History of India, c. 150 A.D. to 350 A.D.: Naga–Vakataka Imperial Period c16.s4.6

c16.s4.6

143. We should note here that the Empire of Samudra Gupta ending with Kangra, leaves out Kashmir and the plains below it. This becomes clear from the Bhāgavata, the original text of which was completed before the submission of the Daivaputra-group whom the text describes as richly deserving suppression. Line 23 of the Allahabad inscription registers the ‘tranquil fame’ of Samudra Gupta ‘pervading the whole land’ and his re-establishing many dynasties ‘fallen and deprived of sovereignty’. The result of this policy of peace is immediately given as the submission of the Daivaputra-shāhi-shāhānushāhi-Śaka-Muruṇḍas—which completes the imperial geography of the North-West and Kashmir. This was the Mlechchha State of the Bhāgavata and the Viṣṇu. The Shāhānushāhi made his submission in person, for the inscription gives the forms of submission which the Daivaputra group and others made respectively, and the order of their enumeration proves his personal submission. The first member of the group is the Daivaputra Shāhi-shāhānushāhi. The words Daivaputra and Shāhi qualify shāhānushāhi, which were probably necessary to distinguish the Kushan emperor from the Sassanian emperor who was at that time the next neighbour of the Gupta Empire. The first form of submission was that of offering themselves (ātmanivedana) and the second consisted of two things: presenting (upāyana) unmarried girls and giving of daughters in marriage (kanyādāna). The third was the request [yāchana] which consisted of two matters: asking for charters for the currency of the Garuḍa coinage within the jurisdiction of their own territories and an application to enjoy the governments of their own respective countries [‘garuḍadaṅka-svaviṣaya-bhukti-śāsana-yāchana:’ asking for charters (śāsana-yāchana) for the use the Garuḍa-coin (garuḍaṅka-bhukti) and for the government of their own territories (provinces or districts, svaviṣaya bhukti)]. We know from the Pālada or Śālada and the ‘Śāka’ coins of the Kushan subordinate kings of the Western Punjab, that they accepted the Gupta coinage.¹ They printed the effigy of Samudra Gupta and his name on their coins, and it was continued up to the reign of Chandra Gupta II when we find his effigy and name also similarly stamped. As to the identity of these Gupta kings there cannot be any doubt, for the kings wear ear-rings or kuṇḍala on these coins, while the Kushans never used them. These coins, have been already described by numismatists as coins allied to the Gupta coinage.² The kanyā-dāna, ‘giving in marriage’ (dāna, as opposed to upāyana, ‘presenting’) of ‘a kanyā’ should refer to the Kushan Emperor, looking at the system current at the time, that, as a rule, it was a big rival ruler who bending his head offered a daughter in marriage to the conqueror.