History of India, c. 150 A.D. to 350 A.D.: Naga–Vakataka Imperial Period c15.s2.t1.38

c15.s2.t1.38

67. The Viṣṇu and Bhāgavata give two totals, one of 100 years and another of an uncertain figure : 56, 6 or 60 (?), the reading being corrupt. The manuscripts of the Viṣṇu read 'varṣa-śataṁ ṣaṭ varṣāṇi' and 'varṣa-śataṁ ṣaś pañca varṣāṇi', and the Bhāgavata reads 'varṣa-śataṁ bhaviṣyanti adhikāni ṣaṭ'.³ It seems that after writing varṣa-śataṁ something else was written which has become unintelligible. There was no reason to repeat the word varṣāṇi in the Viṣṇu after varṣa-śatam. The editors or copyists of the Viṣṇu had two figures before them, one of sixty for Śiśuka-and-Pravīra, and another for the family of Vindhyaśakti, 100 years or 96 years. Ninety-six plus sixty, they made into ‘varṣa-śatāni śaś pañcha’ or ‘ṣaṭ’, evidently, 100 and 56 or 100 and 60 were contracted into 106. It should be noted that they neither give the 60 of the Vāyu and the Brahmāṇḍa, nor the 96 of the Vāyu and the Brahmāṇḍa, and in place of these two they read 106 or 156. We, therefore, take 100 or 96 as the figure for the duration of the independent Vākāṭaka rule and 60 years for Pravarasena and Rudrasena. Rudrasena I by himself, as a king and not an emperor, seems to have had a reign of 4 years (100, ‘varṣa-śataṁ’, against the 96 years, i.e. the difference between the different data of the two sets of the Purāṇas).¹