Maukharis - the forgotten medieval guardians

A great number of empirical stretches occurred also through nomadic expansions globally. Be it the Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians, etc., of the ancient world, or the medieval Khanates of the Uyghurs, Kyrgyz, and the mighty Mongols. One among these several was the Huns, spread across multiple regions in Asia and Europe. The lineage or the predominance of Huns emerged early from the Xiongnu group that stretched around modern-day Mongolia, Kazakhstan, parts of Russia, and China, for nearly four centuries (~300 BC to 100 AD). The Hunnic tribe branched out, continued, and spread throughout central and South Asia. And although the most popular name among the Huns is that of Attila, the European chapter of it, existing between 379 to 469 AD, spreading out from modern-day Hungary, the Huns had its one corridor shaking Indian grounds, so much so that it was a major trigger for the fall of the gigantic Gupta Empire (240 to 579 AD). These were known as the White Huns or the Hephthalites or archaically, Ebodalo. 

It's hard to point out one particular ethnic group for the Huns. They were nomadic pastoral tribes and made no claims over any establishment as their capital or had any expansionist sentiments, at least in the beginning of their invasions. A particular clan would work in monarchic hegemony, and once that clan weakens or is fractured, the whole tribe vanishes or is discontinued or succeeded by another. 

The Kidarites of the 5th century AD and Attila's Huns of the same era, though operating in two entirely different geographical locations, were both Huns — yet shared no connection other than a common origin in the Xiongnu confederation centuries earlier. And so, the Hunnic group that originated from today's Kabul valley (or Gandhara), raided on the various provinces such as Takka, Jalandhara, Sthanviswara, Srughna, Matipura, Mathura, Govisana, Ahichhatra and Kanyakubja and extending to Jejabhukti and Mahesvapura. These lands in modern day stretch from the undivided Punjab to Awadh and Malwa, and the two names from the Hunnic realm that played havoc in these regions were Toramana and Mihirakula. 

The two Indic-sounding names were actually Hunnic rulers originating from Gandhara and around. It's hard to decipher their exact place of origin, but they could be either from Gandhara, or the neighbouring provinces of Taksasila, Varana, Simhapura, Nagarahara, Lampa, Kapisa or Udyana. They coincide with northern Pakistan and the Hindu Kush valley of Afghanistan and it's reported that there still exists a good number of people living in these areas sharing lineage with this particular set of Huns. To simplify, these Hunnic tribes are known as White Huns or Hephthalites. 

It's easier to infer through a superficial glass of history that these Hunnic 'raids' were countered by Indic dynasties, particularly the Maukharis, triggering a precursor to the downfall of the majestic Gupta Empire. The Maukhari Dynasty, that existed between 510 to 606 AD, stretched from Ahichhatra (near today's Bareilly) to Kajangala (near Sahibganj, Jharkhand-Bihar border) in Magadha, the Ganga-Yamuna belt of today's Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, was a major buffer between the deconstructing Guptas and emerging Harsha, the two key names in medieval Indian history. Its capital was Kanyakubja (modern-day Kannauj) which continued to be the capital of the succeeding empires. 

But the conquests of the Hunnic father-son duo - Toramana and Mihirakula - actually proceeded with settlements on the soil of Malwa and Awadh, so much so that they even adapted the Indic religions. The Aulikara dynasty of modern-day Malwa got into the crosshairs of Mihirikula and his king Yashodharman, in 530 AD, actually crushed the Hunnic power, thus consolidating their claim to be lordship of northern India. In fact, this battle at Sondani (near Mandsaur, Madhya Pradesh) was so important that there is a victory pillar marked at the ruins of the ancient city, and inscriptions describe the battle fought by the joint combination of Yadhodharman and the Gupta emperor Narasimhagupta. Even after such a powerful defeat, and although Mihirakula was pushed north to Kashmir, the Hunnic soldiers mingled with the Malwa populace and centuries later, 'Hun' started existing as a caste in central India between the 8th and 10th centuries. 

Even when the Maukharis defeated the Huns, the dynasty is still considered the end of the giant Gupta Empire. A three-century-old empire, that witnessed the existence of some epic names from Indian history - Aryabhatta the mathematician, Kalidasa the poet, Sushruta Samhita the founder of Ayurveda, and many great inventions and establishments, including the Iron Pillar in Delhi - all crumbled down with a trigger from a ruling clan segregated around just the territories of Kanyakubja. Towards the end of the 6th century AD, the Guptas were a crumbling empire as after the demise of Kumaragupta in 455 AD, every other ruler couldn't contain the increasing number of external threats, unclear heir, fragmented policies, and barely dragging the empire's name. Provinces under the empire assumed independence from the Gupta hegemony, and the last few emperors such as Purugupta, Kumaragupta II, Budhagupta, Narasimhagupta Baladitya, Kumaragupta III, and Vishnugupta, simply couldn't retain what the initial emperors had built. The Maukharis of Kannauj took advantage of this situation and after defeating the Huns at Sondani, skyrocketed their dynasty's name. 

The Maukharis are the forgotten guardians of the Indo-Gangetic plains, who prevented north India from a possible Hunnic havoc. The Hephthalites under Mihirakula had raided Balkh and destroyed over 1,000 Buddhist monasteries, and had it been his victory at Sondani, religious sites such as Varanasi, Saranatha, Rohitasva, Buddha Gaya, Nalanda and even Pataliputra were under threat. If one had to imagine, maybe the Hunnic raids under Mihirakula might have resulted in a uglier menace to the Gangetic plains and history would have been written differently. After all, the stories of Hunnic havocs stretched from the Chinese frontier to the gates of Rome, stretching almost 8,000 kms of the earth. And yet, the Maukhari stoppage didn't stand a chance in the pages of history, for the many reasons that it didn't push itself to a point of remembering. 

And it wasn't just this part; the aftermath of Hunnic closure by the Maukharis strengthened ties between them and the Sasanian Empire or Eranshahr, that at its peak stretched from Balochistan to central Anatolia, and between Libya to Turkmenistan bouncing off at the Gulf nations. In fact, the game of chess (technically, its precursor, the Chaturanga) was used as a diplomatic tactic between Sarvavarman the Maukhari king and Khosrow I, head of the Sasanian Empire, to establish a relation with the Persian king in the post-Hunnic world. 

With the complete fall of the Hephthalites in 560 AD, the remnants of soldiers, nobles, and common people started to merge with the Rajput clans, mostly in the Malwa and Rajputana regions. For almost a century, heavy assimilation into Indic clans, Sanskritisation of their names, and acceptance of local religion and traditions took place, so much so that the next lineage of dynasties had mere traces of Hephthalite cultures remaining, but were majorly Rajput dynasties. The Pratiharas, Paramaras, Chahamana or Chauhans, Gujjars, and a few more are somehow or the other way connected to the medieval Hunnic realm, although there exists no direct descendant of Huns in India anymore. 

The Maukharis were succeeded by the mighty Harsha empire, but its remnants can be found as cave inscriptions at Barabar Caves (Jehanabad district, Bihar), Gopika Caves (Gaya district, Bihar), and Vadathika Caves (Gaya district, Bihar). In Uttar Pradesh's Barabanki district, Maukhari inscriptions were found at Haraha village dating back to the 7th century AD. Today, there may not be any significant monument or even a temple belonging to the realm of Maukharis, but their deeds are the reason why the Indian subcontinent wasn't fully galvanised by the cusp of Huns, like what they did in Europe and Central Asia. 

The Two Banaras of Akbar - Atak and Katak

Several hundred cities across the world have been founded by adding the prefix “New” to an existing name, in various languages. Yet some cities possess a far more unusual, almost biblical pattern of etymology. The Greek emperor Alexander the Great established several settlements and attached the name Alexandria to them, of which one survives to this day in Egypt. Rome, another immensely influential city, held such symbolic power over rulers of the past that when a new Roman capital was established at the tip of the Bosphorus, it was called Roma Constantinopolitana, which gradually simplified to Constantinople and eventually became Istanbul. In a similar manner, a rare and largely unknown phenomenon unfolded on the Indian subcontinent in the 17th century, linked to one of the holiest and oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world — Varanasi.

The holy city of Varanasi has had many names over time, the most popular — and still occasionally used — being Banaras, or as the British spelled it, Benares. Another ancient name was Kashi, which provides a useful starting point here. Cities such as Uttarkashi, Kashipur, Kashipura, Kashigarh, and Kashigaon all originate from the root word “Kashi,” reflecting not merely a place name but a supreme spiritual identity. Its influence remains so profound that it continues to appear in personal names such as Kashibai, Kashiram, and Kashinath. By the 17th century, however, the word Banaras gained prominence and was used in a similar fashion for two cities situated at opposite ends of the subcontinent. One lay near Peshawar along the Indus River, known in the colonial era as Campbellpur and today as Attock, while the other stood at the mouths of the Mahanadi on the ancient Kalinga coast — the city of Cuttack. The figure connecting these two cities through the name Banaras was the Mughal emperor Jalaluddin Muhammad Akbar.

Cuttack, or Katak as it is natively spelled, was already a well-established town long before the Mughals arrived on the subcontinent. In the 13th century, when Anangabhima III of the Eastern Ganga Empire shifted his capital from Kalinganagara to this new city, it was named Abhinaba-Baranasi-Katak, which translates to “New Varanasi Capital.” In effect, the medieval city at India’s eastern coast was consciously envisioned as a “New Varanasi.” Even when the name later evolved into Bidanasi Katak, its roots still traced back to Varanasi, Baranasi, or Banaras. By the time the Mughals consolidated power, they were well aware of this association, and Akbar is known to have referred to the town as Katak-Banaras.

Turning to the other city, Attock — or Atak — it was established by Akbar in the 16th century as a strategic frontier settlement. The word “Atak” derives from the idea of a barricade or blockade, reflecting its position at the northern boundary of the Mughal Empire. The attachment of Banaras or Varanasi to Atak appears to have stemmed from Akbar’s vision of it as a “divine frontier,” giving rise to the name Atak-Banaras. This symbolic pairing effectively marked the empire’s extreme frontiers, and since the eastern limit already carried a historical association with Banaras, extending the same suffix to the northern boundary created a conceptual symmetry.

Over time, however, the Banaras suffix disappeared from both cities. Atak was renamed Campbellpur in 1908 and later restored and standardized as Attock in 1978. Meanwhile, Katak was anglicized in the early 19th century to Cuttack, a name that has endured. Yet unlike Attock, a small town named Varanasi still exists roughly 337 kilometers south of Cuttack in Odisha’s Gajapati district.

Below is a recreated portion of a map originally sketched by Daniel Lizars in 1818. Notably, it depicts Attock and Banaras as two adjacent settlements at the northernmost edge of the Lahore province, situated near the confluence of the Kabul and Indus rivers close to Peshawar.

Byzantium of Konkan

In the year 667 BC, the ancient city of Byzantium was founded by Greek colonists at the conflux of Sea of Marmara, the Golden Horn and Bosphorus. This city, would later acquire numerous names over the course of history, instrumental in changing the course of Europe, Africa and Asia plenty of times. Augusta Antonia, New Rome, Roma Constantinopolitana, and Constantinople before finally changing it's current name in 1930 to Istanbul. But this post, isn't about Istanbul or even about Türkiye. But, it's about the name 'Byzantium' and how it got sailed to the most oddest locations from Europe - to the Konkan coast of western India. 

When the Europeans started mapping the Indian subcontinent, they gave some Hellenized names to Indian towns. Bharuch was written as Barygaza, Ponnani in Kerala was Tyndis, and a list of places whose current names are hard to decipher - Brama, Hipocura, Chersonesus etc. It was in the same fashion, that old maps find a place on the Konkan coast, called as Byzantium (or Byzanteion / Byzantine). This theory is stated by the Pleiades Project and by historians S. Tripati, A.S. Gaur and S.N. Bandodkar (1998). 

But how did a 'Byzantium' land on the Konkan coast? Neither was/is Vijaydurg in any way resembling Istanbul, nor was there any direct linkage between the two towns. There are numerous speculations but none have concrete answers. The ancient Greeks used the word 'Chersonesus' to describe the area around Goa, which has a literal meaning of 'peninsula'. But that logic cannot be applied to Vijaydurg here, as it wasn't technically a peninsula. The local towns of Bharukachha (modern day Bharuch) and Muchhiripatnam became Barygaza and Muziris. By this logic, Vijayadurg must be having some name that may have been Hellenised as Byzantine. But there was another theory proposed by W.H. Schoff in 1924, that Byzantium may correspond to the Karnataka town of Banavasi (in Uttara Kannada district) which had it's former names Vaijayanti or Vaijayantipura or Jayanthipura, which can be misread in Hellenistic way as Byzantium or Byzanteion. But at the same time, Banavasi isn't a port so either a port area close to Banavasi was labelled as Byzantium, or it's Vijayadurg itself with some unexplained reason as why it was called as Byzantium. 

But old maps says otherwise. A 1865 dated map by Karl Spruner von Merz recreates the Ptolemic map of Asia and mentions Byzantium straight south to Musopalle and north of Tyrannosboas, denoting Jaigad and Malwan (both in today's Sindhudurg district). Many of these Hellenistic names actually had literal Greek meanings and so as they saw the town's geography, they gave these names. But Byzantine is an exception and as described above, it has multiple meanings to it's placement in India. There is another theory that states these Hellenistic names were basically geographical placeholders and cartographic reference points. Having said that, a Byzantium in India with no connection the the actual Byzantium city is actually pretty interesting. 

Going a bit more with the Karl Spruner von Merz map, it's important to point out the literal translations of some places the map had deciphered and published, back in 1865.