Delhi and Hansi passed under Chahamana rule, the Tomaras becoming their feudatories, and the Chahamana frontier now faced the Ghaznavids in the Punjab.
01Dhillika and Ashika
The Tomaras had held Dhillika, the fort-city at Lal Kot in the south of today’s Delhi, since the eleventh century, and Hansi was their outpost toward the Punjab, which had changed hands with the Ghaznavids more than once. Vigraharaja IV, also called Visaladeva, came to the Chahamana throne at Ajmer around 1150. The Bijolia rock inscription of his house, carved in 1170, says plainly that he took Dhillika and Ashika. The Tomaras stayed on as his feudatories, and Delhi entered the Chahamana kingdom that his nephew Prithviraj III would one day defend at Tarain.
02Words on Ashoka’s pillar
In 1164 Vigraharaja had his own inscriptions cut on the Ashokan pillar then standing at Topra, near Ambala; Firuz Shah Tughluq later moved it to his citadel in Delhi, where it still stands. The record says he conquered the land between the Vindhyas and the Himalaya, and that by repeatedly destroying the mlecchas he made Aryavarta once again worthy of its name. It charges his descendants to keep the rest. The same king was a Sanskrit poet: fragments of his play Harakeli Nataka, carved on stone slabs at his college at Ajmer, were found in the building later turned into the Adhai Din ka Jhonpra mosque.
Vigraharaja’s conquest made Delhi part of the Chahamana kingdom, which is why the fate of Delhi was decided at Tarain in 1192.