860)
was the most prominent. He could extend his sway as the contemporary
Gurjara Pratiharas and Rashtrakutas were weak rulers. But in the ninth
century the Gurjara Pratihara kings, Bhoja (836–885) and Mahendrapala
(885–910), proved to be more powerful than their contemporaries of the
other two dynasties whom they defeated several times. Kanauj then
emerged as the main focus of power in India.
Towards the end of the ninth century the Rashtrakutas gained in
strength once more under their kings Indra III and the great Krishna III
(939–968) whose power made an impact on all major regions of India.
Whereas the Rashtrakutas had so far mostly intervened in the affairs of the
North, Krishna turned to the South and vanquished the newly powerful
Cholas who had only recently defeated the Pallavas. In an inscription of
959 which Krishna left in Tondaimandalam he stated:
With the intention of conquering the South (dakshina-dig) he
uprooted the Chola dynasty and bestowed the lands of their realm
on his own relatives. The mighty overlords of the Mandalas, like
the Cheras and Pandyas and others as well as the ruler of Simhala
(Sri Lanka) he reduced to the status of tributaries (kara-da). He
established a column of victory at Rameshvaram (a South Indian
temple-city facing Sri Lanka).^3This inscription shows that there were exceptions to the rule that the king
of one region was perhaps able to replace a king of another region but
could not extend his administrative control over it. Krishna obviously tried
to do just that and there seemed to be the beginnings of a new centralised
interregional empire. But unlike the large empires of ancient India, the
medieval regional kingdoms had evolved their own structure and could not
be easily controlled from a distance. If the distant ruler wished to retain his
hold on another region he had to be prepared for frequent intervention and
this was costly and diminished the resources of his own region which
would in turn become vulnerable to intervention by third parties or to
subversion from within. The latter happened to the mighty Rashtrakuta
empire only six years after the death of Krishna III. Taila, the governor of a
large province of the empire, usurped the throne of the Rashtrakutas and,