Mahendrapala I (885–910) was a ruler of Pratihara dynasty, the son of Mihir Bhoja I and queen ''Candra-Bhatta-Rika-Devi''. He was also mentioned on various inscriptions in Kathiawar, Punjab and Madhya Pradesh by names ''Mahindrapala'', ''Mahendrayudha'', ''Mahisapaladeva'', and also ''Nirbhayaraja'' and ''Nirbhayanarendra'' in the plays of

Rajasekhara Rajasekhara may refer to: * Rama Rajasekhara/Cheraman Perumal "Nayanar" (''fl.'' 9th century), theologian, devotional poet and ruler from south India * Rajashekhara (Sanskrit poet) Rajashekhara (; ) was a Sanskrit poet, dramatist and critic. H ...

Reign

Inscriptions discovered at Ramgaya, opposite the Gadadhar temple at Gaya, at Guneria in the southern part of the Gaya district, at Itkhori in the

Hazaribagh district Hazaribagh district is one of the twenty-four districts of Jharkhand state, India and the district headquarter located in Hazaribagh town. It is currently a part of the Red Corridor. Etymology The district is named after its headquarters, the tow ...

Bihar Bihar (; ) is a state in eastern India. It is the 2nd largest state by population in 2019, 12th largest by area of , and 14th largest by GDP in 2021. Bihar borders Uttar Pradesh to its west, Nepal to the north, the northern part of West Be ...

, describe his reign. Earlier, it was thought that the greater part of

Magadha Magadha was a region and one of the sixteen sa, script=Latn, Mahajanapadas, label=none, lit=Great Kingdoms of the Second Urbanization (600–200 BCE) in what is now south Bihar (before expansion) at the eastern Ganges Plain. Magadha was ruled ...

up to even northern

Bengal Bengal ( ; bn, বাংলা/বঙ্গ, translit=Bānglā/Bôngô, ) is a geopolitical, cultural and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal, predom ...

had come under the suzerainty of the monarch Mahendrapala I.Sen, S.N., 2013, A Textbook of Medieval Indian History, Delhi: Primus Books, However, that theory has been debunked due to the discovery of a Pala king named

Mahendrapala Mahendrapala (Bangla: মহেন্দ্রপাল) (r. c. 845–860) was the fourth king of the Pala dynasty of the Bengal region of the Indian subcontinent. He was the son of Devapala and his queen Mahata. Reign Mahendrapala has been m ...

, whose inscriptions were mistakenly attributed to his Gurjara namesake. In north his authority was extended up to the foot of the

Himalaya The Himalayas, or Himalaya (; ; ), is a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has some of the planet's highest peaks, including the very highest, Mount Everest. Over 100 ...

Gwalior Gwalior() is a major city in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh; it lies in northern part of Madhya Pradesh and is one of the Counter-magnet cities. Located south of Delhi, the capital city of India, from Agra and from Bhopal, the s ...

was also under his control as the Siyadoni inscription mentions him ''the ruling sovereign in 903 and 907 A.D.''. Thus, he retained the empire transmitted to him by his father Mihir Bhoja and also added some part of

by defeating

Palas A ''palas'' () is a German term for the imposing or prestigious building of a medieval ''Pfalz'' or castle that contained the great hall. Such buildings appeared during the Romanesque period (11th to 13th century) and, according to Thompson, ...

. He also repulsed a

Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...

invasion either by the

Samanids People A person (plural, : people) is a being that has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownershi ...

or the

Saffarids The Saffarid dynasty ( fa, صفاریان, safaryan) was a Persianate dynasty of eastern Iranian origin that ruled over parts of Persia, Greater Khorasan, and eastern Makran from 861 to 1003. One of the first indigenous Persian dynasties to emerg ...

References

9th-century Indian monarchs 910 deaths Pratihara empire {{India-royal-stub