History of India, c. 150 A.D. to 350 A.D.: Naga–Vakataka Imperial Period c16.s4.18

c16.s4.18

146. The Bhagavata treats the Abhiras of Surashtra and Avanti, the Suras and the Malavas of the Aravali as free republics. Their rulers are called janadhipah, 'national' or 'popular' [i.e. republican] 'rulers'. It does not mention the Madrakas. It seems that the Madrakas had already come within the Empire of Samudra Gupta as a sequence of the Aryavarta Wars and were probably the first amongst the republics to own allegiance to the Gupta Emperor when their overlord was conquered. The Suras of the Bhagavata are the famous Yaudheyas. The word Sura ('hero') is a translation of the word 'Yaudheya', their popular title. Rudradaman, 200 years earlier, recorded that the Yaudheyas were popularly known amongst the Kshatriyas by their title 'the heroes'.¹ The Yaudheyas, according to the Puranas, were good and ancient Kshatriyas. They formerly lived, like the Malavas, in the Punjab. It is they and the Malavas who had kept the Kushan power in check, both at its western end on the Sindh borders and the eastern end at Mathura. They were popularly known as ‘Śūra’, ‘Vira’. The Bhāgavata placing them next to the Abhīras and before the Mālavas, puts them between the two, which indicates their position to the north of the Abhīras and to the north-west of the Mālavas, i.e. the western portion of Rajputana. The Viṣṇu reads :—‘Saurāṣṭra-Avanti-Śūrān Arbuda-Marubhūmi-viṣayāṁś ca vrātyā dvijā Abhīra-Śūdra [read Śūra]-ādyāḥ bhokṣyanti’. Its reading Śūdra after Avanti has the variant reading -śūra which is confirmed by the Viṣṇu Purāṇa itself in another place¹ and the Hari-Vaṁśa.² There was, however, a republic of the Śaudrāyaṇas whose name was derived from a proper-name Śūdra, not the caste-name but the personal name of the founder.³ But the texts of the Bhāgavata and Viṣṇu here evidently mean ‘Śūras’ which stands for the Yaudheyas. The Bhāgavata and the Viṣṇu do not mention at all the Prārjunas, Sahasānikas, Kākas and Kharparikas. They had belonged to the Nāga group, being in Eastern Malwā.