History of India, c. 150 A.D. to 350 A.D.: Naga–Vakataka Imperial Period c14.s1.13

c14.s1.13

5. The Emperor Pravarasena got his son Gautamī-putra married to the daughter of the Bhāra Śiva King, Mahārāja Bhava Nāga. This event was so important in the history of the Vākāṭaka dynasty that it was incorporated in their dynastic history and repeated in all the official deeds of the Vākāṭakas. There it is recorded that before this political marriage, the rājavaṃśa (dynasty) of the Bhāra Śivas had performed Ten Horse-Sacrifices on the Ganges which they had acquired by valour; that with the holy water of the Ganges they had been crowned kings. The Bhāra Śivas adopted Śiva as the presiding deity of their empire. The site of the daśāśvamedha of the Bhāra Śivas performed on the bank of the Ganges, seems to me to be the sacred site come down to us as Daśāśvamedha at Benares, the earthly home of Lord Śiva. The Bhāra Śivas issuing from Baghelkhand must have reached the Ganges through what we now call the Ancient Deccan Road terminating at the town of the Goddess Vindhyavāsinī [Mirzapur, U.P.]. The district of Benares was at one end of the Kushan Empire. It was far removed from its western seat. If a new power arising from the Vindhya hills were to reach the plains and if it went, not through Baghelkhand but through any part of Bundelkhand, it would reach the Jumna and not the Ganges. The site of the home of the Vākāṭakas also gives an indication: the ancient town of Vāgāṭ (=Vākāṭa) from which the Vākāṭaka family derived its name, I have discovered in the northern part of the Orchha State in Bundelkhand; and the Vākāṭakas were evidently the neighbours of the Bhāra Śivas¹. There are other indications which I shall discuss in their proper places, in the shape of monuments, place-names, and coins which fix the seat of the Bhāra Śivas between Kauśāmbi and Benares.