4<$ SANSCRIT INSCRIPTIONS 



The date of the Hansi inscription, 1168, shews that Prithivi Rai or Pi- 

 thaura must have succeeded to the supreme authority, immediately after 

 the inscription on the Lat was engraved : at the same time it is to be ob- 

 served that Prithivi Rai although styled by Abulfazl, king of Dehli, appears 

 not to have held that station or at least not to have exercised the sove- 

 reignty personally. The Tebkat Akberi and Ferishta call him prince of 

 Ajmere, and his brother Kanda Rae, king of Dehli: it is possible therefore 

 that the Sakambhari princes still resided on their original dominions, and 

 merely governed Dehli by delegates: that a close connexion however sub- 

 sisted between the two, is indicated by the inscription on the Lat, as well 

 as by the relationship between Pithaura and Kanda Rae. Both brothers 

 perished in the last engagement with Moiz-ud-din; Kanda Rae on the 

 field, and Pithaura was put to death after the battle. The appearance of 

 two or three princes of the Chouhan race at Delhi according to the inscrip- 

 tion on the Lat, immediately anterior to Pithaura, is fatal to the story Col. 

 Wilford cites from the Prithivi Rae Cheritra (A. R. ix. 171) of the adop- 

 tion of that prince by Ananga Pala, the last of the Tomara dynasty o£ 

 Dehli kings in 1170, the last of whom according to Abulfazl, also named 

 Prithivi Raj\ was defeated and expelled from the sovereignty by Bil Deo 

 as already observed. 



The inscriptions that have given rise to these observations are with one 

 exception records of grants made in the reign of Jaya Chandra, the last of 

 the rival house of Kanoj who survived but a very short time the down- 

 fall of that of Dehli, to which he contributed not only by previous contests 

 for pre-eminence, but even if the Musselman writers are to be believed, by 

 an actual alliance with the invaders. 



The circumstances thus ascertained from these antient records satisfac- 

 torily account for the rapid progress of the Mohammedan arms. Instead 

 of employing the interval between Mahmoud of Ghizni and Mohammed 

 Ghori to confirm and establish friendly connexions, the Western princes 



