Jayachandra

 ( Gahadavala Kings ) 

Jaya-chandra (IAST: Jayacandra, r. 21 June 1170– 1194 CE) was a king from the Gahadavala dynasty of northern India. He is also known as Jayachchandra (IAST: Jayaccandra) in inscriptions, and Jaichand in vernacular legends. He ruled the Antarvedi country in the Gangetic plains, including the important cities of Kannauj and Varanasi. His territory included much of the present-day eastern Uttar Pradesh and some parts of western Bihar. The last powerful king of his dynasty, he was defeated and killed in 1194 CE, in a battle near Yamuna against a Ghurid dynasty army led by Qutubuddin Aibak

A fictional account of Jayachandra (as Jaichand) occurs in a legendary text Prithviraj Raso. The epic poem was likely written centuries after his death. According to this account, he was a rival of another Indian king, Prithviraj Chauhan. His daughter Samyukta eloped with Prithviraj against his wishes, and he allied with the foreign non-Hindu Ghurids to ensure Prithviraj's downfall. The name "Jaichand" became synonymous with the word "traitor" in folklore of northern India because of this legend.

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Jayachandra's inscriptions praise him using the conventional grandiloquent terms, but do not mention any concrete achievement of the king. The records of his neighbouring (Paramara dynasty, Chahamana, Chandela and Kalachuri) do not mention any conflict with him either.

The Hindu accounts (such as Prithviraj Raso and Vidyapati's Purusha-Pariksha) claim that Jayachandra defeated the Ghurids multiple times. The contemporary Muslim accounts, on the other hand, mention only two battles: one relatively minor engagement and the Battle of Chandwar, in which Jayachandra was killed.

The Ghurid ruler Muhammad of Ghor had defeated the Chahamana king Prithviraja III in 1192 CE. According to Hasan Nizami's 13th century text Taj-ul-Maasir, he decided to attack the Gahadavala kingdom after taking control of Ajmer, Delhi and Aligarh. He dispatched a 50,000-strong army commanded by Qutb ud-Din Aibak. Nizami states that this army defeated "the army of the enemies of the Religion" (Islam). It appears that the defeated army was not Jayachandra's main army, but only a smaller body of his frontier guards.

Jayachandra then himself led a larger army against Muhammad of Ghor who marched from Ghazni with an army of 50,000 cavalry in 1194 CE.

Jayachandra's son Harishchandra succeeded him on the Gahadavala throne. According to one theory, he was a Ghurid vassal. However, in an 1197 CE Kotwa inscription, he assumes the titles of a sovereign.

The text states that Jaichand's wife was a daughter of king Mukunda-deva, the Somavanshi king of Cuttack. Jaichand's father Vijayachandra had defeated Mukunda-deva, who concluded a peace treaty by marrying his daughter to prince Jaichand. Samyukta was the issue of this marriage. This narrative is historically inaccurate: the Somavanshi dynasty did not have any king named Mukunda-deva. Moreover, the Somavanshis had already been displaced by the Gangas before Vijayachandra's ascension.

The text also talks of a conflict between Jaichand and Prithviraj. Neither Chahamana nor Gahadavala inscriptions mention any such conflict. The text claims that Jaichand assisted the Chandela king Paramardi in a battle against Prithviraj. The Chandelas were defeated in this battle. The inscriptional evidence confirms that Prithviraj defeated Paramardi, but there is no evidence for a Gahadavala-Chandela alliance. That said, it is known that Paramardi's grandfather Madanavarman had friendly relations with the Gahadavalas. It is also possible that Gahadavalas may have supported the Chandelas, because the Chahamanas were a common rival of these two kingdoms. This hypothesis notwithstanding, there is no evidence to suggest that Jayachandra and Prithviraja were rivals.

Prithviraj Raso further claims that Jaichand launched a digvijaya campaign (conquest in all directions). At the end of this campaign, he conducted a rajasuya ceremony to proclaim his supremacy. However, none of the Gahadavala inscriptions mention such a ceremony by Jaichand. The contemporary literary work Rambha-Manjari, which presents Jaichand as a hero, does not mention this campaign either.

According to the text, Jaichand also conducted a svayamvara (husband selection) ceremony for his daughter Samyukta. He did not invite Prithviraj to this ceremony, but Samyukta had fallen in love with Prithviraj, and decided to select him as her husband. Prithviraj came to the ceremony and eloped with the princess after a fight with Jaichand's men. This anecdote is not supported by any historical evidence either.

It is possible that Jaichand and Prithviraj were political rivals, as indicated by their non-cooperation against the Ghurid invaders. But the Prithviraj Raso claim that Jaichand not only refused to help Prithviraj against the Ghurids, but also formed an alliance with the invading Ghurid king Muhammad of Ghor. Although historians dispute the account in Prithviraj Raso, the name "Jaichand" became synonymous with the word "traitor" in Hindu folklore.

The inscriptions from Jayachandra's reign include the following:

An inscription discovered at Bodh Gaya suggests that Jayachandra also showed interest in Buddhism. This inscription begins with an invocation to Gautam Buddha, the , and one Shrimitra (Śrimītra). Shrimitra is named as a perceptor ( diksha-guru) of Kashisha Jayachchandra, identified with the king Jayachandra. The inscription records the construction of a guha (cave monastery) at Jayapura.

• La Malinche, Yanakuna, Benedict Arnold, Vidkun Quisling, similar terms associated with "traitors" in popular culture.

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