The Vakataka–Gupta Age (circa 200–550 A.D.) c8.s6: 1. Did the Bhāraśivas Drive Out the Kushāṇas?
The Vākāṭaka–Gupta Age (circa 200–550 A.D.) c8.s6
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1. Did the Bhāraśivas Drive Out the Kushāṇas?
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The credit for the overthrow of the Kushāṇa power in the Gangetic plain was once given to the Guptas,² but this view can no longer be upheld. There is no evidence to show that the Kushāṇa empire continued to include the Gangetic valley after c. 180 A.D. The Allahabad inscription of Samudra-gupta makes it certain that there was no Kushāṇa rule in Magadha or U. P. when the Guptas were laying the foundation of their empire. The kings of Āryāvarta, whom Samudra-gupta forcibly uprooted, were all Indians; none of them was of Kushāṇa or Śaka extraction.
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² Banerji, *The Age of the Imperial Guptas*, p. 5.
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The late Dr. Jayaswal advocated the view that the Kushāṇa empire collapsed owing to the onslaughts of the Bhāraśivas, whose work in this connection was later completed by the Vākāṭakas under the leadership of the emperor Pravara-sena I.¹ It will be shown in Chapter V how the Vākāṭaka emperor never came into contact with the Kushāṇas. Nor is there any evidence to show that the Bhāraśivas were the leaders of the movement to emancipate the country from the foreign rule. They had no doubt celebrated ten horse-sacrifices, but these were often performed in our period by even small rulers with no claims to imperial achievements or conquests.²
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¹ Dr. Jayaswal's Bhāraśiva theory is based almost entirely on numismatic evidence; the present writer has shown in details elsewhere how the numismatic data do not support the theory at all. See JNSI. V, 111-134.
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² The Ikshvāku king Śāntamūla, who had performed an Aśamedha sacrifice in c. 225 A. D., did not rule over more than two or three districts. Kadamba king Kṛiṣṇa-varman, who had celebrated it in c. 450 A. D., was not even an independent king. The Viṣṇukuṇḍin king Mādhava-varman I, who had performed 11 of them in c. 425 A. D. was ruling over a very small kingdom.
c8.s6.6
According to Jayaswal, the Bhāraśiva family is identical with the Nava-nāga family of the Purāṇas and that its founder was king Nava, whose capital was at Kāntipurī, modern Kantit, in Mirzapur District, U. P. There is nothing to indicate that any Nāga family was ever ruling at Kāntipurī or that king Nava of coins was a Nāga ruler who belonged to it. His coins are not found at Kāntipurī and bear no resemblance whatsoever to any known Nāga coinage. Nāga rulers invariably attach the epithet nāga to their names on their coins, though they are very small; king Nava never does so, though his coins are relatively much larger in size. The assumption that Vira-sena, the successor of Nava, was the real founder of the three Nāga families ruling at Kāntipuri, Padmāvatī and Mathura, has yet to be proved. Since his coins are found in Mathura, it is quite likely that he was an independent Nāga ruler. But there is nothing to show that he had ousted the Kushāṇas from the eastern Punjab, for his coins are but rarely found beyond the Jumna. The view that the successors of Vīra-sena—Traya-nāga, Haya-nāga and Barhiṇa-nāga—pressed the Kushāṇas so hard that they were compelled to seek the protection of the Sassanian emperor Shapur I, has absolutely no shred of evidence to support it. The coins of these rulers are never found in the Punjab, which is said to have been the scene of their military exploits; nay, it is very doubtful whether we have got their coins at all, for the legends on the coins, attributed to them, are very blurred and cannot be read with certainty.
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When considering the question of the disintegration of the Kushāṇa empire, we must therefore disabuse our mind of the notion that it was the Bhāraśivas of Kāntipuri who annihilated the Kushāṇa empire. The riddle of the disappearance of the Kushāṇa power from the Gangetic plain can be solved only by carefully studying the coins and inscriptions of the contemporary powers. If we do so, we shall find that the Yaudheyas, the Kuṇindas, the Mālavas, the Nāgas and the Maghas¹, who began to strike coins as independent powers in the 3rd century, all played their own part in driving out the Kushāṇas.
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¹ The Maghas asserted independence earlier in c. 160 A. D., as will be shown later in this chapter; but the Kushāṇas probably connived at their rebellion as the Magha homelands lay in the jungle tracts of Rewa, not easily accessible.
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Like most other dynasties in Indian history the Kushāṇas also began to decline after a career of about 150 years in c. 200 A.D. They had no doubt been indianised by this time, but nevertheless, it was probably felt that they belonged to a different ethnic stock and the Yaudheyas and their neighbours, with their age-long republican traditions, were not prepared to lose a golden opportunity to regain their political independence, when they detected that the imperial Kushāṇa power had become weak. Evidence available at present does not favour the view that any big federation consisting of all the above powers and working under a common leadership was formed in order to overthrow the Kushāṇa empire. The Yaudheyas were the strongest and probably the first to inflict an effective blow, perhaps in co-operation with their immediate neighbours, the Kuṇindas and the Arjunāyanas. The success of this move emboldened the Nāgas of Padmāvati and the Mālavas of Rajputana to follow their example and to reassert their independence. We shall now proceed to narrate how all these events took place in the first half of the 3rd century A.D.