History of India, c. 150 A.D. to 350 A.D.: Naga–Vakataka Imperial Period c14.s1.11

c14.s1.11

4. It was a continuation by Samudra Gupta of that imperial rule and paramount sovereignty which had been in the hands and the keeping of the Vākāṭakas for 60 years before Samudra Gupta, as is evident from the Vākāṭaka inscriptions and the Purāṇas. I say advisedly ‘in the hands and the keeping of the Vākāṭakas’, for they had inherited that paramountcy from the Bhāra Śivas whose dynasty had performed no less than Ten aśvamedhas on the Ganges—a repeated assertion of their imperial position in Āryāvarta. It is needless to state that the aśvamedhas were at the cost of the Kushan² Empire, that history written in the orthodox Hindu fashion of these imperial functions sums up the breaking-up of the Kushan Empire and the driving of the Kushans further and further north-west towards the confines of the Salt Range.