[1][2] Kṛishṇabhaṭṭa’s (also known as Kṛṣṇakavi) Ratnamālā (c. 1230 CE) says that in 695/696 CE (Samvat 752) Jayaśekhara, the Cāvaḍā king of Pañcāsara, a village (in modern-day Patan district, Gujarat), was attacked by the Chaulukya king Bhūvaḍa of Kalyāna-kaṭaka in Kanyākubja (probably Kanauj) and slain by Bhūvaḍa in battle.

Before his death Jayaśekhara, he sent his pregnant wife Rūpasundarī to the forest in charge of her brother Surapāla, one of his chief warriors who now turned to banditry.

This tradition is of dubious validity, as there is no city called Kalyāna-kaṭaka near Kanauj, and the Cālukya capital of Kalyāṇa in the Deccan was only founded in the 11th century, about 250 years after the events are stated to have taken place.

[3][4] Merutuṇga, the author of the Prabandhachintāmaṇi, tells a story that Rupasundarī was living in Pañcāsara and had placed her infant son in a hammock on a tree, when a Śvetāmbara Jain monk named Śīlaguṇasūri who was passing by noticed that the tree's shade was not bending, which he believed was a sign of the boy's role to be a propagator of Jainism.

The story adds that a nun named Vīramatī brought up the boy whom the monks called Vanarája, literally "the forest king".

[6] According to the Dharmāraṇya-māḥātmya, Gujarat was conquered by Āma, king of Kanauj, who then gave it away as dowry to his son-in-law Dhruvapaṭa of Valabhi.

[6] In the forests where Vanarája passed his youth lived his maternal uncle Surapála, one of Jayaśekhara’s generals, who, after his sovereign’s defeat and death, had become an outlaw.

[3] The Prabandhacintāmaṇi narrates how Vanarāja lived the first half of his life as a vagabound who robbed and plundered throughout the region, but yet was able to gain the support of rich and powerful merchants for his future reign.

His Tilaka ceremony was performed by a woman named Śrīdevī of Kākara village (probably Kankrej) whom in fulfillment of an early promise Vanarāja had taken to be his sister.

The story regarding the promise is that once when Vanarāja had gone with his uncle on a thieving expedition to Kākara village and had broken into the house of a merchant he by mistake dipped his hand into a pot of curds.

Hearing what had happened the merchant’s sister invited Vanarāja as a brother to dinner and gave him clothes.

[3][8][9] According to the Nemināha-cariu by Haribhadrasūri, after the coronation of Vanarāja, he asked an elderly Jain merchant-prince of the Prāgvāṭa lineage from Gambhūya village (although originally from Śrīmālā) named Ṭhakkura Ninnaya to live in Aṇahilapāṭaka as a minister in Vanarāja's court, and Ninnaya's son Lahara became a general (daṇḍapati).

[16] Vanraj Chavdo (1881), a Gujarati novel written by Mahipatram Rupram Nilkanth, is based on the life of Vanraja Chavda.