History of India, c. 150 A.D. to 350 A.D.: Naga–Vakataka Imperial Period c14.s4.t1.57

c14.s4.t1.57

27. The period of the Kushan imperial rule is of about a century. This is to be gathered from the Kushan inscriptions at Mathurā running up to the 98th year of their era which falls under the reign of Vāsudeva and after which we get no date for Vāsudeva.¹ The Bhāraśivas reissuing from the jungles of Hoshangabad and Jubalpur, seem to have reached the Ganges through Baghelkhand. The place where the road from Baghelkhand brings one to the Ganges is the old fort of Kantit² between the towns of Mirzapur and the Goddess Vindhyavāsinī or modern Vindhyāchal. This Kantit seems to represent the Kānti-purī of the Vishnu. I found in the fort on a stone pillar-slab the name Kānti in modern Devanāgarī. It is a large mud fort, about a mile long, on the Ganges, marked with several pieces of Gupta sculpture³ and a big stepped well. It is now in the zemindari of the Rajas of Kantit who are the direct descendants of the Gāhaḍwāla kings of Kanauj and Benares. The fort was destroyed in Muhammadan times and the Raja's seat was removed into the neighbouring hills at Bijayapur and Māṇḍā where the family, now in two branches, reside. The local tradition at Kantit is that long before the ‘Gaharwārs’ the fort belonged originally to the Bhar kings. The ‘Bhar’ kings here are evidently a corruption of the ‘Bhāraśiva’ kings, and not the Bhar tribe of whose rule in Mirzapur-Vindhyachal there is no evidence. The same tradition is repeated about the ‘Bhar Deul,’⁴ once a magnificent Śiva’s temple covered all over with the figures of Nāga [Serpent-] kings, built near Maughāt in the Vindhya hills, 25 miles to W.S.-W. of Allahabad. It is in the region of Bhārahut⁵ (=Bhāra-bhukti), ‘Bhāra Province’. We have no historical fact proving the existence of a rule of the aboriginal Bhars in historical times in the district of Mirzapur, Allahabad and the neighbourhood. The tradition stands explained if it is taken to refer to the Bhāraśiva dynasty. The name Bhar deul which is prominently associated with Nāgas in sculpture and in popular tradition recorded by Kittoe in whose time it was called the ‘Temple of Karkoṭ Nāg,’ evidently supports the view that the ‘Bhar’ here stands for Bhāra Śiva. The place names Nāgaudh¹ and Nāgadeya mark the occupation by the Nāga kings of Baghelkhand, and so does Bhārahut and also probably Bhar deul.²