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Concept
Hindu Shahis
Summary
The Hindu Shahis (also known as Odi Shahis, Uḍi Śāhis, or Brahman Shahis, 822–1026 CE) were a dynasty that held sway over the Kabulistan, Gandhara and western Punjab during the early medieval period in the Indian subcontinent. Details regarding past rulers can only be assembled from disparate chronicles, coins and stone inscriptions.
Scholarship on Hindu Shahis remain scarce.
Colonial scholars—James Prinsep, Alexander Cunningham, Henry Miers Elliot, Edward Thomas et al.—had published on the Hindu Shahis, primarily from a numismatic perspective. The first comprehensive volume on the subject appeared in 1972 by Yogendra Mishra, a professor in the Department of History of Patna University; he explored the Rajatarangini meticulously but lacked in numismatics and paleography. The next year, Deena Bandhu Pandey—Professor of Art History at Banaras Hindu University—published his doctoral dissertation but his handling of Muslim sources, coins etc. were laden with errors, primarily stemming from an exclusive dependence upon English translations of Arabic/Persian chronicles. Both of these works are considered outdated and inaccurate, at large.
In 1979, Abdur Rehman received his PhD from Australian National University on "history, archaeology, coinage, and paleography" of the Turk Shahis and Hindu Shahis under the supervision of Arthur Llewellyn Basham. He has since published on the subject extensively and is considered to be an authority on the subject. In 2010, Michael W. Meister—Chair Professor of Art-History at UPenn—published a monograph on the temple-architecture of Sahis; he had worked with Rahman on multiple field investigations. In 2017, Ijaz Khan received his PhD from the School of Ancient History and Archaeology of the University of Leicester on "Settlement Archaeology of the Hindu Shahi[s] in North-Western Pakistan."
No literature survives from Hindu Shahi courts. Unlike the case of Turk Shahis, only fragmented information can be obtained from chronicles of neighboring powers — Kashmir and Ghaznavi.
Official source
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