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Harshat Mata Temple

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68-449: The Harshat Mata Temple ( IAST : Harṣat Mātā kā Mandir ) is a Hindu temple in the Abhaneri (or "Abaneri") village of Rajasthan , in north-western India . The temple is dedicated to a goddess named Harshat Mata, although some art historians theorize that it was originally a Vaishnavite shrine. The original temple appears to have been built in the panchayatana style, which features

136-568: A macron ). Vocalic (syllabic) consonants, retroflexes and ṣ ( / ʂ ~ ɕ ~ʃ/ ) have an underdot . One letter has an overdot: ṅ ( /ŋ/ ). One has an acute accent : ś ( /ʃ/ ). One letter has a line below: ḻ ( / ɭ / ) (Vedic). Unlike ASCII -only romanisations such as ITRANS or Harvard-Kyoto , the diacritics used for IAST allow capitalisation of proper names. The capital variants of letters never occurring word-initially ( Ṇ Ṅ Ñ Ṝ Ḹ ) are useful only when writing in all-caps and in Pāṇini contexts for which

204-486: A Shakta temple. According to Reitz, the two fragments of a Durga sculpture discovered in the Chand Baori compound may have belonged to the main idol of the original temple. This sculpture appears to have been a 1.5-metre (4 ft 11 in) high statue of Durga in her Mahishasura-mardini (killer of the buffalo demon ) form. The bigger fragment shows the lower part of Durga's torso with her left leg, her lion vahana ,

272-601: A cavalry. He is unfriendly to the Arabs, still he acknowledges that the king of the Arabs is the greatest of rulers. Among the princes of India there is no greater foe of the Islamic faith than he. He has got riches, and his camels and horses are numerous." After bringing much of Rajasthan under his control, Vatsaraja embarked to become "master of all the land lying between the two seas." Contemporary Jijasena's Harivamsha Purana describes him as "master of western quarter". According to

340-433: A font, etc. It can be enabled in the input menu in the menu bar under System Preferences → International → Input Menu (or System Preferences → Language and Text → Input Sources) or can be viewed under Edit → Emoji & Symbols in many programs. Equivalent tools – such as gucharmap ( GNOME ) or kcharselect ( KDE ) – exist on most Linux desktop environments. Users of SCIM on Linux based platforms can also have

408-593: A force of camels. Since Tamin was a new governor he had a force of Syrian cavalry from Damascus , local Arab contingents, converted Hindus of Sindh, and foreign mercenaries like the Turkics . All together the invading army may have had anywhere between 10 and 15,000 cavalry, 5000 infantry, and 2000 camels. The Arab chronicler Sulaiman describes the army of the Pratiharas as it stood in 851 CE, "The ruler of Gurjara maintains numerous forces and no other Indian prince has so fine

476-533: A foreign origin for these dynasties. According to this theory, the foreigners were admitted in the Hindu caste system after performing a fire ritual. However, this legend is not found in the earliest available copies of Prithviraj Raso . It is based on a Paramara legend; the 16th century Rajput bards claim heroic descent of clans in order to foster Rajput unity against the Mughals . The original centre of Pratihara power

544-521: A great raid led by the Rashtrakuta ruler Indra III who, in about 916, sacked Kannauj. Under a succession of rather obscure rulers, the dynasty never regained its former influence. Their feudatories became more and more powerful, one by one throwing off their allegiance until, by the end of the tenth century, the dynasty controlled little more than the Gangetic Doab . Their last important king, Rajyapala,

612-485: A main shrine surrounded by four subsidiary shrines. Only parts of the main shrine now survive and they have been ruined and modified over several centuries, with the tall shikhara tower replaced by a roof-dome. Much of the platform survives, with fragments of carved stones from the original structure, but most of the sculptures have been removed to the museums in Amber and Jaipur . No epigraphic evidence survives regarding

680-463: A male attendant, and a beheaded buffalo. The smaller fragment shows six right arms of the multi-armed Durga, with one of the arms pulling an arrow from the quiver; it also features the remains of a halo in the form of a lotus leaf, and two gandharvas (heavenly beings). Reitz points out that the intact sculpture would have been similar to the idol in the Pipala-devi Temple at Osian , which like

748-522: Is a matter of controversy. R. C. Majumdar, on the basis of a verse in the Harivamsha-Purana, 783 CE, the interpretation of which he conceded was not free from difficulty, held that Vatsaraja ruled at Ujjain. Dasharatha Sharma, interpreting it differently located the original capital in the Bhinmala Jalor area. M. W. Meister and Shanta Rani Sharma concur with his conclusion in view of the fact that

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816-646: Is also used for major e-text repositories such as SARIT, Muktabodha, GRETIL, and sanskritdocuments.org. The IAST scheme represents more than a century of scholarly usage in books and journals on classical Indian studies. By contrast, the ISO 15919 standard for transliterating Indic scripts emerged in 2001 from the standards and library worlds. For the most part, ISO 15919 follows the IAST scheme, departing from it only in minor ways (e.g., ṃ/ṁ and ṛ/r̥)—see comparison below. The Indian National Library at Kolkata romanization , intended for

884-419: Is based on an analysis of other contemporary and near-contemporary temples, as well as a study of various fragments found at the Chand Baori compound or housed at various museums. The main shrine is erected on a platform ( mancha ) located at the top of the two terraces. The platform is bounded by a circumambulatory path ( sandhara ), which was connected to a pillared porch ( gudhamandapa ). The original path and

952-782: Is by setting up an alternative keyboard layout . This allows one to hold a modifier key to type letters with diacritical marks. For example, alt + a = ā. How this is set up varies by operating system. Linux/Unix and BSD desktop environments allow one to set up custom keyboard layouts and switch them by clicking a flag icon in the menu bar. macOS One can use the pre-installed US International keyboard, or install Toshiya Unebe's Easy Unicode keyboard layout. Microsoft Windows Windows also allows one to change keyboard layouts and set up additional custom keyboard mappings for IAST. This Pali keyboard installer made by Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator (MSKLC) supports IAST (works on Microsoft Windows up to at least version 10, can use Alt button on

1020-470: Is not surprising, since Durga and Parvati (Shiva's wife) are considered different aspects of the same goddess. Reitz states that the Vaishnava sculptures at the temple have a "subordinate position", and cannot be used to make any conclusions about the temple's sectarian affiliation. According to him, panchayatana temples tend to be syncretic , and it is not surprising to find Vaishnava or Shaiva sculptures at

1088-495: Is that Gurjara was the name of the tribe to which the dynasty belonged, and Pratihara was a clan of this tribe. Among those who believe that the term Gurjara was originally a tribal designation, there are disagreements over whether they were native Indians or foreigners. The proponents of the foreign origin theory point out that the Pratihars suddenly emerged as a political power in north India around sixth century CE, shortly after

1156-560: The Archaeological Survey of India , but remains in religious use. The original Harshat Mata temple has been ruined and modified over several centuries. No epigraphic evidence been found regarding the construction of the temple or the Chand Baori stepwell connected with it. Based on similarities in style and carvings with the terraced temples of Paranagar and Mandore , the Chand Baori can be dated to 8th-9th century. The Chand Baori

1224-486: The Central Museum, Jaipur . The entrance to the temple faces east, towards the rising sun. The temple complex is built on two broad stepped terraces ( jagati ), which originally included a circumambulatory path, now partially ruined. The boundary of the lower terrace has a relatively plain set of foundation and base moldings ( vedibandha ), which have decorative patterns at the top. The ruins of two small shrines flank

1292-769: The Ghaznavid invasions. These branches fought each other for territory and one of the branches ruled Mandore till the 14th century. This Pratihara branch had marital ties with Rao Chunda of the Rathore clan and gave Mandore in dowry to Chunda. This was specifically done to form an alliance against the Turks of the Tughlaq Empire . There are notable examples of architecture from the Pratihara era, including sculptures and carved panels. Their temples, constructed in an open pavilion style. One of

1360-518: The Gujarat Rashtrakuta dynasty and his younger brother. Bhoja led a cavalry raid into Gujarat against the Dhruva while supporting his Dhruva's younger brother. Although the raid was repulsed by Dhruva II, Bhoja was able to retain dominion over parts of Gujarat and Malwa. Bhoja's feudatory, the‌ Guhilas Samanta named Harsha of Chatsu , is described as : “defeating the northern rulers with

1428-801: The Gurjara-Pratiharas , the Pratiharas of Kannauj or the Imperial Pratiharas , was a prominent medieval Indian dynasty which ruled over the Kingdom of Kannauj . It initially ruled the Gurjaradesa until its victory in the Tripartite Struggle in 816 which secured its right to the throne of Kannauj. Cadet branches of the dynasty ruled other minor states in the subcontinent. The Pratiharas were instrumental in containing Arab armies moving east of

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1496-505: The Hunas invasion of that region. According to them Gujara-Pratihara were "likely" formed from a fusion of the Alchon Huns ("White Huns") and native Indian elements, and can probably be considered as a Hunnic state , although its precise origins remain unclear. Critics of the foreign origin theory argue that there is no conclusive evidence of their foreign origin: they were well-assimilated in

1564-632: The Indus River . Nagabhata I defeated the Arab army under Junaid and Tamin in the Caliphate campaigns in India . Under Nagabhata II , the Pratiharas became the most powerful dynasty in northern India. He was succeeded by his son Ramabhadra , who ruled briefly before being succeeded by his son, Mihira Bhoja . Under Bhoja and his successor Mahendrapala I , the Pratihara dynasty reached its peak of prosperity and power. By

1632-525: The Pratiharas fought back repulsed them from fort of Sindan, pushing the Arabs out of Kutch between 833 and 842 AD. Later on, the Arabs lost a best part of Sindh . This was the major conflict between the forces of Mihirbhoja and Imran ibn-musa Around 880, the Gurjara-Pratiharas were defeated in large battle in Ujjain by Krishna II, the Rastrakuta king of Gujarat. However, retribution likely soon followed on

1700-603: The Vishnu worship as described in the Pancharatra texts. These texts characterize various manifestations of the Vishnu successively emanating from his highest form Vasudeva; his brother Samkarshana (Balarama) emanates from Vasudeva; his son Pradyumna emanates from Balarama; and his grandson Aniruddha emanates from Pradyumna. The temple's inner structure has a pancharatha sanctum ( garbhagriha ): it has an idol of Harshat Mata that

1768-415: The panchayatana style, which features a main shrine surrounded by four subsidiary shrines. Though ruined and modified over several centuries, parts of the main shrine and the bottom of an open mandapa with columns seem to be intact. Much of the platform survives, and carved stones from the original structure lie around it, but most of the sculptures have been removed to the museums in Amber, Rajasthan and

1836-597: The tutelary deity of the Chahamanas – has been identified as a form of Durga, and the Bhagavati Barah copper-plate inscription states that Bhagavati (another form of the goddess) was one of the tutelary deities of Nagabhata II. Atherton notes that the lack of adequate historical information prevents attribution of the temple to a particular ruler with certainty, but it is more likely that the Gurjara-Pratiharas – not

1904-508: The Caliph. Arguments of doubtful validity have often been put forward to explain this unique phenomenon. Currently it is believed that it was the power of the Pratihara army that effectively barred the progress of the Muslims beyond the confines of Sindh, their first conquest for nearly three hundred years. In the light of later events this might be regarded as the "Chief contribution of the Pratiharas to

1972-452: The Chahamanas – were the patrons of the temple, with Nagabhata II being the best candidate. In the 20th century, the sanctum had a Durga idol, which was stolen. It was replaced with an idol of goddess Lakshmi , who is now worshipped as Harshat-Mata. The temple remains in religious use; it was inscribed by the Archaeological Survey of India under Act No. LXXI of 1951 dated 28 November 1951. The original temple appears to have been built in

2040-498: The Harshat Mata temple, has been dated to 800–825 CE by Meister. The builder of the original temple is unknown. According to Agrawala, the sculptures are representative of the early Gurjara-Pratihara art. Reitz theorizes that the temple may have been constructed under the patronage of a local Chahamana prince (possibly Guvaka I ) with support of his Gurjara-Pratihara overlord (possibly Nagabhata II ). He notes that Shakambhari –

2108-603: The Indian culture. Moreover, if they invaded India through the north-west, it is inexplicable why would they choose to settle in the semi-arid area of present-day Rajasthan, rather than the fertile Indo-Gangetic Plain . According to the Agnivansha legend given in the later manuscripts of Prithviraj Raso , the Pratiharas, Parmar, Chauhan and Chalukya dynasties originated from a sacrificial fire-pit (agnikunda) at Mount Abu . Some colonial-era historians interpreted this myth to suggest

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2176-447: The Pratiharas as "Gurjara". The term "Gurjara-Pratihara" occurs only in the Rajor inscription of a feudatory ruler named Mathanadeva, who describes himself as a "Gurjara-Pratihara". According to one school of thought, Gurjara was the name of the territory (see Gurjara-desha ) originally ruled by the Pratiharas; gradually, the term came to denote the people of this territory. An opposing theory

2244-533: The Pratiharas regained the city, their position continued to weaken in the tenth century, partly as a result of the drain of simultaneously fighting off Turkic attacks from the west, the attacks from the Rashtrakuta dynasty from the south and the Pala advances in the east. The Pratiharas lost control of Rajasthan to their feudatories, and the Chandelas captured the strategic fortress of Gwalior in central India around 950. By

2312-642: The Radhanpur Plate and Prithviraja Vijaya , Vatsaraja led an expedition against the Palas under Dharmapala of Bengal As such, the Palas came into conflict from time to time with the Imperial Pratiharas. According to the above inscription Dharmapala , was deprived of his two white Royal Umbrellas, and fled, followed by the Pratihara forces under general Durlabharaja Chauhan of Shakambhari . The Prithviraja Vijaya mentions Durlabhraj I as having "washed his sword at

2380-746: The Transliteration Committee of the Geneva Oriental Congress , in September 1894. IAST makes it possible for the reader to read the Indic text unambiguously, exactly as if it were in the original Indic script. It is this faithfulness to the original scripts that accounts for its continuing popularity amongst scholars. Scholars commonly use IAST in publications that cite textual material in Sanskrit, Pāḷi and other classical Indian languages. IAST

2448-571: The area of Sanskrit studies make use of free OpenType fonts such as FreeSerif or Gentium , both of which have complete support for the full repertoire of conjoined diacritics in the IAST character set. Released under the GNU FreeFont or SIL Open Font License , respectively, such fonts may be freely shared and do not require the person reading or editing a document to purchase proprietary software to make use of its associated fonts. Gurjara-Pratihara dynasty The Pratihara dynasty , also called

2516-471: The center of the Pratihara state, which covered much of northern India during the peak of their power, c. 836–910. Mihira Bhoja first consolidated his territories by crushing the rebellious feudatories in Rajasthan, before turning his attention against the old enemies the Palas and Rastrakutas. After consolidating his rule, he stepped into a war of succession for the throne of Gujarat between Dhruva II of

2584-448: The compound of the adjoining Chand Baori stepwell; the format and dimensions of these fragments suggest that they were once attached to the base moldings on the circumambulatory path. The majority of these fragments feature Shaivite images, including those of Shiva in various forms such as Ardhanarishvara , his wife Parvati , their son Karttikeya , and Shiva's bull Nandi . There is no evidence of any Shaivite shrine having existed in

2652-577: The confluence of the river Ganga and the ocean, and savouring the land of the Gaudas". The Baroda Inscription (AD 812) states Nagabhata defeated the Dharmapala. Through vigorous campaigning, Vatsraj had extended his dominions to include a large part of northern India, from the Thar Desert in the west up to the frontiers of Bengal in the east. The metropolis of Kannauj had suffered a power vacuum following

2720-526: The consumer edition since XP. This is limited to characters in the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP). Characters are searchable by Unicode character name, and the table can be limited to a particular code block. More advanced third-party tools of the same type are also available (a notable freeware example is BabelMap ). macOS provides a "character palette" with much the same functionality, along with searching by related characters, glyph tables in

2788-625: The convention is to typeset the IT sounds as capital letters. For the most part, IAST is a subset of ISO 15919 that merges the retroflex (underdotted) liquids with the vocalic ones ( ringed below ) and the short close-mid vowels with the long ones. The following seven exceptions are from the ISO standard accommodating an extended repertoire of symbols to allow transliteration of Devanāgarī and other Indic scripts , as used for languages other than Sanskrit. The most convenient method of inputting romanized Sanskrit

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2856-460: The death of Harsha without an heir, which resulted in the disintegration of the Empire of Harsha . This space was eventually filled by Yashovarman around a century later but his position was dependent upon an alliance with Lalitaditya Muktapida . When Muktapida undermined Yashovarman, a tri-partite struggle for control of the city developed, involving the Pratiharas, whose territory was at that time to

2924-642: The east of the Sutlej river." Kalhana 's Rajatarangini states that the territories of Bhoja extended to Kashmir in the north, and Bhoja had conquered Punjab by defeating ruling 'Thakkiyaka' dynasty . After Devapala's death, Bhoja defeated the Pala emperor Narayanapala and expanded his boundaries eastward into Pala-held territories near Gorakhpur . In the early 8th century, Arabs fought on and off to take over Sindh . Imran ibn-Musa, who governed Sindh, tried to expand Arab rule to nearby areas. When Bhoja became powerful

2992-539: The end of the tenth century the Pratihara domains had dwindled to a small state centered on Kannauj. Mahmud of Ghazni captured Kannauj in 1018, and the Pratihara ruler Rajapala fled. He was subsequently captured and killed by the Chandela ruler Vidyadhara . The Chandela ruler then placed Rajapala's son Trilochanpala on the throne as a proxy. Jasapala, the last Pratihara ruler of Kannauj, died in 1036. The Imperial Pratihara dynasty broke into several small states after

3060-539: The entrance stairway. The upper terrace is far more decorated, but is largely destroyed; the only image that remains intact is of Narasimha flanked by warriors. The four subsidiary shrines may have been located on the upper terrace. Frank Reitz, who believes that the main idol of the temple was always that of Durga, theorizes that the four subsidiary shrines were located to Surya (north-west corner), Ganesha (north-east corner), Karttikeya (south-east corner), and Lakshmi-Narayana or Uma-Maheshvara (south-west). Reitz's theory

3128-573: The help of the mighty elephant force”, and “loyally presenting to Bhoja the special ‘Shrivamsha’ breed of horses, which could easily cross seas of sand." Besides being a conqueror, Bhoja was a great diplomat. The kingdoms which were conquered and acknowledged his suzerainty includes Travani, Valla, Mada, Arya, Gujaratra, Lata Parvarta and Chandelas of Bundelkhand . Bhoja's Daulatpura - Dausa Inscription (AD 843), confirms his rule in Dausa region. Another inscription states that,"Bhoja's territories extended to

3196-495: The most notable Pratihara style of architecture was Khajuraho , built by their vassals, the Chandelas of Bundelkhand . Māru-Gurjara architecture was developed during Pratihara Empire. Historians of India, since the days of Elphinstone , have wondered at the slow progress of Muslim invaders in India, as compared with their rapid advance in other parts of the world. The Arabs possibly only stationed small invasions independent of

3264-670: The opportunity to install and use the sa-itrans-iast input handler which provides complete support for the ISO 15919 standard for the romanization of Indic languages as part of the m17n library. Or user can use some Unicode characters in Latin-1 Supplement, Latin Extended-A, Latin Extended Additional and Combining Diarcritical Marks block to write IAST. Only certain fonts support all the Latin Unicode characters essential for

3332-553: The part of the Pratiharas, as by the end of his reign, Bhoja had successfully exterminated the Gujarat Rashtrakuta line. Hudud-ul-Alam, a tenth-century Persian geographic text, states that most of the kings of India acknowledged the supremacy of the powerful 'Rai of Qinnauj', ( Kannauj was the capital of the Imperial Pratiharas) whose mighty army had 150,000 strong cavalry and 800 war elephants. Bhoja II (910–912)

3400-465: The porch have been destroyed, and have been rebuilt haphazardly. The platform features figures engaged in amorous activities, which seem to be depictions of encounters between a royal figure and his consorts. According to art historian Cynthia Packert Atherton (1995), these are an idealized portrayal of the temple's royal patron, and are symbolic of Vishnu's reign on earth, thus reinforcing the idea of divine kingship . Several sculptural fragments found at

3468-636: The port of Bharuch in Gujarat. He established his capital at Avanti in Malwa, and checked the expansion of the Arabs, who had established themselves in Sind . In this battle (738 CE), Nagabhata led a confederacy of Pratiharas to defeat the Muslim Arabs who had till then been pressing on victorious through West Asia and Iran . An inscription by Mihira Bhoja ascribes Nagabhata with having appeared like Vishnu "in response to

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3536-516: The prayers of the oppressed people to crush the large armies of the powerful Mleccha ruler, the destroyer of virtue". Nagabhata I was followed by two weak successors, his nephews Devraj and Kakkuka, who were in turn succeeded by Vatsraja (775–805). In the Gwalior inscription, it is recorded that Pratihara emperor Nagabhata "crushed the large army of the powerful Mlechcha king." This large army consisted of cavalry, infantry, siege artillery, and probably

3604-464: The right side of the keyboard instead of Ctrl+Alt combination). Many systems provide a way to select Unicode characters visually. ISO/IEC 14755 refers to this as a screen-selection entry method . Microsoft Windows has provided a Unicode version of the Character Map program (find it by hitting ⊞ Win + R then type charmap then hit ↵ Enter ) since version NT 4.0 – appearing in

3672-483: The romanisation of all Indic scripts , is an extension of IAST. The IAST letters are listed with their Devanagari equivalents and phonetic values in IPA , valid for Sanskrit , Hindi and other modern languages that use Devanagari script, but some phonological changes have occurred: * H is actually glottal , not velar . Some letters are modified with diacritics : Long vowels are marked with an overline (often called

3740-499: The surviving sculptures include those of Vishnu , his vahana - the Garuda , Balarama , apsaras (celestial woman), a vyala (leogryph), Agni , a four-armed Shiva-like seated male, a male seated on a makara (mythical sea creature), a kneeling male having his foot massaged by four female attendants, dancers, and a musician, among others. According to art historian Cynthia Packert Atherton, these images can be explained with reference to

3808-438: The temple complex. The Harshat Mata temple is now a Devi shrine, and is theorized to have originally been a Vaishnavite shrine; therefore, the iconographic significance of these fragments is not clear. The original main shrine was much taller with a superstructure ( shikhara ) tower. However, the superstructure has been destroyed, and later rebuilt with a simple dome. The sculptures on the temple walls have largely been lost:

3876-414: The temple's construction. The analysis of its architectural and sculptural style suggests it was built in the early 9th century, shortly after the construction of the adjoining Chand Baori stepwell. The temple's original builder is unknown, but historians theorize that it may have been built by a Gurjara-Pratihara king, possibly in association with a local Chahamana vassal. The temple is now protected by

3944-448: The temple's iconography is representative of the Pancharatra movement of Vaishnavism. Falk Reitz (1993) of University of Bonn , however, believes that the temple was always a Shakta temple dedicated to a goddess ( Devi ). Reitz associates several sculptural fragments from Abhaneri (now kept in various museums) with the Harshat Mata temple, and concludes that these fragments show strong Shakta and Shaiva influence. According to Reitz, this

4012-682: The time of Mahendrapala, the extent of its territory rivalled that of the Gupta Empire stretching from the border of Sindh in the west to Bengal in the east and from the Himalayas in the north to areas past the Narmada in the south. The expansion triggered a tripartite power struggle with the Rashtrakuta and Pala empires for control of the Indian subcontinent . During this period, Imperial Pratihara took

4080-407: The title of Maharajadhiraja of Āryāvarta ( Great King of Kings of Aryan Lands ). Pratihara are known for their sculptures, carved panels and open pavilion style temples. The greatest development of their style of temple building was at Khajuraho , now a UNESCO World Heritage Site . The power of the Pratihara dynasty was weakened by dynastic strife. It was further diminished as a result of

4148-483: The transliteration of Indic scripts according to the IAST and ISO 15919 standards. For example, the Arial , Tahoma and Times New Roman font packages that come with Microsoft Office 2007 and later versions also support precomposed Unicode characters like ī . Many other text fonts commonly used for book production may be lacking in support for one or more characters from this block. Accordingly, many academics working in

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4216-617: The west and north, the Palas of Bengal in the east and the Rashtrakutas , whose base lay at the south in the Deccan . Vatsaraja successfully challenged and defeated the Pala ruler Dharmapala and Dantidurga , the Rashtrakuta king, for control of Kannauj. Around 786, the Rashtrakuta ruler Dhruva (c. 780–793) crossed the Narmada River into Malwa, and from there tried to capture Kannauj. Vatsraja

4284-561: The writer of the Jaina narrative Kuvalayamala states that it was composed at Jalor in the time of Vatsaraja in 778 CE, which is five years before the composition of Harivamsha-Purana. Nagabhata I (739–760), was originally perhaps a feudatory of the Chavdas of Bhillamala. He gained prominence after the downfall of the Chavda kingdom in the course of resisting the invading forces led by the Arabs who controlled Sindh. Nagabhata Pratihara I (730–756) later extended his control east and south from Mandor, conquering Malwa as far as Gwalior and

4352-517: Was defeated by the Dhruva Dharavarsha of the Rashtrakuta dynasty around 800. Vatsaraja was succeeded by Nagabhata II (805–833), who was initially defeated by the Rashtrakuta ruler Govinda III (793–814), but later recovered Malwa from the Rashtrakutas, conquered Kannauj and the Indo-Gangetic Plain as far as Bihar from the Palas, and again checked the Muslims in the west. He rebuilt the great Shiva temple at Somnath in Gujarat, which had been demolished in an Arab raid from Sindh . Kannauj became

4420-510: Was driven from Kannauj by Mahmud of Ghazni in 1018. The origin of the dynasty and the meaning of the term "Gurjara" in its name is a topic of debate among historians. The rulers of this dynasty used the self-designation "Pratihara" for their clan, and never referred to themselves as Gurjaras. They claimed descent from the legendary hero Lakshmana , who is said to have acted as a pratihara ("door-keeper") for his brother Rama . Multiple inscriptions of their neighbouring dynasties describe

4488-476: Was likely constructed before the temple, which can be dated to the 9th century based on stylistic grounds. Art historian Michael W Meister of University of Pennsylvania dates the temple complex to c. 800–825 CE based on architectural details. Based on analysis of sculptures at the temple, art historians such as Meister and R. C. Agrawala (1991) theorize that the temple was originally a Vaishnava shrine. Art historian Cynthia Packert Atherton (1995) theorizes that

4556-527: Was not present in the original temple. [REDACTED] Media related to Harṣat Mātā ka Mandir at Wikimedia Commons IAST The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration ( IAST ) is a transliteration scheme that allows the lossless romanisation of Indic scripts as employed by Sanskrit and related Indic languages. It is based on a scheme that emerged during the 19th century from suggestions by Charles Trevelyan , William Jones , Monier Monier-Williams and other scholars, and formalised by

4624-456: Was overthrown by Mahipala I (912–944). Several feudatories of the empire took advantage of the temporary weakness of the Pratiharas to declare their independence, notably the Paramaras of Malwa, the Chandelas of Bundelkhand , the Kalachuris of Mahakoshal , the Tomaras of Haryana , and the Chahamanas of Shakambhari . The south Indian Emperor Indra III (c. 914–928) of the Rashtrakuta dynasty briefly captured Kannauj in 916, and although

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