01A boy king and his mother
Merutunga, the Jain monk who wrote the Prabandha Chintamani at Wadhwan in 1305, calls her the daughter of Paramardi, a Kadamba king of the Konkan, and the queen of Ajayapala. Ajayapala ruled from Anahilapataka, modern Patan, for only four years and was killed in 1175. His son Mularaja II was a small child, and the government of one of the richest kingdoms in India fell to his mother. Within three years the Ghurid Sultan Muhammad, who had already taken Multan and Uch, decided Gujarat was the soft way into India.
02Kasahrada, 1178
Muhammad marched across the desert and came to the foot of Mount Abu. There, near the village of Kayadra, the army of Gujarat met him, with the Paramara Dharavarsha of Abu and the Chahamana chiefs Kelhana and Kirtipala of Nadol beside it. Merutunga writes that the queen took the field with the child in her lap and that the mlechchha king was beaten. The Sundha hill inscription of the Chahamanas also remembers Kelhana and Kirtipala fighting the Turushkas at Kasahrada.
The enemy’s own historian agrees. Minhaj-us-Siraj writes in the Tabaqat-i-Nasiri that the Rai of Nahrwala was young but had a great army and elephants, that the Muslim army was defeated, and that the Sultan went back with nothing.
