The Age of the Imperial Guptas c6.30

c6.30

The system of administration has been made clear to us to some extent by the discovery of the Damodarpur plates. Under the Viceroy Cirātadatta of Puṇḍravardhana there was a *Kumārāmātya* in each district or *Viṣaya*. Vetravarman was the officer-in-charge of the district of Koṭivarṣa in G.E. 124 and 129. But in 163, under the Viceroy Brahmadatta, no minor official is mentioned as officer-in-charge of the same district. In the same reign under the Viceroy Jayadatta an officer with the rank of *Āyuktaka* named Śagaṇḍaka was the officer-in-charge of this district.⁴ The *Āyuktakas* are familiar to us as *Tad-āyuktakas* and *Viniyutakas* in medieval copper plates. One seal of a class of similar officials styled Prāyuktakas was discovered at Vaiśālī. Ordinarily the officer-in-charge of a district was styled *Viṣaya-pati*. In the year G.E. 224, during the reign of the Emperor Bhānugupta, when Rājaputradeva was the viceroy of Northern Bengal, a Viṣaya-pati named Svayambhu-deva was the officer-in-charge of the district of Koṭi-varṣa.¹ In G.E. 146 a Viṣayapati named Śarva-nāga was the officer-in-charge of the *Antarvedī* or the country between the Ganges and the Jumna.² In G.E. 165 a viceroy, with the title of *Mahārāja*, named Suraśmi-candra was governing that part of Central India which lies between the Jumna and the Narmadā. The actual term used is Kālindī for the Jumna and this may mean the Kali-Sindh.³ Under Suraśmi-candra there was another official with the same title named Māṭṛ-viṣṇu, who was probably the governor of Eastern Malava or the district of Airakiṇa or Eran in the Sagar district. Finally there was Parṇadatta, Skandagupta’s viceroy of Kathiawad, in whose time the dam of the great Sudarśana Lake was again rebuilt, but the Junagadh inscription does not provide us with the rank and titles of this officer. In the Gupta inscriptions we find that each province was divided into a number of revenue divisions called *Viṣayas*. The later sub-division of a province into *Maṇḍalas* and each *maṇḍala* into different *viṣayas* is yet not known. Therefore the term *viṣaya* has been translated as a district and not as a *parganah*.