History of India, c. 150 A.D. to 350 A.D.: Naga–Vakataka Imperial Period c16.s4.12
History of India, c. 150 A.D. to 350 A.D.: Nāga–Vākāṭaka Imperial Period c16.s4.12
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c16.s4.12.1
145. The republics of the Mālavas, Āryunāyanas, Yaudheyas, Mādrakas, Ābhīras, Prārjunas, Sahasānikas, Kākas, Kharparikas and others were not on the frontiers of Samudra Gupta's empire as wrongly supposed by Dr. Vincent Smith, for, in line 22 (Allahabad Pillar Inscription) where 'the frontier kings' are mentioned, they are expressly excluded from that category. They were internal States and had become part of the Gupta empire by agreeing to pay all kinds of imperial taxes and obeying imperial orders. In the enumeration of the tributary republics there is a territorial scheme. The Mālavas, Āryunāyanas, Yaudheyas and Mādrakas are counted from the direct Gupta territory—say, from Mathurā. The first state is the Mālava. Nāgara or Karkoṭa-Nāgara which is situated in the modern State of Jaipur was the capital of the Mālavas whose thousands of republican coins—'as thick as shells on the sea-shore'—have been found there (§§ 42, 46). The Bhāgavata calls them the Arbuda-Mālavas and the Vishnu locates them in Rajputana (Marubhūmi). They were thus decidedly in Rajputana from Mount Abu up to Jaipur. The territorial designation Mālwār (माळवार) seems to me to be based on their name.² To their south, there was the Nāga territory, and with the Nāga coins their coinage bears affinity.³ They were, like the Nāgas, followers of Nāga worship. Their capital was dedicated to Karkoṭa Nāga.
c16.s4.12.2
Immediately north to them were the Yaudheyas, stretching from Bharatpur [where their republican inscription of a time anterior to Samudra Gupta has been found at Bijaygarh] right up to the lower course of the Sutlej on the border of the Bhawalpur State where Johiyāwār still bears the stamp of their name. This was the biggest republican state also in the time of Rudradāman [c.150 A.D.]; the Yaudheyas were his neighbours, that is, reaching Lower Sindh. Between the Mālava and the Yaudheya States there was the small State of the Āryunāyanas whose exact location is not known but whose coins indicate that they were near Alwar and Agra. The Mā drakas were immediately to the north of the Yaudheyas extending up to the foot of the Himalayas. Madra-deśa was the plain country between Jhelum and Ravi¹, sometimes extending up to the Bias.² In the tract between the Bias and the Jumna lay the Vākāṭaka feudatories the Varmans of Siṃhapura and the Nāga king Nāgadatta. The other republican group of Samudra Gupta’s inscription consists of the Ābhīras, Prārjunas, Sahasānikas, Kākas and Kharparikas. None of these struck their coins before Samudra Gupta, and this for the simple reason that they had been under the Vākāṭaka governor of Western Malwā at Mandhātā (Māhishmatī) and under the Nāgas of Padmāvatī. Gaṇapati Nāga, in fact, is called the overlord of Dhārā [Dhārādhīśa]. We know now that the Sahasānikas and the Kākas were nearabout Bhilsa.
c16.s4.12.3
The modern Kākapur was their town which is within 20 miles from Bhilsa³; the Sāñchi hill was called the Kākanāda. In the time of Chandra Gupta II a Sahasānika Mahārāja, probably a republican chief of the Sahasānikas, built the Chandra Gupta Temple in the Udayagiri rocks. About the Ābhīras, we get great help from the Bhāgavata. The Bhāgavata calls the Ābhīras, ‘Saurāṣṭra’ and ‘Āvantya’ rulers (Saurāṣṭra-Āvanty Ābhīrāḥ), and the Viṣṇu treats the Ābhīras as occupying the Surāṣṭra and Avanti provinces. We know from the Vākāṭaka history that in Western Malwā there were the Puṣyamitras and two other republics with their names ending in -Mitra. These were the Abhira republics and in their place in later Gupta history we find the Maitrakas rising as monarchs. This group beginning with the Abhiras and ending with Kharparikas is almost in a straight line from Kathiawar and Damoh, below the Malava republic and above the Vakataka kingdom. The Abhiras in the time of the Periplus occupy Gujarat, and there is no justification in locating them in Bundelkhand as Dr. Vincent Smith did [J.R.A.S., 1897, p. 30]. He was led to do so on account of a mistaken notion that Kathiawar and Gujarat were at that time governed by the Western Satraps. Both the Puranas and Samudra Gupta's inscription leave no room for the Satraps in Kathiawar or Gujarat. The Western Satraps had been already dispossessed in the Naga-Vakataka period from Kathiawar. The Puranas here throw great light.