Clients of the great powers
Three rulers with names ending in -āyudha are recorded at Kannauj in the second half of the eighth century. They held the most prestigious seat in northern India without the strength to defend it, and each of the three expanding empires of the period intervened to install or unseat them.
Dharmapāla of Bengal deposed Indrāyudha and installed Cakrāyudha, holding a formal assembly at Kannauj at which, his own inscription says, the kings of the north assented. The Rāṣṭrakūṭa king Dhruva had already defeated both the Pratihāra and the Pāla in the Doab, and Nāgabhaṭa II of the Pratihāras subsequently drove out Cakrāyudha and took the city for his own dynasty.
The Āyudhas therefore matter less for what they did than for what happened around them. The tripartite struggle for Kannauj — a Bengal power, a Rajasthan-Gujarat power and a Deccan power all campaigning for the same city across the ninth century — is the defining pattern of early medieval north Indian politics, and the Āyudha throne was its object.
Further reading
- Coedes, George. The Indianized States of Southeast Asia. University of Hawaii Press, 1968
- Hawley, John Stratton. A Storm of Songs: India and the Idea of the Bhakti Movement. Harvard University Press, 2015
- Nilakanta Sastri, K. A. The Colas. University of Madras, 1955
- Samuel, Geoffrey. The Origins of Yoga and Tantra. Cambridge University Press, 2008
- Sastri, K. A. Nilakanta. A History of South India. Oxford University Press, 1955
See also
This entry was last revised on 1 August 2026.