Lalliya

Author:Laxman Burdak, IFS (R)

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Map of Hindu Shahi dynasty

Lalliya (c. 890-895) of Kabul was the first king of Hindu Shahi Dynasty as noted by Kalhana.

Variants

• Lalliya Shahi

Jat Gotras Namesake

• Lalli (Jat clan) →

History

Lalliya is depicted as a great ruler with enormous strength to the standard where kings of other regions would seek shelter in his capital of Udabhanda, a change from the previous capital of Kabul. Ya'qub is not known to have annexed or invaded the country of Gandhara and it is assumed by Rehman that it was under the kingship of Lalliya.

Khudrayaka, the Saffarid governor of Kabul, is noted to have ended his reign in 880 CE, however it is unknown what brought about his downfall. It is assumed Lalliya was implicated as when Kabul is next mentioned in 900 CE, it is described as reverting back as Shahi territory. Amr ibn al-Layth succeeded Yaqub as the Amr of the Saffarid dynasty in 879 CE. The Tarikh-i Sistan records 'two Indian kings', reconstructed as Toramana and Asata described as governors and sons of Lalliya, are stated to have taken advantage of Amr al-Layth's preoccupation with rebellions in Khorasan and to have successfully invaded Ghazni in 900 CE, defeating the Saffarid governor named as Fardaghin, though the Tarikh does not make it clear whether it was the region of Zabulistan or of the city.

Aggression with the Utpala dynasty

Kalhana notes that Lalliya was a significant ally of the Gujrati ruler Alakhana against the machinations of the Utpala dynasty, whose ruler Samkaravarman invaded the Hindu Shahis c. 902 CE, however Kalhana further states that Lalliya's 'mighty glory outshone the kings of the north'. Samkaravarman was killed by a stray arrow in Hazara, with scholars stating Lalliya's role in his death. A year later, his successor Gopalavarman re-invaded Shahi territory to depose a rebellious Shahi, and installed Lalliya's son Toramana with the new name of "Kamaluka".

Rajatarangini, v, 232-33: As superintendent of the treasury he (Prabhakaradeva, the prime minister of Gopalavarman - the successor of Samkaravarman ) plundered the riches of the amorous (queen) and vanquished the Shahi kingdom at Udabhanda. He bestowed the kingdom of the rebellious Sahi upon Toramana, Lilliya's son, and gave him the (new) name Kamaluka..... — Kalhana

In Rajatarangini

Rajatarangini tells us that King of Kashmir Shankaravarmma easily defeated Alakhāna king of Gurjjara who ceded Takka a part of his kingdom to his conqueror. The king of the Thakkiyaka family took service as guard under the king of Kashmira. The latter caused the kingdom of the Thakkiya king which had been usurped by the king of Bhoja to be restored to him. The king of the country which lay between Darat and Turushka, (as the Aryavarta lies between Himalaya and Vindhya,) Lalliya Shahi by name, who was among kings even as the sun is among stars, and was also lord over Alakhāna, did not submit to the king of Kashmira, on which the latter drove him out of his country.

Rajatarangini tells that Then the virtuous and truthful Gopalavarmma (902-904), began to reign under the direction of his mother Sugandha. Though he was yet a boy, and lived among the vile and the seduced, yet he did not contract any bad habit. His mother was now a widow, and living in luxury, asked Prabhakaradeva, a minister (treasurer), to her embrace, and bestowed on her paramour wealth, rank, and three good districts. The treasurer robbed the queen of much wealth and built a town Bhandapura at Shahirajya. The reigning Shahi disobeyed his orders to build the town, on which he changed the name of the country to Kamalaka, and gave it to Tomarana the son of Lalliya. (Book V,p.122)

Laliya Sahi Jat of Kabul

Bhim Singh Dahiya writes... [p.221]: This important dynasty under Kabul and Gandhara was founded in 477 A.D. under king Hephthal II, of Balkh. His coins have been found and show that Balkh was his capital, because the legend on the reverse of his coins, in Tokhri script, mention the name of Balkh city. In 456 A.D. the Iranian emperor Yezdegird II was still fighting with the Jats when the latter sent an embassy to the Chinese Court of Emperor Wei. This is further proof of the fact that Hephthal II was a sovereign ruler. In 457 A.D. the Jats crushed the power of Sassanid emperors and Yezdegird II was killed. It was during this period that one of their clans, the 'Jaula' occupied Gazni and adjoining areas. They conquered Gandhara in 477 A.D.; Kashmir was taken in 478 A.D.; and in 479 A.D. they occupied Sogdiana and before 500 A.D. they had taken over Turfan and Qarashahr.

This date of occupation of Gandhara in 477 A.D. is further proved by the Chinese pilgrim, Sung-Yun, who stated in 520 A.D. that the Yetha had conquered Ye-Po-Lo, about two generations ago. Here the Ye-Po-Lo of the Chinese stands for Jauval/Jabul and the Yetha, of course, stands for the Jats; the Chinese Ye, ilVing the sound of 'J'. It is interesting to note that Hephthal III, who defeated and killed the next Iranian emperor Peroz, in a decisive battle in 484 A.D., is called Ye-ta-i-li-to meaning (Jaṭlāṭa) the king of the Jats. ⁶⁵ As shown above the Yetha/Yeta is the Chinese transliteration of the word Jat, and Lāṭa or Rāṭa is a

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64. U. Thakur, The Hunas in/ndia, pp. 109-110.

65. See Note I at the end of this section.

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[Page 222]: Scythian word for king. Buddha Prakash says that it is a manifestly non-Indian name, Rata being a suffix of foreign names.⁶⁶

The Chinese sources further say that one, Laelih was made ruler of Gandhara by the Yetha. Now the name Laelih has not come down in coins or other literary works. However, the coins of a king named, Ramanila have been found and these coins are related to this very period. We know that the paramount ruling clan was the Jaula, the 'gotra' of Toramana and Mihiragula. It is also known that the ruler of Gandhara was a Tegin meaning Governor- a subordinate title. From these facts it is easy to conclude that paramount rulers had appointed Ramanila, a Jat of Lalli clan (Laelih of the Chinese) as Governor of Gandhara. Thus we find that 'Sung-yun was correct in naming the ruler of Gandhara but, as often, he gave the clan name and not the personal name of the ruler, the latter being Ramanila of the coins. This however, does not mean that Gandhara, Kabul and Gazni were not under the Jats earlier. We know that up to the first century B.C. it was continuously ruled by them and the Jaulas had only replaced the Kasvan Jats, the so-called later Kushana/Kidarites.⁶⁷

However, It seems that when after Mihiragula and his son/ successor Ajitanjaya, their Indian empire was disintegrating the Jaula secured Jabulistan for themselves. As shown earlier, the word is Jauvlistan, the land of the Jauvlas, written as Jabulistan by the Arabs. ⁶⁸ On this basis, its king was mentioned simply as Janbil by the Arabs. However, when Hiuen- Tsang visited this area in 644-45 A.D. he found that the king of Jabulistan had succeeded a long line of kings and he was a follower of the sun-god.⁶⁹ Coins of a king of this dynasty, named Vakbha, have been found and the legends on these coins show that they had become markedly Indianised by this time.⁷⁰

Their wars with the Arabs

The first war that these Jats had to fight with the rising power of Islam was in 654/655 A.D. only ten years after the visit of Hiuen-Tsang.

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66. SIH&C, p. 140.

67. See Note II at the end of this section.

68. Sec Note III at the end of this section.

69. BRWW, Vol. II, p. 285/86.

70. R. Ghirshman, La Chionites-Hephthalites, p. 45.

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[Page 222]: It was beaten back. Another war and defeat of the invaders is noted from Kholau-Sul-ul-Akbar.⁷¹ Obaidullah, Governor of Seistan, was ordered by his superior, Hejauge, ruler of Khorasan, to invade Kabul. The ruler of Kabul is named as Retpeil (Ratha Pal ?). The war was fought in 697 A.D. and Rath Pal, "artfully retiring, drew the Mohammedan army into the defiles, and blocking up the rear, cut off their retreat, and Obaidullah was compelled to purchase his liberation by the payment of seven hundred thousand dirhams". The repeated attacks of the Arabs were fought back; and when it became necessary to solicit help, they found that their traditional and nearest helper, viz., Iran, was already under the Arabs and therefore any help from these quarters was out of question. The only other source was Chinese and it is to the Chinese that the Jats sent repeated embassies up to the year 755 A.D. But no help came and they had to fight with their own resources. The Indian nation shall be indebted to these Jats for stopping the Arabs from entering Kabul from 654 to 870 A.D. In 870/71 A.D. the Arab General, Yaqubb-in-Laith overthrew this kingdom of Kabul by treachery. The Persian work, Jama-al-hikayat-wa-lawama-al-Rawayat. of 1232 A.D., states that when Yaqub found that his army was no match for that of the Jats of Jabulistan, and could not defeat them in a field of battle, Yaqub invited the latter to meet him as a friend. At the meeting however, Yaqub resorted to Taqia and treacherously killed the king. Thus Kabul was lost by 871 A.D. Gandhara and Peshawar area, however, still remained with them till 1021 A.D. It does not mean that heroic efforts were not made to take back Kabul and Ghazni. Babar, relates a story of an attack on Ghazni by "The Rai of Hind" at the time of Subaktegin, when the latter put dead flesh (obviously cows) and impurities into their water supply and the "Rai" withdrew.⁷²

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71. Col. Tad, op., cit. Vol. II, p. 244.

72. ibid., p. 244 note.

Page 227

Note I - In fact, the Chinese used two words for the purpose, viz., Yetalito and Yue-che wang. The first is a transliteration of jatrat, and the second is a sort of translation of the same word, i.e. Guti-wang or Guti king or Jat king.

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Note II

Of tremendous historical importance is the search for the proceedings of the fourth Buddhist Council believed to have been engraved on copper plates, by Kaniska, the Kushana emperor, and buried in steel boxes, somewhere in Kashmir. If found, these documents will certainly revolutionise the Indian and Central Asian history! Reporting about the excavation work done near Pahalgam (Kashmir), the Hindustan Times (New Delhi) of 26/27.7.1978, mentions about some of the findings:

"The arc shaped tiles recovered near Hoi-Nar village of Pahalgam depict hunting scenes in two panels, showing a deer being struck with a spear by a hunter clad in Kushan-type dress. The hunter with hands raised skyward is a picture of joy.

The right corner of some tiles depicts the eight-spoked Chakra (wheel) of law common to the Buddhists. According to a director of the department, Mr F.M. Hassnain, the Kharoshti numerals on the tiles and their motifs take Kashmir's history back to the period when the valley formed part of the Kushan empire, and had close cultural and political relations with regions now forming Central Asia."

Note III

Vincent Smith implies that the word, Jaula, was a Huna title.⁸⁷ But Hoernle says, correctly, that it was the name of a tribe. ⁸⁸ Ibbetson does not admit the existence of any Jaula tribe, ⁸⁹ obviously because he had not heard about the Jaula or Johla Jats in the Punjab. As Jaulistan is mentioned on the coins of Vasudeva,⁹⁰ they, the Jaulas, must have come to India,

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87. JRAS, 1909, p. 268.

88. JRAS, 1905, p. 3.

89. Tribes and Castes, p. 40. ?O. ibid., p. 40.

Page 229

along with the Kushanas (Kasvan Jats) in the first century AD. "Cunningham's identification of Jaulistan with Jabultstan is incontrovertible, and Bhandarkar takes that to be Zabulistan-an equation which appears hardly open to dispute." ⁹¹

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91. ibid.

Turki Sahi of Kabul displaced by Lalliya of Hindu Shahi

Buddha Prakash mentions .... [p.135]: As said above, in the ninth century the Arabs exercised relentless pressure on Kabul. From the east the Pratihara rulers of Kanauj struck at them. Nagabhata II (795-833) wrested some territory in the Panjab from them and Mihira Bhoja (836-90) sent an expedition under Harsharsja Guhila against them (Chatsu Inscription, Epigraphia Indica, XII, p.13). As a result of these moves, East Panjab was annexed to the Pratihara empire and West Panjab was placed under the viceroyalty of Alakhana with his capital at or near Gujarat. Almost at the same time the people revolted against the tyranny of the Turki ruler

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[p.136]: Laghturman who, according to Al-Biruni, had ‘bad manners and a worse behaviour’. (E. C. Sachau, Al-Berun's India, Vol. II p. 13). Under these blows and pressures, external as well as internal, the Turki Sahi kingdom of Kabul fell and the Brahmana minister of the king, Laghturman, whom Kalhana calls Lalliya and Al Biruni, Kallar, staged a coup'd’ etat and shifted his capital to Ohind or Udbhandapura on the Indus. His kingdom included the lower Kabul Valley from Laghman (Lampaka) to Gandhara and also parts of western Panjab. He was a powerful ruler, “whose mighty glory outshone the kings of the north just as the sun-disc outshines the stars in heaven”, as Kalhana states (Rajatarangini V, 154). ‘In his capital of Udbhandapura other kings found safety, just as the mountains in the ocean, when threatened by the danger of having their wings cut by Indra ” (Ibid,, V, 153). That he was friendly to the Pratiharas is clear from the fact that he gave shelter to the Pratihara chief Alakhana when he was defeated by the king of Kashmira, Shankaravarman, and compelled to surrender the Takka country to him.

It appears that the Turki Sahi rulers, displaced by Lalliya, took refuge with the king of Kashmira while he made friends with the Pratiharas. Thus the entente of the Brahmana Sahis and the Pratiharas was confronted with the alliance of the Turki Sahis and the king of Kashmira. But there seems to have been no encounter between them on account of their respective problems. However H. C. Ray suggests that the violent death of the king of Kashmira, Shankaravarman, in the hills of Hazara, may be due to the complicity of the Sahis (Dynastic History of Northern India, Vol. I, p. 75).

References

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