History of India, c. 150 A.D. to 350 A.D.: Naga–Vakataka Imperial Period c15.s2.t1.32

c15.s2.t1.32

64. In the Vākāṭaka chronology the one fixed point according to the inscriptions is the contemporaneity of Chandra Gupta II with Prithivisheṇa I and Rudrasena II. Another point, which we infer from the Allahabad inscription of Samudra Gupta, is that Pravarasena, the Emperor, had been dead and gone before Samudra Gupta launched on his imperial career, as we do not find his name there. Samudra Gupta made the kings of ‘the Forest Country’ adjoining the Gaṅgā-Yamunā Doāb, his own governors and servants,¹ which undoubtedly means that Bundelkhand and Baghelkhand passed under him. Who was, then, the Vākāṭaka king at the time whose feudatories in the Vindhya country were snatched away by Samudra Gupta? As his conquests are to be taken to have come after Pravarasena, and as the fourth Vākāṭaka king (Prithivisheṇa I) ruled over the whole of the Vākāṭaka territory and his son was married to Chandra Gupta Vikramāditya’s daughter, the Vākāṭaka contemporary of Samudra Gupta must have been the king succeeding Pravarasena and preceding Prithivisheṇa, i.e., Rudrasena I, whom we may identify confidently with Rudradeva, the leading king of Āryāvarta in the list of Samudra Gupta (§ 139).