Most of what people 'know' about Prithviraj Chauhan comes from legend
Prithviraj Chauhan ranks among India's most celebrated medieval kings, yet solid facts about him are scarce. Only a few inscriptions survive from his reign, and none were issued by the king himself. His popular image owes most to the Prithviraj Raso, an epic attributed to his court poet but crowded with exaggerations historians cannot use.
Prithviraja III, also called Rai Pithora, belonged to the Chahamana or Chauhan dynasty and ruled from Ajmer, in present-day Rajasthan. Even his birth year is a reconstruction: the one surviving literary work from his own reign, the Prithviraja Vijaya, gives only a day and some planetary positions, from which the historian Dasharatha Sharma calculated 1166. Born in Gujarat, he came to the throne around age 11 in 1177, with his mother as regent, and took full control around 1180.
The sources disagree even on small details. The Prithviraja Vijaya says he mastered six languages; the Raso claims 14, which seems inflated, though both agree he excelled at archery. Legends say he killed his loyal chief minister, Kadambavasa, one version blaming a palace intrigue and another a conspiracy. Historians doubt both, since the more reliable Prithviraja Vijaya mentions no such event. Later chronicles, written centuries afterwards, add anachronistic anecdotes of their own.
His early reign was spent consolidating and expanding. He put down a revolt by his cousin Nagarjuna, defeated an obscure dynasty called the Bhadanakas, and invaded the lands of the Chandela king Paramardi, which inscriptions of 1182 to 1183 say he laid waste. Folk epics such as the Alha-Khanda later turned that war into a rich tale of generals, feuds and shifting loyalties.
His fame rests above all on two battles near Taraori. In 1191 he led a coalition of Rajput kings that defeated the Ghurid army of Muhammad of Ghor. In 1192 Muhammad returned with Turkish mounted archers and won on the same field. Prithviraj was captured and put to death, and his young son Govindaraja was installed as a subordinate ruler in Ajmer. That defeat is regarded as a landmark in the Islamic conquest of India.
Source: Prithviraj Chauhan
