History of India, c. 150 A.D. to 350 A.D.: Naga–Vakataka Imperial Period c14.s4.t1.106

c14.s4.t1.106

31 A. The Nandi-Nāgas, when they leave Padmāvatī and Vidiśā in the Kushan period about 80 A.D., migrate to the Central Provinces where they live and rule in the security of mountain fastnesses for over half a century. There is a definite piece of evidence of their occupation of the district Nāgpur (C.P.). The Deoli plates of the Rāṣṭrakūṭa king Kṛṣṇarāja II (E.I., Vol. V, p. 188) which was found within a few miles of Nagpur, the modern capital of the Central Provinces, and is dated in the Śaka year 852 (940-41 A.D.) describes the gifted estate to be in the district of ‘Nāgapura-Nandivardhana’. Now, both these names are connected with the Nandi-Nāgas. We find Nandivardhana much earlier than this inscription, going back right to the time of the Vākāṭakas who were the immediate successors of the Bhāraśiva Nāgas. In the Poona plates of Prabhāvatī Guptā, edited in E.I., vol. XV, p. 39, the town of Nandivardhana figures. This Nandivardhana has been identified by Rai Bahadur Hira Lal, as pointed out by Mr. Pathak and Mr. Dikshit in E.I., XV, p. 41, with Nagardhan, which is 20 miles from Nagpur.¹ The name Nandivardhana could not have come into existence under the Vākāṭakas or the Bhāraśivas when the title Nandi had dropped, and would go back to a period before the Bhāraśiva rise. When the Nāga kings left Padmāvatī and Vidiśā they at the time bore the dynastic style Nandi. It seems that the Nandi-Nāgas for about half a century made the country on the other side of the Vindhyas in the Central Provinces their place of refuge and haven of freedom where the Kushans could not reach. This migration of an Āryāvarta dynasty into the heart of the Central Provinces has a tremendous effect upon the subsequent history which united Āryāvarta with a part of Dakṣiṇāpatha in the reign of the Bhāraśivas and their successors the Vākāṭakas. From 100 A.D. up to 550 A.D. the Central Provinces became absolutely interwoven and one with the Vindhyan Āryāvarta, i.e. Bundelkhand—a unity which has obtained and come down to our own days. A part of Bundelkhand and the Nagpur part of the ancient Dakṣiṇāpatha have remained a Hindusthānī province, wholly become Northern in race, language and culture; and Āryāvarta has been *de facto* extended up to the confines of the Nirmal range. This is a legacy of the history of those sixty years of the Nāga exile. From Nagpur up to Purikā (Hoshangabad) on one side and through Seoni and Jabalpur on the other, they maintained touch respectively with Eastern Malwā (from which they had been dispossessed) and with Baghelkhand (Rewah) through which ultimately they reached the Ganges. This new home became the second and subsequent home of the Vākāṭakas in the Gupta time and led to the enrichment of Ajaṇṭā, which had been throughout its main history under the influence and direct possession of the Bhāraśivas and the Vākāṭakas. The art of Ajaṇṭā in the main is the Nāgara (Bhāraśiva) and Vākāṭaka art; Ajaṇṭā passed hands from the Sātavāhanas to the Bhāraśiva-Vākāṭakas about 250-275 A.D.