01From the Chavdas to the Solankis
Anahilapataka had been founded by the Chavda king Vanaraja. Merutunga tells that Mularaja was the son of a Chavda princess, and that he took the throne from his maternal uncle Samantasimha, the last of that house, around 941. His Kadi copper plate of 987 is the oldest dated record of the dynasty. He fought on three sides: Graharipu, the Abhira king of Saurashtra at Vamanasthali; Barappa, the general of the Kalyani Chalukyas in Lata; and the Chahamana Vigraharaja II, who invaded from the north and drove him for a time to Kanthkot in Kutch.
02Siddhpur and the Shaiva king
Mularaja was a devotee of Shiva. Gujarat tradition credits him with beginning the Rudra Mahalaya at Siddhpur on the Sarasvati, the great Shiva temple that Jayasimha Siddharaja finished two centuries later; only a few of its pillars and toranas stand today. He is also said to have brought learned Brahmin families from the north to settle at Siddhpur. In his last years, by the chronicles’ account, he handed the kingdom to his son Chamundaraja.
A later king of his line, Mularaja II, the child in whose name his mother Naiki Devi beat Muhammad of Ghor in 1178, carried the founder’s name.
