History of India, c. 150 A.D. to 350 A.D.: Naga–Vakataka Imperial Period c14.s5.17

c14.s5.17

42. The Nāga performers of the ten aśvamedhas, to put it in modern phraseology, the Nāga emperors, fostered the republics which covered the whole of [ Eastern and Western ] Mālwā, and probably also Gujarat (Abhiras), the whole of Rajputana (Yaudheyas and Mālavas), and probably also a portion of the Eastern Punjab (Madras)—all connected territory, to the west of the valley of the Ganges. These were certainly free in the next, the Vākāṭaka period, when Samudra Gupta emerges on the stage. The Mālwā republics seem to have been formed by peoples and clans akin to the Nāgas. Those around Vidiśā were worshippers of Nāgas from early times, as the republican coins of Eran prove. Eran, the Airikiṇa town, is itself after the name Airaka, a Nāga, and the Eran coins bear a Nāga (serpent) figure. The Mālavas, near Jaipur, had founded their capital, Karkoṭa Nāgara, naming it after the Nāga Karkota, which now lies within the territory of the Raja of Uniyāra—a feudatory of the Mahārāja of Jaipur, about 25 miles E.-S. from Tonk. The word Nāgara itself in the capital Karkoṭa Nāgara is connected with the word Nāga. It is important to recognise this fact that the Nāga monarchs and the republican Mālavas were, by their civilization and also probably ethnically, connected. Rājaśekhara says that the Ṭakkas and the people of Maru used apabhraṃśa idioms. As we have already seen, the family of Gaṇapati Nāga of Padmāvatī was a Ṭaka-vaṃśa, which means that the family came from the Ṭakka-deśa. Thus we see that the Mālavas and the Nāgas spoke the same dialect. It seems that with the original migration of the republican Mālavas from the Punjab, the Ṭakka Nāgas had also migrated, and that the Nāgas themselves originally belonged to a republican community [the Five Karpaṭas] [§ 31], and that they were a Punjab people settled in Malwā.