The Tripartite Struggle

After Harṣha died in 647, north India saw a lot of turmoil. Kannauj became the prize in a long fight called the Tripartite Struggle. 'Tripartite' means involving three parties.

The three were:

• the Pālas from the east (Bengal),
• the Gurjara-Pratīhāras from the west,
• the Rāṣhṭrakūṭas from the Deccan.

Through the 8th and 9th centuries they fought one another again and again, winning and losing by turns, with no lasting winner. Three powers, one prize, and a hundred years without a result.

The Pāla king Dharmapāla is often called a Buddhist; he certainly supported Buddhist learning. But the book warns us: in ancient India, religion was more fluid than today.

Apart from monks and nuns, people were comfortable with several belief systems at once and worshipped in different ways. Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism were often seen not as separate religions but as branches of one philosophical tree.

Rulers were proud to support many schools of thought. Several of Dharmapāla's successors supported Buddhist institutions while being devotees of Śhiva. So asking 'which religion was this king?' may be the wrong question for this period.

Dharmapāla founded Vikramaśhilā university in the late 8th century on the banks of the Ganga. It remained a great centre of learning for over 400 years, with six colleges, monasteries, temples, lecture halls and a huge library. Nearly 3,000 scholars studied grammar, logic, Hindu and Buddhist philosophy, and rituals.

Getting in was hard. Each college had a dvārapaṇḍita ('scholar gatekeeper') who tested students at the door before letting them in — an entrance exam! Vikramaśhilā had close ties with Tibet: one of its famous teachers went there, translated Sanskrit works into Tibetan and helped shape Tibetan Buddhism.

There were hundreds, perhaps thousands, of such centres across India, keeping its knowledge traditions alive. Sadly, as the next chapter tells, Vikramaśhilā was plundered and destroyed by Bakhtiyār Khiljī in the 12th century.