History of India, c. 150 A.D. to 350 A.D.: Naga–Vakataka Imperial Period c16.s3.5

c16.s3.5

Gaṇapati-Nāga-Nāgasena-Achyuta-Nandi-Balavarma—The most important personality of the group is Gaṇapati Nāga. The great result of the battle being avowedly an easy capture of Pāṭaliputra and of the Prince of the family of Kota, the battle must have been intimately connected with the question of the recovery of Magadha. Samudra Gupta himself did not capture ‘Kota’s descendant’ who was the ruler of Pāṭaliputra at the time. We may take it, therefore, that one army had attacked or laid siege to Pushpapura, and that Samudra Gupta gave battle to Nāgasena and Achyuta and also probably to Gaṇapati at a place other than Pāṭaliputra, and at some distance from Pāṭaliputra. Now, we know from coins and from the *Bhāvaśataka*, a work written under the reign of Gaṇapati Nāga (§ 31) that Gaṇapati Nāga was the ruler of Malwā (*Dhārādhīśa*) with his capital at Padmāvatī and probably a second capital at Dhārā. The name of Achyuta Nandi as set out in full in line 21, and the coin of ‘Achyuta’ found at Ahichhatra which has the same symbols as on the Nāga coins of Padmāvatī and also has the same fabric, suggest that he was a scion of the Nāgas. Nāgasena was probably the son of Kirtisheṇa of Mathurā,¹ father-in-law of Kalyāṇavarman king of Magadha and Pāṭaliputra.² As Kalyāṇavarman who had dispossessed Chaṇḍasena of Pāṭaliputra was related to the king of Mathurā and thus belonged to the confederacy of the Nāga-Vākāṭakas, we find Nāgasena and Achyuta Nandi, in all probability led by Gaṇapati who was a noted soldier and the leader of the Nāgas according to the Bhāvaśataka, meeting Samudra Gupta in a pitched battle. They might have been on their way to the relief of Pāṭaliputra. The convenient place upon which the kings or rulers from Ahichchhatra, Mathurā and Padmāvatī could have converged was Kauśāmbī or Allahabad, more likely the former, as the old royal route to Pāṭaliputra lay through Kauśāmbī. The proclamation of this victory on the Kauśāmbī Pillar seems to convey that meaning. The praśasti was meant to be engraved on this very pillar, as line 30 expressly mentions: