History of India, c. 150 A.D. to 350 A.D.: Naga–Vakataka Imperial Period c15.s1.4

c15.s1.4

‘—whose treasure and means of government had been accumulating for a hundred years’—(Fleet, G. I., p. 241). This Pṛithivīsheṇa, whose political wisdom, heroism and good government are praised, subjugated the king of Kuntala, which was the name for a part of the Karṇāṭaka country and the Kadamba kingdom, with which we shall deal later. Rudrasena II, son of Pṛithivīsheṇa I, was married to the daughter of Chandra Gupta II, Vikramāditya, whose name was Prabhāvatī Guptā, born of the Empress Kubera Nāgā, a princess of the Nāga dynasty. Prabhāvatī Guptā ruled as regent after the death of her husband Rudrasena II, as guardian to her minor son Yuvarāja Divākarasena who was in his thirteenth year when the Poona Plates were issued by the Queen-Mother, and subsequently to another son called Damodarasena-Pravarasena who succeeded Divākarasena and who issued a charter in his nineteenth year, which has come down to us.² The double name Damodarasena-Pravarasena proves the practice that these kings had two names, one the pre-coronation, and the other the coronation name which in the Champā (Cambodia) inscription is called the Abhisheka-nāma.³ Similarly the Gupta Emperor Chandra Gupta II had two names, one Deva Gupta and the other Chandra Gupta.⁴ Damodarasena-Pravarasena would have assumed kingship when 25 years of age, as that is the age laid down by the Śāstras for obtaining coronation.⁵ Prabhāvatī Guptā had thus a regency of about 20 years during the minority of her two sons. Neither Prabhāvatī Guptā nor her son when he came of age, ever used the Gupta Era. We may, therefore, conclude with certainty that the position of the Vākāṭakas was such as the Gupta Era was not required to be used in the Vākāṭaka dominions during the reigns of Chandra Gupta II and his successors. Although the Vākāṭakas after Samudra Gupta were in the Empire of the Guptas, they were full sovereigns. From the Ajaṇṭā inscriptions and the Bālāghāṭ plates it is also clear that they had their own feudatories and they made war and peace on their own account. They subdued the kings of Trikūṭa, Kuntala, the Andhras, etc. and kept them as their feudatories. Their kingdom commenced in the western portion of Bundelkhand where Bundelkhand begins, in Ajaygarh and Pannā, and covered the whole of the Central Provinces and Berars, and with the Trikūṭa territory which was situated in northern Konkan, they were also masters of the northern part of the Maratha country, up to the sea. They were next-door to Kuntala, i.e. Karṇāṭaka, and the Andhra country. Their direct rule covered all the land on the table-land of the Vindhyas and the valley between the Vindhyas and the Satpura with the Maikal range. They controlled the passage through the Ajaṇṭā ghats to the South. Their empire included S. Kosala and Andhra, Western Malwā and Northern Hyderabad (§§ 73 ff.), apart from their Bhāraśiva inheritance. They had thus a very large kingdom under their direct control, which in the reign of Samudra Gupta had been reduced, but which in the next reign was fully restored and revived, and very likely it was so restored in the reign of Samudra Gupta himself, as Pṛthivīsheṇa I waged war against the newly constituted Kadamba kingdom and reduced its king to a subordinate position (§§ 82, 203).