History of India, c. 150 A.D. to 350 A.D.: Naga–Vakataka Imperial Period c15.s3.55

c15.s3.55

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.