Gurjara-Pratihara - Origin

Origin

According to a legend given in later manuscripts of Prithviraj Raso, the Pratiharas were one of the Agnikula clans of Rajputs, deriving their origin from a sacrificial fire-pit (agnikunda) at Mount Abu. However, this mythical story of Agnikula is not mentioned at all in the original version of the Prithviraj Raso preserved in the Fort Library at Bikaner.

Several scholars including D. B. Bhandarkar, Baij Nath Puri and A. F. Rudolf Hoernle believe that the Pratiharas were a branch of Gurjars. The Pratihara dynasty is referred to as Gurjara Pratiharanvayah, i.e., Pratihara clan of the Gurjaras, in line 4 of the "Rajor inscription (Alwar)". The historian Rama Shankar Tripathi states that the Rajor inscription confirms the Gurjara origin of the Pratiharas. In line 12 of this inscription, occur words which have been translated as "together with all the neighbouring fields cultivated by the Gurjaras". Here, the cultivators themselves are clearly called Gurjaras and therefore it is reasonable to presume that, in line four too, the term bears a racial signification. The Rashtrakuta records, as well as the Arab writers like Abu Zaid and Al-Masudi (who allude their fights with the Juzr or Gurjara of the north), indicate the Gurjara origin of the Pratiharas. The Kanarese poet Pampa expressly calls Mahipala Ghurjararaja. This epithet could hardly be applied to him, if the term Ghurjararaja bore a geographical sense denoting what after all was only a small portion of Mahipala's vast territories. Tripathi believes that all these evidences point to the Gurjara ancestry of the Pratiharas. However, H. A. Rose and Denzil Ibbetson stated that there is no conclusive proof that the Agnikula clans are of Gurjara origin; they believed that there is possibility of the indigenous tribes adopting Gurjara names, when their founders were enfiefed by Gurjara rulers. Dasrath Sharma believed that Gurjara was applied for territory and conceded that although some sections of the Pratiharas (e.g. the one to which Mathanadeva belonged) were Gurjars by caste, the imperial Pratiharas of Kannauj were not Gurjars. However, in the earliest epigraphical records of the Gurjars of Broach, Dadda is described as belonging to the Gurjara-nrpati-vamsa which, as Calukva-vamsa or Raghuvamsa, refers not to the country, but to the family or the people; i.e., it stands for the Gurjar family and not the country. Gurjaratra, Gurjara-bhumi or Gurjara-mandala would thus only mean land or Mandala of Gurjars.