Mihira Bhoja and the Pratihara empire of Kannauj

Bhoja’s earliest record, the Barah copper plate of 836, was issued from his camp at Mahodaya, usually identified with Kannauj, and renewed a grant that had lapsed under his father Ramabhadra; the Daulatpura plate of 843 shows him again master of Gurjaratra in Rajasthan. His rise was then checked: he was defeated by the Pala Devapala, by Dhruva of the Gujarat branch of the Rashtrakutas and by the Kalachuri Kokkalla. In the third quarter of the century he resumed his conquests: with the help of his Kalachuri and Guhila feudatories he crushed the Pala Narayanapala, and he fought a long war with the Rashtrakuta Krishna II that included a bloody battle at Ujjain. By the end of his reign his empire stretched from Kathiawar and the Punjab to Awadh, and the Chandellas of Bundelkhand acknowledged his overlordship.

The Gwalior prashasti, his long genealogical inscription, is a principal source for the early history of the dynasty. He was known by the names Adivaraha, Mihira and Prabhasa, and the silver and copper drammas bearing the boar incarnation of Vishnu (Adivaraha) are generally attributed to him. The Arabic Accounts of China and India, compiled from merchants’ reports in 851/852 and often attributed to the merchant Sulaiman, add that the king of Jurz (Gurjara) was rich in camels and horses, that exchanges in his country were made in silver and gold dust and that no country in India was safer from robbers; R. C. Majumdar took the passage to refer to Bhoja. He died about 885 and was succeeded by his son Mahendrapala I, under whom the empire grew larger still.