Rise in the west
The dynasty emerged in the Marwar country of Rajasthan in the early eighth century. Its first securely known ruler, Nāgabhaṭa I, is credited in the Gwalior inscription with having crushed the army of the Mlecchas — that is, the Arab forces advancing from Sindh, in ancient India (modern-day Pakistan), which had taken the lower Indus in 712 CE and pushed east and south for decades afterwards.
The Arab advance into India was checked in the eighth century by the Pratihāras in the north and the Chalukyas and Rāṣṭrakūṭas in the south, and it did not resume. Arab geographers of the ninth and tenth centuries write about the Pratihāra ruler — the Juzr of their accounts — with respect, and describe a large and well-mounted army.
Kannauj and the tripartite struggle
Nāgabhaṭa II took Kannauj at the beginning of the ninth century, and under Mihira Bhoja, who ruled for nearly fifty years, and his son Mahendrapāla I the empire reached from the Sutlej to Bengal and south into Gujarat and Malwa. The Arab traveller Sulaiman, writing in the ninth century, describes the kingdom's cavalry and its hostility to Islam.
The Rāṣṭrakūṭas of the Deccan repeatedly broke into the north and sacked Kannauj, most damagingly under Indra III around 916 CE. The Pratihāras recovered, but the pattern of three empires exhausting one another over the same city continued until all three declined.
Fragmentation
In the tenth century the great feudatories became independent: the Paramāras in Malwa, the Chandelas in Bundelkhand, the Chāhamānas in Sakambhari, the Chaulukyas in Gujarat, the Kalachuris at Tripurī. The Pratihāra empire dissolved into the Rajput kingdoms that would face the Ghurid invasions two centuries later.
Mahmud of Ghazni sacked Kannauj in 1018 and the last Pratihāra rulers survived as a local house until about 1036. Their architectural legacy is substantial — the Teli ka Mandir at Gwalior and much of the early work at Osian in Rajasthan belong to the period — and their political legacy is the map of Rajput India.
Further reading
- Hawley, John Stratton. A Storm of Songs: India and the Idea of the Bhakti Movement. Harvard University Press, 2015
- Jackson, Peter. The Delhi Sultanate: A Political and Military History. Cambridge University Press, 1999
- Kramrisch, Stella. The Hindu Temple. Motilal Banarsidass, 1976
- Michell, George. The Hindu Temple: An Introduction to Its Meaning and Forms. University of Chicago Press, 1988
- Nilakanta Sastri, K. A. The Colas. University of Madras, 1955
See also
This entry was last revised on 1 August 2026.