PRITHI RAJA, also written Prithivi Raja and Pritwi Raja, a Rajput prince of the Chauhan tribe, under whom the Tomara and Chauhan tribes were united. Shortly before the time of Shahab-ud-Din, the four greatest kingdoms in India were—Dehli, then held by the Tomara Rajputs ; Ajmir, by the Chauhan ; Kanouj, by the Rahtor ; and Gujerat, by Baghela, who had supplanted the Chalukya dynasty. But the Tomara chief dying without male issue, his grand son Prithivi, raja of Ajmir, united the Tomara and Chauhan under one head. As the raja of Kanouj was also a grandson of the Tomara chief by another daughter, he was mortally offended at the preference shown to his cousin ; and the wars and jealousies to which this rivalship gave rise, con tributed greatly to Shahab-ud-Din's success in his designs on India. Prithi Raja was born in the year 1154, and was sixteen years of age when he succeeded his maternal grandfather on the throne of the Anango. The first princess married by Prithivi was the daughter of the Dahima of Biana, a city the castle of which was built on the topmost peak of Druinadaher. He enlarged the circle of his alliances, till there gathered round his throne 108 chiefs of high rank, and in the height of his power he celebrated the Aswa Medha as a claim of empire. By one account, it was on the occasion of this ceremony that Prithivi, in 1175, carried off the princess Sanjogata in open day from the capital of Jye-chand a feat, the heroism of which forms the subject of the Kanouj Kandh of the Prithivi Raja Chauhan Rasa of the poet Chand. The princess of Kanouj was not only remarkable for her personal charms, but formed the most perfect model of Rajput female character in her day. Her father, claiming empire. was being served by princes of his race, but as Prithivi Raja did not appear, the Kanouj king erected a mocking, ill shapen image of him. The princess Sanjogata, however, threw her bridal garland over the image, and Prithivi Raja, hearing of it, successfully carried her off, but with the loss of his best chiefs.
Shahab - ud -Din's first attack on Prithivi was A.D. 1191, A.H. 587. The armies met at Tirouri, between Tanesar and Karnal, where most of the contests for India have been decided. While he was engaged in the centre of his army, the Hindus outflanked him ; both wings of his army gave way. The rout was complete, and his army was pursued for forty miles, and Shahab settled at Ghazni, where, as he said, he never slumbered in ease or waked but in sorrow and anxiety. After two years (A.D. 1193, A.H. 589) he returned to India with an army of Turk, Tajak, and Afghan. Prithivi again met him on the banks of the Caggar with a vast army, swelled by numerous allies, who were attracted by his former success. They allowed themselves to be surprised one morning at daybreak, but recovered their position and advanced against the Muhammadans in four lines. Shahab-ud-Din retired, keeping his men in hand, till an opportunity occurring, lie charged the Hindu army at the head of 12,000 chosen horse in steel armour, and Prithi's prodigious army, once shaken, like a great building, tottered to its fall, and was lost in its own ruins. The Viceroy of Dehli and many other chiefs were slain on the field, and Prithivi Raja, being taken in the pursuit, was put to death in cold blood. Then followed scenes of devastation, plunder, and massacre that have too often been enacted in Dehli. The bard Chand remained to sing the requiem of his nation's fall. He was the last heroic Hindu poet of India, and was the author of the Prithivi Raja Chauhan 1 Rasa, containing an account of Prithivi Raja. It has many books, of which the Kanouj Kandh con tains the history of Sanjogata Jye-chand.
The chief of the Chauhan Raj puts in the Ulwar district of Raht claims to be the living repre sentative of Piithi.—Elph. pp. 313, 314 ; Brigg's Ferishta, i. pp. 173-177 ; Tr. of Hind. ii. p. 164 ; As. Res. ix. pp. 77, 109, 118, 168, 170.