Agnikulas, Pramāra.
The Agnikulas are the Pramara, the Parihara, the Chalukya or Solanki, and the Chauhan.[[39]]
That these races, the sons of Agni, were but regenerated, and converted by the Brahmans to fight their battles, the clearest interpretations of their allegorical history will disclose; and, as the most ancient of their inscriptions are in the Pali character, discovered wherever the Buddhist religion prevailed, their being declared of the race of Tasta or Takshak,[[40]] warrants our asserting the Agnikulas to be of this same race, which invaded India about two centuries before Christ. It was about this period that Parsvanatha the twenty-third Buddha,[[41]] appeared in India; his symbol, the serpent. The legend of the snake (Takshak) escaping with the celebrated work Pingala, which was recovered by Garuda, the eagle of Krishna, is purely allegorical; and descriptive of the contentions between the followers of Parswanatha, figured under his emblem, the snake, and those of Krishna, depicted under his sign, the eagle.
The worshippers of Surya probably recovered their power on the exterminating civil wars of the Lunar races, but the creation of the Agnikulas is expressly stated to be for the preservation of the altars of Bal, or Iswara, against the Daityas, or Atheists.
The celebrated Abu, or Arbuda, the Olympus of Rajasthan, was the scene of contention between the ministers of Surya and these Titans, and their relation might, with the aid of imagination, be equally amusing with the Titanic war of the ancient poets of the west [91]. The Buddhists claim it for Adinath, their first Buddha; the Brahmans for Iswara, or, as the local divinity styled Achaleswara.[[42]] The Agnikunda is still shown on the summit of Abu, where the four races were created by the Brahmans to fight the battles of Achaleswara and polytheism, against the monotheistic Buddhists, represented as the serpents or Takshaks. The probable period of this conversion has been hinted at; but of the dynasties issuing from the Agnikulas, many of the princes professed the Buddhist or Jain faith, to periods so late as the Muhammadan invasion.
The Pramara, though not, as his name implies, the ‘chief warrior,’ was the most potent of the Agnikulas. He sent forth thirty-five sakha, or branches, several of whom enjoyed extensive sovereignties. ‘The world is the Pramar’s,’ is an ancient saying, denoting their extensive sway; and the Naukot[[43]] Marusthali signified the nine divisions into which the country, from the Sutlej to the ocean, was partitioned amongst them.
Maheswar, Dhar, Mandu, Ujjain, Chandrabhaga, Chitor, Abu, Chandravati, Mhau Maidana, Parmavati, Umarkot, Bakhar, Lodorva, and Patan are the most conspicuous of the capitals they conquered or founded.
Though the Pramara family never equalled in wealth the famed Solanki princes of Anhilwara, or shone with such lustre as the Chauhan, it attained a wider range and an earlier consolidation of dominion than either, and far excelled in all, the Parihara, the last and least of the Agnikulas, which it long held tributary.
Maheswar, the ancient seat of the Haihaya kings, appears to have been the first seat of government of the Pramaras. They subsequently founded Dharanagar, and Mandu on the crest of the Vindhya hills; and to them is even attributed the city of Ujjain, the first meridian of the Hindus, and the seat of Vikrama.
There are numerous records of the family, fixing eras in their history of more modern times; and it is to be hoped that the interpretation of yet undeciphered inscriptions may carry us back beyond the seventh century.