The tripartite struggle for Kannauj

The struggle began soon after 783, when the Pratihara Vatsaraja, whose kingdom included Malwa and eastern Rajasthan, probably took Kannauj, leaving its king Indrayudha on the throne as his vassal, and defeated the Pala Dharmapala. The Rashtrakuta Dhruva then marched north, routed Vatsaraja around 789 and beat Dharmapala in the Ganges–Yamuna Doab, but went back to the Deccan without annexing anything. Dharmapala took Kannauj and replaced Indrayudha with his protégé Chakrayudha; his Khalimpur copper plate says that the kings of the Bhojas, Matsyas, Madras, Kurus, Yadus, Yavanas, Avanti, Gandhara and Kira approved the installation, bowing their heads with trembling diadems. Vatsaraja’s son Nagabhata II defeated Chakrayudha and won a great victory over Dharmapala near Monghyr, but was in turn crushed by Dhruva’s son Govinda III, who, according to Rashtrakuta records, marched as far as the Himalayas and to whom Dharmapala and Chakrayudha submitted of their own accord.

The order and dates of these campaigns are disputed. In R. C. Majumdar’s provisional reconstruction Nagabhata’s victories came before Govinda’s invasion, which took place before 809/810; A. S. Altekar dated the invasion to 806 or 807, other accounts to about 800, and Nagabhata’s capture of Kannauj is often placed about 816; some limit the name ‘tripartite struggle’ to the wars of about 785–816. Majumdar himself, summing up, spoke of a struggle of ‘nearly a century (750–850)’ whose outcome was the Pratihara empire of Bhoja and Mahendrapala; here it is followed to Indra III’s sack of Kannauj, the last Rashtrakuta strike at the city. Devapala of Bengal and the Rashtrakutas held back the Pratihara Mihira Bhoja, who nevertheless made Kannauj the capital of a great empire; in 915–918 the Rashtrakuta Indra III crossed the Yamuna and devastated the city, but the Pratiharas recovered it.