Yashovarman

Yashovarman
Ruler of Kannauj
Predecessor	Harsha
Successor	Āma
Born	7th or 8th century AD
Died	8th century AD
Issue	Āma

Yashovarman (IAST: Yaśovarman) was a medieval ruler of Kannauj in India. There are few sources that provide information of his life, although he was indubitably a powerful man.

Yashovarman was king of Kannauj in the early part of the eighth century. The city (then known as Kanyakubja) had previously been ruled by Harsha, who died without an heir and thus created a power vacuum. This lasted for around a century before Yashovarman emerged as its ruler.Alexander Cunningham, an archaeologist of the British Raj period, speculated on possible rulers of Kannauj during the period between Harsha and Yashovarman but there is little evidence to support his claims.

Little is known of Yashovarman or his family, with most information being derived from the Gaudavaho (Slaying of the king of Gauda), a Prakrit-language poem written by Vakpati. Yashovarman was a supporter of culture and Vakpati was among his courtiers: the extent to which the poem can be relied upon for statements of fact is impossible to determine. Vakpati's work has been variously said to describe Yashovarman as either a divine incarnation of Vishnu or a kshatriya of the Lunar dynasty; Cunningham considered him likely to be related to the Maukharis, who had ruled Kannauj prior to Harsa, and some Jain works say that he was related to the Chandraguptas who ruled the Mauryan empire. The dates of his reign are also obscure, with assertions including c. 728–745 (Vincent A. Smith), around the late-seventh century/early eighth-century (Sankara Panduranga Pandit) and, according to the calculations of Ramashandra Tripathi, probably 725–752.

The Gaudavaho depicts Yashovarman as conquering large swathes of northern India — including Bihar, Bengal, the western Deccan, Indus Valley and Kashmir — before returning in triumph to Kannauj. However, Kalhana, a Kashmiri court chronicler who lived around the 12th century CE, gives a very different story in his Rajatarangini, depicting Yashovarman as a ruler who was among those defeated by Lalitaditya Muktapida, a ruler of Kashmir. The variant claims of stupendous conquests given by both of these courtiers are improbable, with Tripathi saying of those in the Gaudavaho that "These exploits read more like fiction than sober history". Other early sources are the Prabhavakacarita, Prabandha Kosha and Bappabhattasuricarita, which are Jain documents.

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