History of India, c. 150 A.D. to 350 A.D.: Naga–Vakataka Imperial Period c14.s4.t1.99

c14.s4.t1.99

§ 31. The family history of Gaṇapati Nāga has been yielded by a manuscript in Mithilā of a poetic work written in the reign of Gaṇapati Nāga and dedicated to him. The author says that both ‘Vāk’ (Sarasvatī) and ‘Padmālayā’ (=Padmāvatī) adore the Nāga king (Nāgarāja)² whose name he gives in verse as ‘Gajavaktra Śrī (the “Elephant-faced Majesty”) Nāga’.³ In one of the verses he says that by looking at ‘Gaṇapati,’ the other Nāgas feel afraid.⁴ The king is called the overlord of Dhārā (Western Malwa).⁵ His family is described as Ṭaka vaṃśa and his gotra is called Karpaṭi. Neither his father, Jālapa, nor his grandfather, Vidyādhara, was king; he evidently succeeded from a collateral line. The name of the book is ‘Bhāva-śataka’ which consists of a little over a hundred verses, 95 verses of which are mostly on sentiments. Every verse is complete in itself with one poetic idea, as in Amaru. Many verses, however, are in praise of Śiva who was the iṣṭa devatā of the author’s patron. The author’s patron is described as of a severe and austere character, who did not take interest in beautiful women and who is noted to be of a warlike temperament and a veteran warrior. The book is printed in the Kāvyamālā series, Part IV, 1899, pages 37 to 52.¹ But in the second śloka of the Kāvyamālā text the name of the king is wrongly given as Gatavaktra-Śrīr Nāgarājaḥ,² while in the Mithilā manuscript it is Gajavaktra-Śrīr Nāgarājaḥ, i.e. Śrī Gaṇapati Nāgarāja, which led me to identify the king with Gaṇapati Nāga. The Tāk Nāgas living near Jammu and elsewhere in the Punjab are well known.³ Their royal race is mentioned by the chronicles of Rajputana, Chandbardai and Muhammadan historians. Their gotra Karpaṭi is to be traced in the Mahā-Bhārata where we have the Five Karpaṭas placed in the company of the Mālavas in the Punjab-Rajputana region, evidently as republican communities.⁴ The Nāga family seems to have been akin to their next-door neighbours the Mālavas who were worshippers of Karkoṭa Nāga and had migrated from the Punjab to Rajputana (see Pt. III of this book, §§ 145-6).