The Age of the Imperial Guptas c4.44

c4.44

Among the twelve places mentioned in the Allahabad pillar inscription, the princes of which were vanquished by Samudragupta, Koraḷa, Avamukta and Kusthalapura cannot be identified even now. But the position of the remaining nine clearly indicates the route of Samudragupta’s march. He passed through the Rewah State and the Jubbulpur district, defeated Mahendra of Mahakośala, entered the Eastern Gondwana forest, where he defeated a chief named Vyāghrarāja and emerged on the eastern coast in the Vizagapatam district. The Vyāghrarāja mentioned in the Allahabad pillar inscription appears to be the same as that mentioned in the Nachne-ki-talai ² and Ganj ³ inscriptions of the Vākāṭaka Mahārāja Pṛthivīseṇa I. Mr. K. N. Dikshit, Superintendent of the Archæological Survey of India, Eastern Circle is certainly wrong in ascribing these two inscriptions to Pṛthivīsena II.⁴ The Poona plates of the 13th year of the queen Prabhāvatiguptā are written in a different script altogether, which does not show the use of the box-headed type of the seriff.¹ This particular variety of the 5th century alphabet appears to be the South-Western variety. The Ganj and Nachne-ki-talai inscriptions and the Chammak² and Siwani³ plates belong to the North-Eastern variety of the Central Indian alphabet of the same century. The Ganj inscription shows well-marked box-heads on the top of letters but the Nachne-ki-talai record shows an incipient stage in the formation of the boxes. In the Balaghat plates of Pṛthivīṣeṇa III⁴ we find completely developed boxes. For these reasons it is not possible to agree with M. Jouveau-Dubreuil.⁵