Dynasties of India

Dynasty after dynasty held the gates, raised the temples and kept the chronicle — the ruling houses of India.

The dynasties of India are the spine on which the subcontinent's political history hangs — yet popular memory has been strangely selective. Every schoolbook carries the Mauryas, the Guptas and the adversaries of the Mughals; far fewer can name the houses that stood at the north-western gates for nearly four centuries — the Rai and Brahman kings of Sindh, the Shahis of Kabul and the Indus, the lines of Kashmir — absorbing and answering the first Arab and Turkic invasions from the 660s to 1026 CE. This gateway opens Indopedia's chronicle of the ruling houses, the famous and the forgotten together — and the forgotten first.

Why the frontier houses come first

Between the first Arab expeditions against Kabul and Sindh and the last campaigns of Mahmud of Ghazni lie some three and a half centuries. For most of that time the gates of India were held — by dynasties whose names have nearly vanished from common memory, and whose wars are documented chiefly in the chronicles of their enemies and in Kalhana's Rajatarangini. Indopedia records battles won and lost, in proper detail; these houses fought both, and earned their place at the head of this page.

The gate of Sindh — the Rai and Brahman houses (c. 489–724)

The Rai dynasty ruled from Aror on the Indus, a realm the Chachnama describes as reaching from Kashmir to the Makran coast; its line of five kings ended when Rai Sahasi II died and the chamberlain Chach took the throne, founding the Brahman house (c. 632). Arab expeditions probed the coast from the 640s, and more than once died on the Makran approaches; the commander Budail fell before Debal. In 711–12 the Umayyad governor al-Hajjaj sent his kinsman Muhammad bin Qasim with a siege train; Debal fell, and in June 712, at the battle of Aror, Raja Dahir — the last Hindu king of united Sindh — died fighting from his war-elephant. His queen held the fort of Rawar to the act of jauhar; his son Jaisiah fought on for years from the interior. What followed mattered as much as what fell: the Arab advance into India stopped, in substance, at Sindh for three hundred years — the caliphate's easternmost province became a frontier, not a doorway. Qasim himself outlived his conquest by barely three years — recalled in the faction-purge that followed the deaths of his patrons, he died in the caliphate's prison about 715, aged about twenty; for what became of Arab Sindh, and how the Turks of Ghazni finally ended it, see Mahmud of Ghazni — The Raider and the Resistance. The whole four-century chain — from the first sea-raid of 636 to Mahmud’s death — is charted at The Caliphate and India — A Timeline (636–1030).

The wall of Kabul — the Shahis (c. 665–1026)

For two centuries the Turk Shahis of Kabul and the allied Zunbils of Zabulistan blunted the armies of the caliphate's eastern governors — in 698–700 an Arab force remembered in Arabic tradition itself as the Jaysh al-Fanāʾ, "the Army of Destruction", was destroyed in the Zunbil country. In the ninth century (the chronology is debated) the Brahmin minister Lalliya founded the Hindu Shahi line, which moved its seat from Kabul to Udabhandapura (Hund) on the Indus and held the passes against the new power of Ghazni. Jayapala (r. c. 964–1001) fought Sabuktigin and then Mahmud; defeated at Peshawar in November 1001, he abdicated and burned himself on a pyre rather than outlive the defeat. Anandapala raised a northern confederacy for the battle of Chach (Waihind, 1008) — Firishta, writing four centuries later, says contingents came from Ujjain, Gwalior, Kalinjar, Kannauj, Delhi and Ajmer, and that women sold their ornaments to fund the army; the day turned when Anandapala's elephant fled the field. Trilochanapala (d. 1021) fought on from the Salt Range with Kashmiri aid; with the death of Bhimapala the line ended — in 1026, the very year Somnath fell (see Somnath Temple — The Shrine Eternal).

No tribute to them equals their enemy's own. Al-Biruni, who came to India in Mahmud's train, wrote:

"The Hindu Shahiya dynasty is now extinct, and of the whole house there is no longer the slightest remnant in existence. We must say that, in all their grandeur, they never slackened in the ardent desire of doing that which is good and right, that they were men of noble sentiment and noble bearing."

A century later Kalhana could already write that "the very name of the splendour of the Shahi kings has vanished" — the lament of a chronicler watching memory fail. This page exists so that it does not.

The mountain throne — Karkota, Utpala and Lohara Kashmir (625–1339)

Kashmir is the one region of ancient India with a continuous dynastic chronicle: Kalhana's Rajatarangini ("River of Kings", 1148–50), a verse history that names its sources and weighs them — and through it these houses speak. The Karkota dynasty (from c. 625) reached its height under Lalitaditya Muktapida (c. 724–760): an embassy to the Tang court is on record in the 730s, Kalhana credits him with the defeat of Yashovarman of Kannauj and campaigns against the Tibetans and the Turks of the passes, and he raised the Martand sun temple, whose ruins still command the valley. Under the Utpalas, Avantivarman (855–883) turned from war to water: his engineer Suyya regulated the Vitasta and drained the valley floor — and Kalhana, remarkably, records the fall in the price of rice that followed. The Lohara dynasty produced Queen Didda (r. 980–1003 in her own name), granddaughter of the Shahi king Bhima; her successor Samgramaraja sent the general Tunga across the mountains to stand with Trilochanapala against Mahmud. Mahmud answered by turning on Kashmir itself — and twice, in 1015 and 1021, his army failed before the fortress of Lohkot in the Pir Panjal: among the very few walls that stopped him outright. The Hindu line of Kashmir ended only in 1339, with Queen Kota Rani.

The eighth-century repulse — when the west was held

When the Arab governors of Sindh pushed east in the 720s–730s under Junaid, a ring of houses answered. The Navsari plates of the Chalukya prince Avanijanashraya Pulakeshin (739 CE) record — in stone, not legend — the defeat of the "Tajika" (Arab) army that had struck at southern Gujarat; the Gwalior prashasti of the Gurjara-Pratihara emperor Mihira Bhoja says his ancestor Nagabhata I crushed the army of the "mlechchha king"; and the tradition of Mewar sets Bappa Rawal of the Guhilas in the same fight. Popular histories remember these campaigns together as the "Battle of Rajasthan"; the name is modern, the repulse is documented. For the next two centuries the Pratihara empire stood as the wall of the west — the Arab traveller Al-Masudi, who saw its power in the 910s, wrote that among the princes of India there was "no greater foe" of the caliphate's faith than the Gurjara king, master of the finest cavalry in the land. When the wall finally broke, it was not the Arabs of Sindh who came through, but the Turks of Ghazni.

The frontier houses

The guardians of the gates, summarised — their full stories stand in the sections above and in The Resistance Chronicle:

House	Seat	Span	Remembered for
Rai dynasty	Aror	c. 489–632	Five kings; a realm the Chachnama stretches from Kashmir to the Makran coast
Brahman dynasty of Chach	Aror	c. 632–712	Raja Dahir — the last stand at Aror; Jaisiah's long resistance after
Turk Shahis and the Zunbils	Kabul · Zabulistan	c. 665–843	Two centuries holding the gates; the "Army of Destruction" annihilated (698)
Hindu Shahis	Kabul → Udabhandapura (Hund)	c. 843–1026	Lalliya to Bhimapala — the wall of the Frontier Age; Jayapala's pyre (Peshawar 1001), the confederacy of Waihind, Al-Biruni's tribute · full genealogy, civilisation and remains at Battle of Peshawar (1001)
Karkotas	Srinagar	c. 625–855	Lalitaditya — Martand, the Tang embassy, the passes held
Utpalas	Srinagar	855 – c. 939	Avantivarman — Suyya's waterworks, and the price of rice in Kalhana's record
Loharas	Srinagar · Lohkot	980 (Didda) – 1339	Didda; Samgramaraja and Tunga; Lohkot — Mahmud defeated twice

The great houses

House	Seat	Span	Remembered for
Mauryas	Pataliputra	321–185 BCE	The first subcontinental empire; Chanakya's Arthashastra; Ashoka and the edicts
Satavahanas	Pratishthana	c. 100 BCE – 225 CE	The Deccan's first empire; guardians of the trade with Rome
Guptas	Pataliputra	c. 320–550	The classical efflorescence — Kalidasa, Aryabhata, Nalanda
Vakatakas	Vidarbha	c. 250–500	Ajanta's painted caves; Prabhavatigupta's regency
Pallavas	Kanchipuram	c. 275–897	Mamallapuram by the sea; Kanchi's schools; the long duel with the Chalukyas
Chalukyas of Badami	Vatapi	543–753	Pulakeshin II halted Harsha at the Narmada; Aihole and Pattadakal
Rashtrakutas	Manyakheta	753–982	The Kailasa of Ellora; ranked by Arab geographers among the four great kings of the world
Palas	Bengal–Bihar	c. 750–1161	Patrons of Nalanda and Vikramashila; Dharmapala in the Kannauj triangle
Imperial Cholas	Thanjavur	848–1279	Rajaraja and Rajendra — the great temple, the fleet, the Ganga and overseas expeditions
Chalukyas of Kalyani	Kalyani	973–1189	Vikramaditya VI; the Mitakshara school of law
Hoysalas	Belur–Halebidu	c. 1026–1343	The soapstone marvels; the south's shield in the Sultanate storms
Kakatiyas	Warangal	c. 1163–1323	Rudrama Devi — a reigning queen on the Deccan throne, praised in Marco Polo's account
Eastern Gangas	Kalinga	1078–1434	Konark — Narasimhadeva I's sun temple, raised after his victories over the Bengal Sultanate
Vijayanagara (four houses)	Hampi	1336–1646	Sangama to Aravidu; Krishnadevaraya; the city travellers called without equal
Gajapatis	Cuttack	1434–1541	Kapilendra's surge from the Ganga to the Kaveri
Ahoms	Charaideo–Garhgaon	1228–1826	Held Assam through seventeen Mughal invasions; Lachit Borphukan at Saraighat (1671)

The Rajput houses

House	Seat	Span	Remembered for
Gurjara-Pratiharas	Kannauj	c. 730–1036	The wall of the west (above); Mihira Bhoja's empire
Chauhans	Ajmer–Delhi	c. 7th c. – 1192	Prithviraj III — Tarain won (1191) and lost (1192); Hammira's last stand at Ranthambore (1301)
Tomaras	Dhillika	c. 736–1152	The founders of Delhi
Chandelas	Khajuraho–Kalinjar	9th–13th c.	Khajuraho; Vidyadhara's defiance — Mahmud left Kalinjar untaken
Paramaras	Dhara	9th–14th c.	Bhoja — the philosopher-king of Malwa
Chaulukyas (Solankis)	Anahilavada	940–1244	Bhima I and Kumarapala — rebuilders of Somnath; the queen's stepwell at Patan
Guhilas–Sisodias of Mewar	Chittor–Udaipur	c. 728–1948	Bappa Rawal, Hammir, Kumbha, Sanga, Pratap — the three sakas of Chittor; the one great house that made no marriage alliance with the Mughals
Rathores	Jodhpur	1243–1948	Rao Jodha's city; Durgadas and the thirty-year fight that restored Ajit Singh
Kachwahas	Amber–Jaipur	11th c. – 1948	Man Singh; Jai Singh II — the astronomer-king of the Jantar Mantars
Bundelas	Orchha–Panna	16th–18th c.	Chhatrasal — Bundelkhand carved free, sealed by alliance with Bajirao

The Maratha houses

House	Seat	Span	Remembered for
Bhosales (Chhatrapatis)	Raigad → Satara & Kolhapur	1674–1848	Shivaji's coronation (1674); Sambhaji; Tarabai and the war Aurangzeb could not win (1681–1707)
Peshwas (Bhat family)	Pune	1713–1818	Bajirao I — twenty years, no battle lost; the flag at Attock (1758); Madhavrao's recovery after Panipat
Scindias	Ujjain → Gwalior	1731–1948	Ranoji rebuilt Mahakaleshwar (1734); Mahadji — master of Delhi and protector of the emperor
Holkars	Indore–Maheshwar	1728–1948	Ahilyabai (r. 1767–95) — rebuilder of Kashi Vishwanath and Grishneshwar, builder of the new shrine at Somnath (1783)
Gaekwads	Baroda	1721–1949	The western anchor of the confederacy; Sayajirao III's model state
Bhosales of Nagpur	Nagpur	1739–1853	Raghuji's campaigns east to Bengal and Odisha
Angres (Sarkhel)	Konkan coast	1698–1756	Kanhoji — the admiral no European fleet could break in his lifetime

How this gateway grows

Each house named above opens as its own page, in the manner of the jyotirlinga shrines — chronology, capitals, the major reigns, battles won and lost (cross-indexed in Military History), architecture and coinage, and a full bibliography. The frontier sections will grow first. The map of India in the years of resistance — and the wing it belongs to — stands at The Resistance Chronicle.

Sources and further reading

• Kalhana, Rājataraṅgiṇī, trans. M. A. Stein, 2 vols. (1900).
• Chachnama, trans. Mirza Kalichbeg (1900) — with the cautions noted above.
• Al-Biruni, Kitāb al-Hind, trans. E. C. Sachau (1910).
• Elliot & Dowson, The History of India, as Told by Its Own Historians, Vol. I (Al-Masʿūdī and the Arab geographers).
• Mishra, Yogendra, The Hindu Sahis of Afghanistan and the Punjab (1972); Rehman, Abdur, The Last Two Dynasties of the Śāhis (1979).
• Majumdar, R. C. (ed.), The Age of Imperial Kanauj and The Struggle for Empire (Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan series).
• Ray, H. C., The Dynastic History of Northern India, 2 vols. (1931–36).
• Wink, André, Al-Hind: The Making of the Indo-Islamic World, Vol. I (1990).
• Sarkar, Jadunath, History of Aurangzib, Vol. V; Sardesai, G. S., New History of the Marathas (1946–48).