Aulikara dynasty

Daśapura

The Aulikaras held the country around Daśapura, modern Mandsaur, on the routes between Malwa, Gujarat and Rajasthan. For much of their history they were feudatories, first of the Western Kṣatrapas and then of the Guptas, and their inscriptions are dated in the Mālava era.

The Mandsaur silk-weavers' inscription of 473 CE is one of the most quoted documents of classical India: it records that a guild of silk weavers migrated from Lāṭa to Daśapura, built a temple to the sun, and later repaired it, and its verses describe the city and the guild's fortunes at unusual length. It is a rare case of an inscription commissioned by a corporate body rather than a king.

Yaśodharman

In the 520s or 530s Yaśodharman broke free of Gupta overlordship and defeated Mihirakula. Two stone pillars at Mandsaur carry his praśasti, claiming a territory reaching from the Brahmaputra to the western ocean and from the Himalaya to Mount Mahendra, and stating that Mihirakula, who had bowed to no one but Śiva, bowed his head to him.

The claims of extent are conventional and should not be taken literally, but the defeat of the Hūṇas is corroborated by the collapse of their power in India shortly afterwards. Yaśodharman's own supremacy was brief and left no dynasty of consequence; the Aulikaras disappear within a generation, and Malwa passed to the Kalachuris and then the Chalukyas.