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Inscription · 739 CE (Kalachuri year 490)

Navsari plates of Avanijanashraya Pulakeshin

Found
At Navsari, south Gujarat, in the 19th century
Kept at
Text edited in V. V. Mirashi’s corpus of Kalachuri-Chedi era inscriptions (1955)

A land grant of the Chalukya prince of Lata that records how he threw back an Arab army trying to break into the Deccan.

What it says

The Tajikas, it says, had broken the Saindhava, Kacchella, Saurashtra, Chavotaka, Maurya and Gurjara kings with the sword, and, wishing to enter Dakshinapatha, came to take the Navsari country. Pulakeshin met them in battle and beat them. His overlord, the Chalukya king Vikramaditya II, gave him titles, among them Anivartaka-nivartayitri, ‘he who turned back the unturnable’.

What it proves

It is a dated Indian record of the Arab raids out of Sindh in the 730s and of their defeat in south Gujarat.

Evidence for

The Rajasthan and Gujarat resistance to the Arabs

Resistance to the Arab raids

Chalukyas of Badami

The Chalukyas of Badami

Evidence

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Boğazköy treaty naming Mitra, Varuna, Indra and the Nasatyas

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Heliodorus pillar, Besnagar

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