Battle of Chandawar

01The battle

Jayachandra, grandson of Govindachandra, ruled from Kanyakubja to Varanasi, the richest kingdom of the plain. Hasan Nizami, Aibak’s chronicler, describes his army as numberless, with many elephants. The armies met at Chandawar on the Yamuna. The fight went the Rajput way until Jayachandra, on his elephant, was struck in the eye by an arrow and fell. His army broke at his death. His head was carried on a spear to the Sultan; ninety elephants were taken.

02Asni and Kashi

The army went on to the Gahadavala treasure fort at Asni and then to Varanasi. Hasan Nizami’s Taj-ul-Maasir boasts that about a thousand temples there were destroyed and mosques raised on their foundations. The Gahadavalas held on east of the Ganga for a few years under Jayachandra’s son Harishchandra. Later bards blamed Jayachandra for Prithviraj’s fall over the tale of Sanyogita; that tale belongs to the Prithviraj Raso, not to any record of the time.

Dynasty · c. 1089–1194 CEGahadavalas of Kannauj and KashiChandradeva took Kannauj at the end of the eleventh century and named himself protector of the tirthas of Kashi, Kushika, Uttara Kosala and Indrasthana. A century later Jayachandra fell at Chandawar against Muhammad of Ghor.Read →