History of India, c. 150 A.D. to 350 A.D.: Naga–Vakataka Imperial Period c16.s3.38

c16.s3.38

This list is divisible into two parts. (1) From Gaṇapati Nāga to Balavarman are the names of the kings already defeated in the first Āryāvarta War; the battle of Kauśāmbī accounting for the three, the last one, Balavarman, might have been the ruler of Pāṭaliputra captured by Samudra Gupta’s army who is left unnamed in verse 7. If so, B a l a v a r m a n, was the second or the abhiṣeka- [the coronation-] name of Kālyāṇavarman. The other group must therefore consist of the kings and rulers defeated in the Second War or in a probable continuation of the Second War.¹ Of these Nāgadatta is to be identified with the Nāgadatta, father of the Mahārāja Maheśvara Nāga—a Nāga sub-king whose seal bearing the lāñchana of a cobra was found at Lahore and has been edited by Fleet in his Gupta Inscriptions, which according to its script belongs to the fourth century A.D. (G. I., page 283). Matila ruled in the district of Bulandshahr, whose seal with another Nāga emblem was discovered.² We do not know who this C h a n d r a v a r m a n of Samudra Gupta’s inscription was,³ but we know that a Yādava dynasty of feudatories had been set up about 250 A.D. at Siṃhapura in the Jālandhara Doab [§§ 78 and 80]. This house must have been feudatory to the Vākāṭakas. Their names ended in ‘varman’. Although in the list of the Simhapura rulers we do not find any name as Chandravarman yet it is possible that he might have been a younger cadet who came to the battlefield to fight for Rudrasena, or Chandravarman was a second name of some king of the line. The sixth king who would have been a contemporary of Samudra Gupta and whose name is Vṛddhivarman, is described as ‘Chandra’