Gurjara-Pratihara

Imperial dynasty of Kannauj — 8th–11th century CE

The Gurjara-Pratihara dynasty of Kannauj is the most powerful Indian polity of the eighth-to-tenth centuries CE — the empire that holds the Indo-Gangetic plain through the long Tripartite Struggle with the Pala and the Rashtrakuta. The dynasty’s relationship to the Varaha story is indirect but important: V. A. Smith (1907) identified the “white Hun” silver drachm of Vyaghramukha of the Chapa (Gurjara) dynasty of Bhinmal as a Hephthalite-derived issue, and the Gurjara identity itself overlaps in important ways with the post-Hephthalite settlement in north-west India.

Sources

• Smith, V. A., “white Hun coin of Vyaghramukha”, JRAS 39:4 (1907)
• Munshi, The Glory that was Gurjaradesa (1943)
• Hornle, “Some Problems of Ancient Indian History — The Gurjara Clans” (1905)