Jayapala

Hindu Shahi king · reigning c. 964 – 1001 CE · the wars with Sabuktigin

Jayapala is the Hindu Shahi king who first faces the Ghaznavid emirate. Two campaigns against Sabuktigin end in defeat — the second at Lamghan c. 988 CE, the third at Peshawar c. 1001 CE under Sabuktigin’s son Mahmud. After the third defeat, accepting that the dynasty had reached the end of its long retreat, Jayapala immolates himself on a funeral pyre rather than accept the terms of tribute. The act is recorded with grudging admiration by the Persian chroniclers — Al-Utbi, Firishta — and becomes one of the founding stories of the Rajput tradition of jauhar.

The Bilhari inscription

Jayapala’s coinage and the Bilhari inscription place him as the senior Hindu power on the north-west frontier in the late tenth century, with diplomatic ties to Lahore, Kashmir, and the Pratihara remnants in Kannauj. He is succeeded by his son Anandapala.

Sources

• Al-Utbi, Tarikh-i Yamini (Reynolds trans., 1858)
• Firishta, Tarikh-i Firishta
• Kalhana, Rajatarangini, Book VI
• Habib, Sultan Mahmud of Ghaznin (1978)
• Mishra, The Hindu Sahis (1972) — chapter on conflict with Alptegin