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History of India, c. 150 A.D. to 350 A.D.: Naga–Vakataka Imperial Period c15.s3: IX. Vākāṭaka Empire

History of India, c. 150 A.D. to 350 A.D.: Nāga–Vākāṭaka Imperial Period c15.s3

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IX. Vākāṭaka Empire

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70. The Vākāṭaka chronology as proposed above, answers to the known dates of Chandra Gupta II. Chandra Gupta II initiated a policy of political marriages with the once enemy states, as a result of which he married his daughters to the Vākāṭaka ruler Rudrasena II and took a daughter of the Kadamba monarch to his own family.² He himself married a Nāga princess Kubera-Nāgā who was the mother of Prabhāvatiguptā. Both Dhruva-Devī and Kubera-Nāgā are described as *Mahādevī* respectively in Gupta and Vākāṭaka documents; if Dhruvā Devī whose ancestry is not known, is not identical with Kubera Nāgā, he must have married her soon after coming to the throne, and she on the death of Dhruvā Devī would have succeeded to the position of the *Mahādevī*. An offspring of the Nāga princess going to the Vākāṭaka House, the successors of the Nāgas, put an end to the old Gupta-Vākāṭaka hostility. The Vākāṭakas again begin to rise and are given a measure of independence which no other state enjoyed under the Guptas. Soon after Prabhāvati and on the fall of the Gupta Empire, under Narendrasena, they once more become a sovereign power in the Berar-Maratha country including Koṅkaṇa and up to Kuntala, in Western Mālwā and Gujarat, and in Kosalā and Mekalā including Andhra. And under Harisheṇa the same limits are maintained. Narendrasena and Harisheṇa virtually succeed to the Gupta Overlordship in the West and in the South up to the Kuntala country of the Kadamba kingdom. The significance of this large overlordship will become clear when we deal in detail with the Vākāṭaka government, fully described in the Purāṇas, and the Gupta conquest of the South and the reorganization thereof under Samudra Gupta which is also fully treated in the Purāṇas.

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² The Kadamba Kula, pp. 21-22.

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71. There are three main divisions of the Vākāṭaka Period: (i) the Imperial, (ii) the Guptan, and (iii) post-Guptan (from Narendrasena to Hariṣeṇa and probably later).

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Vākāṭaka Imperial Period.

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72. The Vākāṭaka Empire begins from the reign of Pravarasena I and ends with the reign of Rudrasena I who had no time, on account of Samudra Gupta's first war (§ 132), to assume the imperial position of his Vākāṭaka grandfather. Emperor Pravarasena, whose coin bears the date 76, evidently counted the foundation of his state from the time of his father as he himself ruled for only 60 years. Samudra Gupta similarly in reckoning the ‘Gupta-rājya’ years¹ counted from the coronation of his father, and followed the example of Pravarasena I.

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¹ Cf. G.I., p. 95, ....abda-śate Gupta-nṛipa-rājya-bhuktau.

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73. The system of the Vākāṭaka imperial organization was to have sons and other relations as rulers over different provinces, a system borrowed from the Nāga Empire. The Purāṇas here are specially full. They say that four sons of Pravarasena became rulers and that there were three dynasties of relations by marriages and one dynasty of their descendants, over four centres—Māhiṣī, Mekalā, Kosalā and Vidūra.² Māhiṣī here is the Māhishmatī on the Narbada between the British district of Nimar and the Nimar zilla of the Indore State.³ It was the capital of the province of Western

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² Vindhyakānāṁ kulānāṁ te nṛipā vaivāhikās trayaḥ (Br.). Vaivāhikāḥ here has been misread in the text of the other Purāṇas as vaivālhikāḥ and vai vāhikāḥ. The mistake is curious, but easily understandable. Vaivāhikāḥ was read as two words, vai and vāhikā, and vāhikāḥ was sanskritized into Vālhikāḥ and Bālhikāḥ!

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³ See J.R.A.S., 1910, p. 444 for its location.

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Vākāṭaka Imperial Organization.

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Malwā. This division of the territories adjoining Berar is found to reappear in the Third Vākāṭaka Period as Kosalā, Mekalā, and Mālava.¹ For all these provinces the Purāṇas give the rulers and their totals, implying their end with the end of the Imperial Vākāṭaka period, i.e., by the conquest of Samudra Gupta.

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¹ Bālāghāṭ plates, E.I., Vol. IX, p. 271. Prof. Kielhorn who thought that the spellings ‘Kosalā’, and ‘Mekalā’ were wrong, substituted ‘Kosala’, ‘Mekala’. But the Purāṇa text shows that the inscriptional forms are correct and represent the Vākāṭaka nomenclature.

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73 A. Out of the four provincial dynasties, the dynasty of Mekalā is expressly called in the Vāyu ‘a dynasty of the descendants’ of the Vindhyakas:

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Vākāṭaka Provinces: Mekalā, etc.

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Mekalāyāṁ nṛipāḥ sapta bhavishyantīha santatiḥ.²

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² P.T., p.5 l, n. 17. This is the reading in the majority of the MSS. [ibid.], and in all the copies consulted by Wilson and Hall [V.P., 4, pp. 214-215]. The variant sattamāḥ is a corruption and is meaningless.

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These subordinate kings of Mekalā, who were seven in number, are described by the Bhāgavata and several copies of the Vishnu as the Seven Āndhras, i.e., the seven kings of the Andhra Country.³ The Province of Mekalā evidently extended from the south of the present Maikal Range,⁴ in a straight line, covering the modern State of Bastar wherein begins the Andhra country. To the east of it lay the Province of Kosalā, i.e., the area of the feudatory states of Orissa, and Kalinga. It should be noted here that the region from Raipur to Bastar is marked with the remains of Nāga settlements where inscriptions of later Nāga families from the tenth century onwards have been found in abundance. The tract formed a part of the Nāga Empire with the rest of the Central Provinces. The dynastic identity of this branch of the Vindhyakas or of Vindhyaśakti, I shall discuss under the Southern History when I deal with the Pallavas (§ 173 ff.). It is sufficient to notice here that the Vindhyakas were rulers of Andhra-deśa, that their province of Mekalā included Andhra, and that a branch line of the family was established there as a feudatory family who ruled for seven successions. The ruling families of the other three dynasties came under the description ‘the dynasties of relations by marriage (vaivāhikāḥ)’¹. The Naishadha province was under a dynasty who claimed to have descended from Nala. Their capital was at Vidūra, which seems to be represented by Bidar, an ancient capital in the Nizam's Dominions; Vaidūrya is the Satpura. The Mahishin rulers consisted of two sets, one of Rājās as the lord of the Mahishins, and the Pushyamitras with two more communities who are not called kings. These are included amongst the Mahishins, that is, the people of Western Malwā which is called Mālava in the later Vākāṭaka inscriptions. These republican Mahishīs were evidently under this rājā, feudatory of the Vākāṭakas.

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³ P.T., p. 51, n. 16.

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⁴ J.B.O.R.S., XVIII, 98.

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¹ The Vishṇu misread the text of the Vāyu and made the groups from the Mahishī rulers to the Mekalā kings, including the ‘Vaivāhikāḥ’ (misreading it as ‘Vālhikāḥ’) sons of Vindhyaśakti [cf. the commentator, ‘tat-putrāḥ, Vindhyaśaktyādīnām putrāḥ’]. The text of the Vishṇu is tat-putrāḥ trayodaśaiva Vālhikāḥ trayaḥ tataḥ Pushyamitra-Padhumitra-Padmamitrās trayo daśa | Mekalāś cha | (Wilson, V.P., 4, 213). It applied the santati originally referring to the Mekalas and the figure daśa of the Traya-Pushyamitra group [§ 74] to the kings following Vindhyaśakti and coming before the Mekalās in the text of the Vāyu, i.e., the ‘three’ Vālhikas (i.e., the Vaivāhikas) and the ten Pushyamitras-Padhumitras-Padmamitras. As the number 13 was thus completed, about the Mekalas [the real descendants] it said ‘and also the Mekalas’. The Bhāgavata following the Vishṇu was content with 13 sons. It is evident that the Vishṇu found santati after and with the Mekalas.

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74. To take up the centres separately. One ruler of Mahishī is named, ‘Supratīka-nabhāra’ son of Śakyamāna.² He was king of the Mahishins and lord of the land.³ We have

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² 3 Supratīko nabhāras tu samā bhokshyati triṁśatim | Śakya-māna-bhavo rājā Mahīshīnāṁ mahīpatiḥ|| [PT., 50-51 ns. 6-10].

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The number sapta, seven, the Vishṇu reads with Kosalā—‘sapta, Kosalāyām’ (a reading attested by the commentator and supported by Wilson's MSS. See J. Vidyasagara's ed., p. 584; Wilson, IV, 213, 214). In the preface the [e] Vāyu Purāṇa designates it ‘pañcha-Kosalāḥ’-‘the Five-Kosalas’ [Vaidīśāḥ pañcha-Kosalāḥ, while it mentions ‘Mekalāḥ Kosalāḥ’ separately [Pargiter, PT., p. 3]. With these two the seven provinces of the ‘Sapta-Kosalā’ would be complete. In the M.-Bh. also, there are two units in this region with the name Kosala; Sabhā, XXXI, 13 [‘the King of Kosala, the King of Veṇa-taṭa, the Kāntārakas, the King of the Eastern Kosalas’].

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coins of this ruler. The coins read:—Mahārāja Śrī Prat (i) kara. Prof. Rapson who published his coins¹ pointed out that they belong to the series of the Nāga coinage.² The Purāṇic name seems to be Su-Pratīkana Bhāra (= Bhāraśiva), as spelt in the present manuscripts. The letter na here is a misreading for ra, like the misreading of paurā for maunā which is pointed out by the commentator of the Viṣṇu Purāṇa.³ The correct reading was Su-Pratīkara-bhāra. To him 30 years are given. In the same area, i.e. under the centre Mahishī, there were three communities whose names ended in Mitra. The Viṣṇu gives them as Pushpa-mitra-Padhumitra-Padmamitrās trayaḥ. The Vāyu and the Brahmāṇḍa name only two, Pushpamitrāḥ and Paṭumitrāḥ. But the Brahmāṇḍa adds trimitrāḥ. The Bhāgavata calls ‘Pushyamitra’ [i.e., the President] a ‘rājanya’, which is the technical term for a type of republican president.⁴ In view of the datum of the Viṣṇu Purāṇa, naming the three communities and that of the Brahmāṇḍa mentioning tri-mitras,⁵ we have to take that their state was divided into three sections, and that they had ten successions, and the expression trayo daśa of the Vāyu is to be taken as meaning that the three states had ten rulers or ten successions of presidents. The other reading in the manuscripts [in place of trayo daśa] tathaiva cha⁶ would indicate that they were also given 30 years as given to the main rulers of Mahishī. They are assigned no separate location, and consequently I take that they were in Western Malwā. They, in the next period, i.e., the Guptan, are described as ‘Āvantyas’ who were under or in the confederacy of the Ābhīras (§§ 145 ff.). It is well-known that the Pushyamitras rose to such a height of power in the reign of Kumāra Gupta that they attacked the Emperor with great severity. As the successions here are of republican presidents, their number ten means that each president's office lasted for three years. This province of Malwā seems to have been an acquisition of the Vākāṭakas about 300-310 A.D.

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¹ J.R.A.S., 1900, p. 116, Pl. figs. XVI and XVII.

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² He read it as Mahārāja Śrī Prabhākara. I read as ‘t’ the letter which he read as ‘bh’. In coin legends ‘i’-strokes are generally omitted. The difference between ‘bh’ and ‘t’ of that period is slight and confusing.

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³ Vidyāsagara’s ed., p. 584.

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⁴ See, Jayaswal, Hindu Polity, vol. I, pt. 1, page 40.

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⁵ षट्त्रिमित्राः Shaṭ trimitrāḥ of the Brahmāṇḍa is to be taken as a misreading for पटु-त्रिमित्राः, Paṭu-trimitrāḥ (Paṭu, ‘the Tri-Mitras’, the Three Mitras).

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⁶ Wilson, V.P., 4. 214; Pargiter, P.T., 51, n. 14.

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75. In Mekalā, there flourished seven rulers in seventy years,¹ i.e., from about 275 A.D. to 345 A.D. It seems that this portion was acquired in the time of Vindhyaśakti. The rulers of Mekalā who were a branch of the Vindhyaka dynasty, were kings of Andhradeśa.² The history of Andhra, which is discussed below under Southern India, fully corroborates the period we get from the Purāṇas for these rulers.

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¹ Taking the reading saptatiḥ of the Brahmāṇḍa.

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² P.T., 51, n. 16.

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76. The Kosalā rulers under the Vākāṭakas numbered nine successions [according to the Bhāgavata, seven]. They were called Meghas. They might have been the descendants of the Chedis of Orissa and Kaliṅga, i.e. the Chedis of the family of Khāravela who were called Mahāmeghas in their imperial days. Their nine or seven successions would carry them back to the time of Vindhyaśakti, the time of the conquest of Andhra, or earlier, to the Bhāraśiva times. According to the Viṣṇu there were seven territorial units of Kosalā [Sapta-Kosalā]. These rulers are described in the Purāṇas as ‘very powerful’ and ‘very wise’. The Meghas reappear under the Guptas as governors of Kauśāmbi where two of their inscriptions have been found.³

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³ E.I., 1925, p. 158.

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76A. The Province of Berar (Naishadha) with its capital at Vidūra (Bidar, Northern Hyderabad) was under the Nala dynasty, who were ‘brave’ and ‘very strong’. Their number is not noted by any authority except probably the Viṣṇu, of which the majority of manuscripts would give them also nine successions.⁴ Their beginning or end is described in this way—bhavishyanti ā-Manukshayāt: ‘they will be until their destruction by the (dynasty of) Manu’, the alternative meaning being ‘they will be since the destruction of the Manus’. In the latter case, their rise is dated with the end of the Manus, i.e., the Hāritiputra Mānavyas, i.e., the dynasty called in modern text-books the Chuṭu Dynasty (see Part IV, § 157 ff.), in other words, since about 275 A.D. In the former case, the meaning would be that the Berar family was destroyed by the Mānavya Kadambas, which would be about 345 A.D. Both interpretations equally suit the known chronology of the Chuṭus (see Part IV, below) and that of the Vākāṭakas and the Guptas. Taking the reading of the *e Vāyu*¹ we have to prefer the first interpretation—that the Nalas arose on the destruction of the Chuṭu Mānavyas. This will coincide with the conquest of Andhra in Vindhyaśakti’s time. Vindhyaśakti as a general of the Bhāraśivas seems to have put an end to the kingdoms which had arisen on the fall of the Sātavāhanas. The end of the Naishadha family came with the conquest of Samudra Gupta. Whether they had lasted for nine successions or less is not certain.

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⁴ The reading tāvanta eva (‘that much’) alternates with tata eva (‘after’).

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¹ Pargiter, P.T., 51, n. 24, *bhavishyanti Manu-(k)shayāt*.

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77. Probably under Purikā was comprised the government of Nagpur, Amaraoti and Khandesh. Pravira was the ruler of both Purikā and [Kāñ]Chanakā, i.e., both Western C.P. and Bundelkhand were under the direct Home Government. The province of Malwā was under the Nāga family stationed at Māhishmatī; Eastern and Southern Baghelkhand, Sirguja, Balaghat and Chanda were under the Mekalā rulers, and the territory to the West of Orissa and Kaliṅga was under the rulers of Kosalā. If the above map of provincial governorships is compared with Harishena’s list (Kuntala-Avanti-Kaliṅga-Kosala-Trikūṭa-Lāṭa-Andhra²....) it would become evident that Kuntala was a later addition, the overlordship of which had been asserted and re-asserted from the time of Pṛithivīsheṇa I onwards. Lāṭa might have been included under Māhishmatī in the early Vākāṭaka period; at about 500 A.D. it was certainly under them.

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² § IA (l).

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78. In the Eastern Punjab there was the feudatory ‘D y - nasty of S i n g h a p u r a’ (Simhapura) who were the ‘k i n g s’ of J ā l a n - d h a r a’. This Simhapura was an ancient fortified city which is known to the Mahā-Bhārata.¹ An inscription² of their family recorded at Lakkhāmaṇḍal, on the Upper Jumna, in the district of Dehra Dun, proves that their jurisdiction in the Gupta times extended up to the Siwaliks. The family, as feudatory rulers of the ‘S i n g h a p u r a rājya’, seems to have been founded about 250 A.D., as 12 generations of theirs are given in the inscription.³ Their date shows that they must have come into existence in the latter part of the Bhāraśiva time or in the beginning of that of the Vākāṭakas. They were Y ā d a v a s, and the inscription says that they had been in that part of the country since the beginning of the Yuga (Kali Yuga). This receives corroboration from the history of the migration of the Y ā d a v a s from M a t h u r ā as recorded in the Sabhā Parvan, Chapter XIV, verse 25 ff. The Ś ā l v a s and K u n i n d a s had migrated along with and at the same time as the Yādavas from Mathurā [Śūrasena] and its neighbourhood, and settled in the Punjab. The Ṭ a k k a s, who later migrated into Malwa from the Śālva country, the S i m h a p u r a Y ā d a v a s and the M a t h u r ā - N ā g a s thus seem to have all belonged to the great Y ā d a v a stock, which explains their special patriotism for Mathurā. The Simhapura family was thus a family allied to the Bhāraśivas. It was kept on by the Vākāṭakas. The ‘S i m h a p u r a - r ā j y a’ seems to have been a bulwark erected by the Nāga emperors to throw back the Kushans. The early Simhapura kings are noted in the inscription for their Hindu orthodoxy (Ārya-vratatā) and bravery. They were, like the Bhāraśivas, Śaivaites. Their kingdom lasted, at least, down to the time of Yuan Chwang (631 A.D.) who has noticed it. The Guptas evidently allowed them to continue, probably in view of the importance of their family and the part which they must have played in pushing back the Kushans from northern Āryāvarta during the Bhāraśiva time. They are not registered in the Purāṇas as they formed part of the Āryāvarta dominions of the Vākāṭakas which they inherited from the Bhāraśivas. The kings of Simhapura, i.e., of Jālandhara, never struck coins of their own. The M a d r a s were to the west of the kingdom of Simhapura.

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¹ It is placed among the Trigartas, Abhisāra, etc. Sabhā, Ch. XXVI, 20.

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² E.I., i, 10. I endorse the date of the inscription as given by Rai Bahadur Daya Ram Sahani, viz., the Sixth Century A.D. (E.I., Vol. XVIII, p. 125) as against the Seventh Century proposed by Bühler (E.I. Vol., i. 11).

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³ Their genealogy stands thus:—(1) Senavarman, (2) Āryavarman, (3) Dattavarman, (4) Pradīptavarman, (5) Īśvaravarman, (6) Vṛddhivarman, (7) Siṅghavarman, (8) Jala, (9) Yajñavarman, (10) Achalavarman Samaraghaṅgala, (11) Divākaravarman Mahighaṅghala, (12) Bhāskara Ripughaṅghala (E.I., i, 11). Nos. 1 to 11 are related as father to son; No. 12 is brother to No. 11.

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79. The K u s h a n s about 280 A.D. were placed between two fires. Varahrān II, who reigned on the Sassanian throne from 275 to 292 A.D., subjugated Seistan. It may be assumed that P r a v a r a s e n a I, who undertook four aśvamedhas and must have launched at least four campaigns, carried on the Bhāraśiva policy of weakening and destroying the Kushan power. Between 301 and 309 A.D. the Kushans seek the protection of H o r m a z d II, who marries the daughter of the king of Kabul, that is, the Kushan king. This is just the time of the vigour of Pravarasena I, and at this juncture the Kushan king gives up India, which no more remains his ‘imperial’ seat. He withdraws himself into Afghanistan, outside India proper, for his safety, and throws himself completely into the arms of the Sassanian king. Whatever territory still lingered in the Western Punjab was due to that protection. And the protection required could be only against Pravarasena I, the Hindu Samrāṭ.

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80. When S a m u d r a G u p t a comes on the stage and defeats R u d r a s e n a, the whole Empire of the Vākāṭakas including the M ā d r a - k a s in the north, he wins at one stroke. The ready submission of the Mādrakas without a fight is an indication of the fact that the Mādrakas had been within the empire and a part of the empire of the Vākāṭakas. That the Vākāṭaka Empire covered the Eastern Punjab explains the rise of the new house of the Yādavas in Jālandhara. It also explains the intercourse between the Mādraka country and Eastern India in the later Bhāraśiva and the Vākāṭaka period. The Guptas who reach Bihar about 250-275 A.D. were, as we shall see (§ 112), from the Madra country. And this connection with the Madra country is responsible for the Kushan type of coinage at the distant Pāṭaliputra under Chandra Gupta I, which has caused so much puzzle to a numismatist (Mr. Allan) that he refuses to believe that Chandra-Gupta I's coins could have been struck by him and comes to the conclusion that they were posthumously struck by his son after the conquest of the Punjab.¹ Considering the revival of the Mādraka coinage in the Bhāraśiva period and the facts noted above bearing on the history of the Kushan and the foundation of the kingdom of Jālandhara, there can be little doubt that the Vākāṭaka Empire included the Mādraka country.

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¹ Allan, Catalogue of the Coins of the Gupta Dynasties, p. lxiv ff. It should be noted, in connexion with the theory of Mr. Allan, that no Hindu would ever think of celebrating the marriage of his father and mother. The coins, whereon Chandra Gupta I is caressing his wife, could only have been struck by Chandra Gupta I himself.

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81. The same has to be said about Rajputana and the States in Gujarat. The inscription of Samudra Gupta places the Ābhīras at the head of the group of the republican communities of Western and Eastern Malwā, and the Mālavas at the head of the group of the Mālavas-Arjunāyanas-Yaudheyas-Mādrakas. The Mālava-to-Mādraka group extends from S. to N., i.e., from southern Rajputana, one above the other, reaching the Punjab; while the Ābhīra group, beginning in Surāṣṭra and coming to Gujarat includes the region next to the south of the Mālavas, in a straight line from west to east (§145). This is exactly

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Chandra-Gupta I's pre-Pāṭaliputran coins, as pointed out above, are those illustrated in Cunningham, C.A.I., pl. VII, figs. 1-2. They were struck when he was subordinate to the Bhāra-Śiva-Vākāṭaka Empire. The coins bear Triśūla, which was a Bhāraśiva emblem. Cunningham read the legend as Rudra-Guptasa (p. 81). But the first letter is cha which is confirmed by the anusvāra dot on cha. The last letter is sya, not sa.

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the position which the Purāṇas assign to the Ābhīras of Surāṣṭra-Avanti in the beginning of the next period (the Gupta Empire), which we shall see in the next part of this book. There were no Śaka-Satraps left in Kathiawar or Gujarat in the Vākāṭaka period. They had been ousted from there, and according to the Purāṇas they remained in Cutch and Sindh only [Part III, § 148]. The Republican India, which re-struck coins in the Bhāraśiva period, accepted, without any war, Samudra Gupta as emperor. It was the case of recognizing a settled fact; when the Gupta Emperor succeeded to the position of the Vākāṭaka Emperor, the Republican India naturally accepted the Gupta, as it had accepted the Vākāṭaka, as their Samrāṭ.

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82. The history of Southern India of the time is treated separately in this book (Pt. IV), but it is necessary to anticipate a few facts at this point to understand the Vākāṭaka and the Gupta history and its relation with the South. The Vākāṭaka Empire under their direct rule bordered on the frontiers of Kuntala. This is evident from the frequent clashes which occur on the subsequent rise of the strong Kadamba kingdom of Kuntala-Karṇāṭa. To be a neighbour of Kuntala, the direct Vākāṭaka government must cover Koṅkaṇa and the area of the Southern Maratha States, i.e., their sway must have penetrated to the other side of the Bālāghāṭ Range. The territory to the east was occupied by ‘the Āndhras’ who were within the Vākāṭaka zone; Kaliṅga and Kosalā also being under the Vākāṭaka overlordship. Before the time of Pravarasena I, almost contemporaneous with Vindhyaśakti, the Pallavas established in Andhra-deśa a seat for themselves. The Pallavas, like Vindhyaśakti, were Brahmins of the Bhāradvāja gotra. They, about the time of Pravarasena I, like him, perform Aśvamedha, Vājapeya and other Vedic sacrifices and try to succeed to the imperial throne of the Sātavāhanas, the Emperors of Dakṣiṇāpatha. Here history was being repeated as in the time of Pushyamitra Śuṅga and Sātakarṇi [I] Sātavāhana. The Pallavas are described in the Purāṇas under the designation ‘the Andhra Kings’—‘the kings of Andhradeśa’, as ruling over Mekalā with Andhra, and are specified as ‘the descendants (santati) of the Vindhyakas, i.e., Vindyaśakti (§ 176). A dynasty which lasted for about three generations preceded the Pallavas. They were the Ikshvākus who, on the heel of the extinction of the Sātavāhana line, try to succeed the Sātavāhanas, announcing their intention by an aśvamedha. Their capital was at Śrī Parvata which is now called Nāgārjuni koṇḍa in the Guntur district. They are known from the inscriptions of their relations at the newly discovered stūpa at Nāgārjuni koṇḍa and from inscriptions at Jaggayya-peṭa. The Ikshvākus disappear at the rise of Vindyaśakti and the Pallavas. The Pallavas were Brahmins and the Sātavāhanas had been Brahmins. There was a great Brahmin tradition of imperialism in the South, and it was so strong that the moment the Pallavas were defeated by Samudra Gupta, the Kadamba feudatory of the Pallavas, Mayūra-śarman, and his son Kaṅga, who were Brahmins, not accepting the abolition of the Southern Empire, declared the re-establishment of the Southern Empire. This was not, of course, suffered by Samudra Gupta and Prithivīsheṇa Vākāṭaka.

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83. The main feature of the history of the time as between the North and the South is that the North is trying to establish an Empire for All-India. This was the result of the experience which the Hindus had gained during the last empire of the Sātavāhanas. They found that a Southern power could not cope with the invaders against India who always came from the north. To have two emperors in one India appeared to them as a source of great weakness. This seems to be the moral motive for Pravarasena I’s becoming the universal Indian Emperor or Samrāṭ¹ and

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¹ The Pallavas [Śiva] Skandavarman I, though a Dharmamahārājādhirāja of the South, never struck any independent coin, and his son and descendants remained ‘Mahārājas’, i.e., Mahārājas to the Vākāṭaka Samrāṭ. ‘Mahārāja’ denoted a feudatory position at the time. Śivaskandavarman’s descendants describe him only as a ‘Mahārāja’ in their copperplates. The title of [Dharma] Mahārājādhirāja, was short-lived and was intended as against the Cholas, etc., i.e., the South.

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Need for an All-India Empire.

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for his successor Samudra Gupta expressing satisfaction at uniting the whole of India between his two arms. The need for this was apparent, both from the past experience of the Kushan Empire and the new necessity from the rise of the powerful Sassanian Empire next-door to India, born in the time of Vindhyaśakti. That need stood specially punctuated in the time of Pravarasena I, when by about 300 A.D., the Kushan Empire was practically merged into the Sassanian Empire. The Vākāṭaka king performed four aśvamedhas. On the analogy of the Mahā-Bhārata digvijaya in four sections, we may infer that Pravarasena I had his digvijaya divided into four sections, one of which would have been in the South. Although we have not yet discovered any contemporary account of the digvijaya of the Samrāṭ Pravarasena, and that the chronology of the Tamil literature mentioning the Āryas and the Vādukas, i.e., their invaders from the North, is extremely uncertain, yet it seems certain that the early Vākāṭakas having reached and occupied the territory on the other side of the Bālāghāṭ and the Andhra country, had become the next-door neighbours of the states of the Tamil-land, and a digvijaya over them was made easy by the success of the Pallavas who could and did occupy Kāñchī, the capital of the Cholas, the leading state of Tamilagam. The issue having been already settled with the Ikshvāku successors of the Sātavāhanas who had transmitted only a lost prestige and a discredited name as the imperial defenders of India, Pravarasena I could rightfully declare himself to be the Samrāṭ of the whole of India.

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84. The Bhāraśivas had made the Gaṅgā and the Yamunā free, but it was left to the vigorous Pravarasena I, son of a soldier and himself a great soldier, to push the Kushans out of India. In his time, the Kushan king became the king of Kabul, while up to 240 or 245 A.D., according to Chinese authorities, the king who sent Yüeh chï horses to a Hindu king in Indo-China was the Muruṇḍa ‘King of India’,¹ that is, he was still regarded as the Emperor of India and was reigning in India, although he had left the Antarveda of the Yamunā-and-Gaṅgā.

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¹ Jayaswal, ‘The Muruṇḍa Dynasty’, the Mālaviya Commemoration Volume, p. 185. Muruṇḍa was the royal title of the Kushans [J.B.O.R.S., XVI, 203].

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85. There were three great contributions of the Vākāṭaka Emperor. His father Vindhyaśakti for about forty years of the last portion of the Bhāraśiva imperial rule was the real fighter and empire-builder of the Bhāraśivas. Inheriting his energy and ideal, Pravarasena I evolved a clear political thesis. (1) His thesis was a H i n d u E m p i r e for the w h o l e o f I n d i a and enthronement of the ś ā s t r a s. (2) A great literary movement in favour of S a n s k r i t begins about 250 A.D. and in fifty years reaches a pitch at which the Guptas take it up. We have the drama K a u m u d i-m a h o t s a v a, written about 340 A.D., where the whole literary movement is cinematographed. It was written at the Court of a feudatory of the Vākāṭaka Emperor by a woman, at practically one sitting, to whom Sanskrit Kāvya was as facile a subject as to Bhāsa and Kālidāsa. Classical Sanskrit had become her vernacular. It had become the Court language. Expressions and forms had become set, and everyone in the official circle talked and wrote in Sanskrit. The earliest Vākāṭaka inscriptions found near or at their capital are in Sanskrit. In the South at that time,—a generation after Śivaskandavarman—Sanskrit begins ruling in royal documents. The set genealogical form in the Vākāṭaka documents, repeated generation after generation, shows that in the time of Pravarasena I, Sanskrit drafting must have come into vogue. Samudra Gupta and his successors follow exactly the system of Vākāṭaka drafting. At the Court of another feudatory, Gaṇapati Nāga, vernacular literary tradition is converted into Sanskrit classical poetry where the verses written for the Nāga-rāja in the Bhāva-śataka remind one of the [Prakrit] Gāthā-śaptaśatī. (3) The Kaumudī-mahotsava gives us an insight into the S o c i a l R e v i v a l. Revival of Varṇāśrama dharma and Hindu orthodoxy is emphasized very pointedly; it was the cry of the time. The society under the Vākāṭaka imperialism was seeking to purge the abuses crept in under the Kushan rule. It was a Hindu Puritan Movement which was greatly fostered, and which received a wide imperial implication under Pravarasena I.¹

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¹ Long and repeated Vedic sacrifices [agniṣṭoma, aptoryāma, ukthya, shoḍaśin, ātirātra, vājapeya, Bṛihaspatisava, sādyaskra and Aśvamedhas] [G.I., 236] must have been occasions for big gatherings and missionary propaganda.

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86. We find the figures of Gaṅgā and Yamunā be- Revival of Art. come royal and national symbols in architecture. The Matsya Purāṇa which embodies the text on architecture up to the Sātavāhana period, as observed above, knows nothing of the figures of Gaṅgā and Yamunā as essential or otherwise, to be associated with the temple of Śiva or Viṣṇu or of any other god. Their adoption is essentially a political motif. The association of the Bhāraśivas with the Ganges was a vital moral force in the Bhāraśiva period. The Bhāraśivas liberated the Gaṅgā and brought her in the sphere of art as on their coins. They also brought the Yamunā within the compass of their art, as Bhūmarā and the Nāga-canopied figures of the two river-goddesses at Deogarh would indicate. But the Vākāṭakas made them their ‘imperial symbols’, from whom they were transmitted to the Chālukyas and became their ‘Imperial Symbols’² (§ 101 A). The Pallavas—the branch line of the Vākāṭakas—used them.³ And the people were always conscious of the political meaning of this symbolism—‘the Empire’ (‘the Empire of Āryāvarta’).⁴ In the Nāga- Vākāṭaka idolisation of Gaṅgā and Yamunā, there is the idolisation and idealisation of the land of the Gaṅgā-and-Yamunā where they re-established orthodoxy. The elegant moulding of the river-goddesses at Bhūmarā and Nachnā are a mirror of the Nāga-Vākāṭaka culture. The Vākāṭakas themselves were a line of handsome men. The (e) Vāyu manuscript notes that the four sons of Pravīra were sumūrtayaḥ, handsome, statue-like.¹ The Ajaṇṭā inscription especially notes the handsomeness of Devasena and Hariṣeṇa. Under the Vākāṭakas the art of sculpture and the graphic art of Ajaṇṭā which lay under their direct government, were vivified. The tradition was kept up in the later Vākāṭaka period. The credit of this revival of Hindu art which had been universally attributed by the present-day writers wholly to the Guptas, like the credit of Sanskrit revival, really belongs to the Vākāṭakas. The seed of all architectural modes which reach their full development at Eran, Udaygiri, Deogarh and Ajaṇṭā and even later, are all to be found in the Vākāṭaka temples at Nachnā—the perforated window, the gavākṣa balcony, the sikhara, the entwined serpent, the sculptured and ornamented door-frame, the bulging shape of the sikhara, the square temple in the residential style, etc. [On the age of the Nachnā temples, see App. A at the end.]

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² See S.I.I., Vol. I, p. 54, where Gaṅgā and Yamunā, Makara-Toraṇa, Kanaka-Daṇḍa, etc. are called the dynastic imperial insignia (Sāmrajya-chinhāni) of the Chālukyas. See also I.A., VIII, 26.

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³ See the seal of the Velurapalaiyam plates, S.I.I., Vol. II, p. 521, where in the second row the figure of Yamunā is in relief with a tortoise below, and the figure of Gaṅgā with two pitchers at her feet is in the middle. There is a serpent-hood canopy on the head.

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⁴ I.A., XII, 156, 163. The Rāṣṭrakūṭa copperplate of Waṇi (Baroda) described the triumph of Govind-Rāja II in capturing the banners bearing the figures of Gaṅgā and Yamunā in these words: ‘Govinda-Rāja, the personification of fame, taking from his enemies the Gaṅgā and the Yamunā, charming with their waves, acquired at the same time that supreme position of lordship (which was indicated) by (those rivers in) the form of a visible sign’—cf. Fleet, I.A., XX, 275, who attributed them to have been

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¹ P.T., p. 50, n. 38.

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87. Their non-adoption of a spectacular coinage like that of Chandra Gupta I is not due to any want of artistic capacity², but is due to their conservatism and partiality for the past. They would not imitate the coinage of the Kushans whom they regarded as the enemy of the nation and as low Mlechchhas. Its adoption by Chandra Gupta I would have been looked down upon by them as an act of denationalization. Under the Vākāṭaka influence Samudra Gupta himself had to revert, in his feudatory stage, to a type of coinage which was national³.

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² See the bull on the coin of Pṛthivīṣeṇa I, § 61 above; C.I.M., Pl. XX, fig. 4.

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³ His tiger-type (which is in gold), bearing the Imperial Vākāṭaka symbol of Gaṅgā.

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derived by 'some means or another from the Early Guptas.' [The Nāga-Vākāṭaka symbolism had not been discovered in his time.]

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88. The system of the Vākāṭaka administration was borrowed from the Bhāraśivas and in its turn it was borrowed by Samudra Gupta. But both had introduced certain modifications of their own. The Vākāṭaka system consisted of a large central state under their direct rule with two capitals and a number of hereditary sub-rulers, and an imperial confederacy of free states. In the Bhāraśiva system the imperial keystone existed almost as an equal brick of the state-arch, while in the Vākāṭaka one it became a prominent piece.

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89. The Vākāṭakas established subsidiary dynasties of their relations. According to the Purāṇas, Pravarasena I's four sons were rulers. Mahārāja Śrī Bhīmasena who has left a painted inscription in a cave-temple on the Ginja hill, about 40 miles to the south-west of Allahabad, dated in the 52nd year, was evidently the governor of Kauśāmbī and probably a son of Pravarasena.¹ Important subordinate families (e.g. of Gaṇapati Nāga, Su-Pratikara), as well as the members of the Empire (the Republics), were allowed to mint their own money. In the Gupta system, in Āryāvarta, the only ruling relation was the Vākāṭaka who was practically independent. The Guptas preferred to have servants as governors and practically stopped the coinage of all subordinates. Both allowed their subordinate rulers to employ the title of Mahārāja, after the fashion of Mahākshatrapa, avoiding of course, that term. The Vākāṭaka emperor, however, did not translate the Shāhānushāhī as Mahārājādhirāja, as the Guptas did, but went back to the time-honoured Vedic imperial title Samrāṭ.

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¹ A.S.R., Vol. XXI, p. 119, Plate XXX; E.I., Vol. III, page 306. See here below § 103.

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90. The faith of the Vākāṭakas was strict Śaivaism.² It changed only for one generation in the time of Rudrasena II, under the influence of his wife Prabhāvatī and father-in-law, Chandra Gupta II, who were both ardent Vaishnavas. But when Chandra Gupta's influence was gone, the family atonce reverted to their Śaivaism. Temples and remains of the Vākāṭaka period are prominently of the martial Śiva—the temples at Nachnā, and the Bhairava lingams at Jāso¹, which differ from the [Bhāraśiva] Ekamukha lingams at Bhūmarā and Nakṭi [illustrated by Mr. Banerji; Arch. Memoirs, No. 16, Pl. XV; ASWC., 1919-20, Pl. XXIX]². All these lingams artistically belong to one school, though the deity-aspects differ. Although there is no great fundamental difference between these and the Guptan art, yet in aim and spirit they belong to a distinctive school. The great guide to distinguish the Vākāṭaka from the Gupta remains—which all have been described as Guptan, though Cunningham has put in the caution—'Although it is probable that the earliest specimen of this kind of temple belongs to a period shortly preceding the Gupta rule' (A.S.R., Vol. IX, p. 42),—is the distinguishing faith. Śaivaism is peculiar to the Nāga-Vākāṭakas and Vaishnavism to the Guptas. Eran and the existing Vaishnava remains at Deogarh should therefore be taken as Guptan, while those at Nachnā, Jāso and mostly (if not wholly) the remains at Tigowa are undoubtedly Vākāṭakan.

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² The Vākāṭaka inscriptions record it; their coins have Nandi. Up to the time of Rudrasena I, Mahā-Bhairava was the royal deity; Pṛthivīsheṇa adopted Maheśvara [which form is a compromise between Viṣṇu and Śiva]. G. 1. 236. Nachnā has Mahā-Bhairava [See App. A].

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¹ See Appendix A at the end.

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² The Ekamukha lingam at Nakṭi near Khoh. It is a youthful face as prescribed in Matsya, 258, 4.

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