History of India, c. 150 A.D. to 350 A.D.: Naga–Vakataka Imperial Period c15.s3.1

c15.s3.1

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.