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Some Notes on the Palaces of the Imperial Gurjara Pratīhāras

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2009

Michael D. Willis
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Extract

The Gurjara Pratīhāras have long been recognised as the leading royal house of northern India during the ninth and tenth centuries. A considerable number of copper plate and stone inscriptions have survived from Pratīhāra times and these have provided the requisite data for a reconstruction of the dynasty's political and social history. Following conventions established in the Gupta period if not before, the copper-plates of the Pratīhāras record grants of villages or land, while stone inscriptions typically recount the building of temples and the provision of gifts to enshrined divinities. A large number of temples from the Pratīhāra age have been preserved; some of these buildings have enjoyed the recent scholarly attention of the team working on the Encyclopaedia of Indian Temple Architecture as well as the Temple Survey of the Archaeological Survey of India. In contrast, palatial architecture is virtually unknown. This is neither surprising nor unusual, there being little left of such buildings in any part of India from before the fourteenth century. This is due to the wide use of perishable building materials, notably wood, brick and stucco. In the case of the Pratīhāra rulers there is also the fact that their capital city of Kannauj (anc. Kānyakubja) has been completely destroyed. That the Pratīhāras were responsible for some building at Kannauj is indicated by the inscription, dated Harṣa year 276 (A.D. 882–3), from the shrine of Garībnāth at Pehowa. This inscription records, among many other things, that a temple of Viṣṇu Garuḍāsana was built by the Brāhmaṇa Bhūvaka on the banks of the river Gaṅgā in Bhojapura near Kānyakubja.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , November 1995 , pp. 351 - 360
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1995

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References

1 The earliest comprehensive survey is Tripathi, R. S., History of Kanauj (Benares, 1937)Google Scholar updated in Majumdar, R. C. (ed.), The History and Culture of the Indian People: The Age of Imperial Kanauj (Bombay, 1955).Google Scholar This is not the place to examine the theoretical problems posed by these and other pioneering works. In this article the spelling of place names follows Survey of India maps and Corpus Topographicum Indiae Antiquae (Part I, Epigraphical Find Spots) by R. Stroobandt (Ghent, 1974); abbreviations used: ASIR = Archaeological Survey of India Report; El = Epigraphia Indica; IA = Indian Antiquary.

2 Michael Meister, M. A. Dhaky and Deva, Krishna (eds), Encyclopaedia of Indian Temple Architecture: North India, Foundations of North Indian Style, c. 250 BC–AD 1100 (Princeton and Delhi, 1988)Google Scholar and Trivedi, R. D., Temples of the Pratīhāra Period in Central India (Delhi, 1990).Google Scholar

3 EI i (1889–1892), pp. 184–90.Google Scholar The complexity of calendars and eras in India often excludes exact Gregorian equivalents even when the day and month are recorded in the inscription. For the present purposes, equivalents have been only approximately calculated and thus typically span two Gregorian years. In some cases, there is sufficient information about the procedure used to record a date that an exact equivalent can be provided. For a useful introduction to some of these problems, Basham, A. L., The Wonder that was India (London, 1971)Google Scholar, appendix III.

4 IA, XIX (1888), p. 310.Google Scholar

5 A trial trench was dug in 1955, revealing substantial quantities of Painted Grey Ware, see Indian Archaeology–A Review, III (1955), pp. 19–20Google Scholar, plate XXVIII. Historical archaeology has been generally ignored in India during the last forty years.

6 Edited in EI, xviii (1925–1926), pp. 99–114Google Scholar and Sircar, D. C., Select Inscriptions Bearing on Indian History and Civilization, 2 vols (Calcutta, 1965; Delhi, 1983), ii, pp. 242–246Google Scholar, plate xvn.

7 Sircar, , Indian Epigraphical Glossary (Delhi, 1966), p. 22.Google Scholar

8 Sankalia, H. D., “Gurjara Pratīhāra monuments: a study in regional and dynastic distribution of North Indian monuments”, Bulletin of the Deccart College Research Institute, IV (1942–1943) 150Google Scholar; EI, p. xxxv (1964–1965), p. 184.Google Scholar

9 For the ancient name EI, xxvi (1941–1942), p. 117Google Scholar; for the pavilion, Patil, D. R., The Cultural Heritage of Madhya Bharat (Gwalior, 1952), p. 110.Google Scholar As far as I am aware, the building is illustrated here for the first time.

10 EI, i (1889–1892), pp. 154–62.Google Scholar

11 A few of the ancient names in this region have been collected in my “Introduction to the historical geography of Gopakṣetra, Daśārṇa and jejākadeśa”, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, LI (1988), pp. 273–8.Google Scholar

12 ASIR, ii (1864–1865), P. 337Google Scholar; on term see Vogel, J. Ph., “The Sanskrit pratoli and its new-Indian derivations”, JRAS (1906), pp. 539–51.Google Scholar

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14 That this monument can be dated was first discussed in Richard Salomon and Willis, M., “A ninth century Umāmaheśvara image”, Artibus Asiae, L (1990), pp. 148–55.Google Scholar

15 Husain, Mahdi, The Reḥla of Ibn Baṭṭūṭa (India, Maladiue Islands and Ceylon) Translation and Commentary (Baroda, 1953), pp. 45, 163.Google Scholar

16 Keith, J. B., Preservation of National Monuments; Gwalior Fortress (Calcutta, 1883), p. 75Google Scholar, records that the capital was found at Trikonia Tāl, Gwalior. Illustrated in Department of Archaeology, Gwalior State, A Guide to the Archaeological Museum at Gwalior (Gwalior, [193–?]), plate vii. (The capital was transferred to the National Museum after Independence.)

17 Chandra, Pramod, The Sculpture of India, 3000 BC to 1300 AD (Washington, 1985), p. 209.Google Scholar

18 As evidenced by the raid of Indra III, see Sircar, , Studies in the Geography of Ancient and Medieval India (Delhi, 1971), p 305.Google Scholar

19 IA, XV (1886), p. 36Google Scholar (verse 6); Dvivedī, Harihar Nivās, “Gopakṣetra ke kacchapaghāta”, in Gvāliyar darśan (Gwalior, 1980), pp. 186–216.Google Scholar