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Mahendrapala I (IAST: Mahendrapāla; r. 885 – 910) was the Emperor of Aryavarta (ancient name for India, lit. 'Land of the (Indo-)Aryans') and King of Kannauj from 885 until his death in 910 and member of the Pratihara dynasty. He reigned over a vast empire in northern India. He is also mentioned on various inscriptions found in present-day Kathiawar, Punjab and Madhya Pradesh by the names Mahindrapala, Mahendrayudha, Mahisapaladeva, and also Nirbhayaraja, Nirbhayanarendra and Raghukula-tilaka in the plays of his guru Rajasekhara.

Reign

Rajasekhara called Mahendrapala as "Maharajadhiraja of Aryavarta" (lit. 'King Emperor of Northern India') indicating his imperial status in northern India.

Inscriptions discovered at Ramgaya, opposite the Gadadhar temple at Gaya, at Guneria in the southern part of the Gaya district, at Itkhori in the Hazaribagh district of Jharkhand, describe his reign.

Earlier, it was thought that the greater part of Magadha up to even northern Bengal had come under the suzerainty of the emperor Mahendrapala I. However, that theory has been debunked due to the discovery of a Pala king named Mahendrapala, whose inscriptions were mistakenly attributed to his Gurjara namesake.

References

1. Baji Nath Puri (1986). The History of the Gurjara-Pratihāras. Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers.
2. Rama Shankar Tripathi (1989). History of Kanauj: To the Moslem Conquest. Motilal Banarsidass. p. 248. ISBN 978-81-208-0404-3.
3. Radhey Shyam Chaurasia (2002). History of Ancient India: Earliest Times to 1000 A. D. Atlantic Publishers & Distributors. p. 208. ISBN 978-81-269-0027-5.
4. V.D. Mahajan. Ancient India. S. Chand. p. 489. ISBN 978-93-5253-132-5. Rajasekhara called Mahendrapala as Maharajadhiraja of Aryavarta or King Emperor of Northern India.
5. Sen, S.N., 2013, A Textbook of Medieval Indian History, Delhi: Primus Books, ISBN 9789380607344
6. Debala Mitra; Gouriswar Bhattacharya (1991). Akṣayanīvī: Essays Presented to Dr. Debala Mitra in Admiration of Her Scholarly Contributions. Sri Satguru Publications. ISBN 978-81-7030-275-9.

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