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The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c30: Chapter XXI. Indian Native States After the Period of the Maurya Empire

The Cambridge History of India, Vol. I: Ancient India v1.c30

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Contents

Chapter XXI. Indian Native States After the Period of the Maurya Empire

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THE inscriptions of Açoka give us, for the first time in history, a comprehensive survey of India from the Hindu Kush to Ceylon; but it would be a mistake to assume that even Açoka, the most powerful of the Mauryas, maintained full political control over an empire of so vast an extent. His edicts clearly show that there were certain well-defined grades in the influence which he claimed to exercise in different regions. There were first of all 'the king's dominions,' by which we must no doubt understand the provinces of the empire—the central government of Pāṭaliputra (the United Provinces and Bihār) and the viceroyalties of Takshaçilā (the Punjab), Avanti or Ujjayinī (Western and Central India north of the Tāpti), and Kaliṅga (Orissa and the Ganjām District of Madras). Over all kingdoms and peoples in these provinces the emperor was supreme. He was the head of a great confederation of states which were united under him for imperial purposes, but which for all purposes of civil government and internal administration retained their independence. He was the link which bound together in association for peace or war powers which were the natural rivals of one another.

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Beyond 'the king's dominions' to the north-west and to the south lay 'the border peoples,' whom the emperor regarded as coming within his sphere of influence. On the north-west, in the North-West Frontier Province and in the upper Kābul valley, these are called in the inscriptions Gandhāras, Kāmbojas, and Yavanas (Yonas); and on the south, beyond the limits of the provinces of Avanti and Kaliṅga, there were the Rāshtrikas of the Marāthā country, the Bhojas of Berār, the Peṭenikas of the Auran-gābād District of Hyderābād, the Pulindas, whose precise habitat is uncertain, and the Andhras, who occupied the country between the Godāvari and the Kistna.

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Açoka's relations with these frontier peoples are most clearly indicated in the Jaugaḍa version of the Kaliṅga edicts. It was addressed by him to the officers of state at Samāpā, no doubt the

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MAP 5

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BHARATAVARSHA

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BHARATAVARSHA

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| Countries and Peoples thus | ... | ... | ... | ANDHRA |
| Mountains | ... | ... | ... | *HIMAVANT* |
| Towns | ... | ... | ... | Takshaçilā. |
| Rivers | ... | ... | ... | *Brahmaputra.* |
| Modern names within brackets. | | | | |

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city on the site of which the ruined fort of Jaugada in the Ganjām District now stands:

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If you ask, ‘With regard to the unsubdued borderers what is the King’s command to us?’ or ‘What truth is it that I desire the borderers to grasp?’—the answer is that the King desires that ‘they should not be afraid of me, that they should trust me, and should receive from me happiness, not sorrow.’ Moreover, they should grasp the truth that ‘the King will bear patiently with us, so far as it is possible to bear with us,’ and that ‘for my sake they should follow the Law of Piety, and so gain both this world and the next.’ And for this purpose I give you instructions. (Kaliṅga Edict I, trans. V. A. Smith, *Asoka*², p. 178.)

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The emperor’s attitude towards these neighbours is one of general benevolence. They are not his subjects: they are ‘unsubdued’; but in the interests of peace and good government he is concerned in their welfare and their good conduct. He is prepared to bear with them patiently ‘so far as it is possible’: that is to say, he trusts that punitive expeditions or annexations may not be necessary.

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The region occupied by the southern ‘border peoples’ includes what is now known to ethnologists as the Central Belt and still contains the largest groups of primitive tribes to be found in India. In the course of twenty-two centuries the policy of the government remains unchanged in regard to these representatives of the earliest inhabitants of the sub-continent. They continue to govern themselves in accordance with their traditional tribal constitutions and are subject only to such control as may be deemed to be indispensable:

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The policy of the Government of India is to permit no sudden restrictions that may alter the accustomed mode of life of these tribes, but rather to win confidence by kindness, and thus gradually to create self-supporting communities, acknowledging the state as arbitrator of those questions hitherto decided by might rather than by justice. (*Imp. Gaz.* III, p. 124.)

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Beyond the zones of border peoples lay realms of whose complete independence there is no question. On the north-west Açoka’s sphere of influence ended at the frontiers of the Yavana king Antiochus, i.e. the Seleucid monarch Antiochus II Theos; and on the south it probably did not extend much beyond the locality of his southernmost group of inscriptions at Isila, the modern Siddāpura in the Chitaldroog District of N. Mysore. The apex of the peninsula was occupied by the ancient Dravidian kingdoms of the Sātiyaputas, the Chēras, the Chōḷas, and the Pāṇḍyas. With these independent nations Açoka’s relations were merely such as might be expected to exist between friendly powers.

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But, while the invaluable testimony of the edicts thus enables us to estimate the character and the extent of Maurya rule at its height, we have no such trustworthy guide for the period of its decline¹. Its end, according to the Purāṇas, came about through a revolt which placed the Çuṅgas on the imperial throne. It seems certain, however, that the Çuṅgas succeeded to a realm already greatly diminished. The history of India at this time is still confined to the regions which were once known as 'the king's dominions' and 'the border peoples'; but these are no longer under the immediate rule or under the indirect control of any one power. Political conditions in the 2nd and 1st centuries b.c. were extremely complicated. The causes of this complication were twofold—internal strife and foreign invasions; and both of these were the natural and inevitable results of the downfall of imperial rule. In Central India and in the land of the Ganges the supremacy of the later Mauryas and of their successors, the Çuṅgas, was disputed by the Andhras of the Deccan and the Kaliṅgas of Orissa; and, now that the frontiers could no longer be held securely against hostile pressure from without, torrents of invasion burst into North-Western India through the channels which led from Bactria and from Eastern Irān.

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¹ Chapter xx, pp. 511 ff.

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The chief kingdoms of Northern India lay along the routes which connected Pātaliputra, the former capital of the empire, with the Kābul valley on the one hand and with the delta of the Indus on the other; and these routes were continuations of others which passed through Irān to the West. When, at the height of their power, the Maurya and the Seleucid empires were conterminous, intercourse by land between India and the Western World was unimpeded. But already during the reign of Açoka revolts in the Seleucid empire had led to the establishment of hostile powers in Bactria and Parthia, which controlled the two great lines of communication. The extension of the Yavana power from Bactria through the Kābul valley to the Jumna in the first quarter of the second century b.c., and the invasion, a century later, of the Çakas from Seistān into the country of the lower Indus (Çakadvīpa or Indo-Scythia), a position commanding the route through Central India, are described elsewhere². The land-ways which united India with the West had thus become increasingly difficult from the middle of the third century to the early part of the first century b.c.; but by sea commerce was still maintained with Mesopotamia (Babylon) and Egypt (Alexandria) through the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea; and the ports on the west coast were connected with Pāṭaliputra through Ujjayinī, the great emporium of the period. But the isolation of the sub-continent was now almost complete. The attempt to make India a great world power had failed; and its history now becomes a complex struggle within its own borders of elements both native and foreign, such as was to recur many centuries later on the downfall of the Mughal empire.

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² Chapters xxii and xxiii.

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No detailed account of this period of turmoil can be written. All that we can attempt, with the aid of such fragments of historical evidence as have been preserved, is to disentangle the various elements involved in the struggle and to estimate their mutual relations. These may best be understood if we consider the means of communication then available.

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Roads in the ordinary sense of the word did not exist; but there was a net-work of well-beaten routes throughout; and along these armies in war, like merchants and pilgrims in peace-time, made their way from one city to another¹. Through this system ran the two great arteries which have been already mentioned. The chief stages on the more northern of these are described in Chapter XXII, p. 543, in connexion with the progress of the Yavana invasions. The course of the central route, which joined the northern route at Kauçāmbī, was as follows:

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¹ For the military importance of this state of affairs which 'made the ordinary business of peace time...a regular training for campaigning,' and which 'explains the extraordinary promptitude with which the wars of the Indian army have been so frequently entered on,' see Chesney, *Indian Polity*, Chapter XVII (quoted in *Imp. Gaz.* III, pp. 402-3).

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| From (1) | Hyderābād in Sind to Ujjain (Ujjayinī) | 500 miles. |
| ,, (2) | Broach (Bhṛigukaccha) N.E. to Ujjain | 200 ,, |
| ,, | Ujjain E. to Besnagar (Vidiçā) | 120 ,, |
| ,, | Besnagar N.E. to Bhārhut | 185 ,, |
| ,, | Bhārhut N.E. to Kosam (Kauçāmbī) | 80 ,, |
| ,, | Kosam E. to Benares (Kāçī) | 100 ,, |
| ,, | Benares E. to Patna (Pāṭaliputra) | 135 ,, |

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It is in the monuments and coins of the kingdoms of Vidiçā, Bhārhut, and Kauçāmbī that we find the most unmistakable traces of the Çuṅgas and their feudatories. That the first Çuṅga king reigned at Pāṭaliputra is assumed in literature (p. 518) and may be inferred from the description which the Purāṇas give of the origin of the dynasty. We are told that Pushyamitra, the commander-in-chief of Bṛihadratha, the last of the Mauryas, slew his master and reigned in his stead; and it was believed in the seventh century A.D. that this military *coup d'état* took place on the occasion of a review of the forces¹. If the chronology of the Purāṇas may be trusted, this event happened 137 years after the accession of Chandragupta, i.e. c. 184 B.C., and the reign of Pushyamitra lasted for thirty-six years². Fortunately in this instance the statements of the Purāṇas may be checked to some extent by evidence supplied from other sources. The Çuṅgas came into conflict with other powers who were eager to share in the spoil of the Maurya empire—Andhras, Yavanas, and Çakas—and what we know of the history of these peoples is in accordance with the view that Pushyamitra was actually reigning during the period thus attributed to him.

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¹ *Harshacharita* (trans. Cowell and Thomas), p. 193.

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² The alternative statement of some versions, 'sixty years,' is manifestly due to textual corruption.

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The origin of the Çuṅgas is obscure. Their name, which means 'fig-tree,' may perhaps be tribal. According to Pāṇini (IV, 1, 117) they claimed to be descendants of Bharadvāja, the *purohita* of Divodāsa, king of the Tritsus (p. 82); and, as Bharadvāja is associated with Vītahavya³ from whom the Vītihotras (p. 316) probably derived their name, the two peoples may have belonged to the same region, that is to say, to the countries which, under the Maurya empire, were included in the viceroyalty of Ujjain. It is with the kingdom of Vidiçā, which forms part of this region, that the Çuṅgas are especially associated in literature and inscriptions.

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³ *Vedic Index*, II, pp. 97–8, 316–7.

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The dynastic list of the ten Çuṅga kings is as follows⁴:

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⁴ *Cf. Kali Age*, pp. 30–3, 70.

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| 1. Pushyamitra reigned | 36 | years. | 6. Pulindaka reigned | 3 | years. |
| 2. Agnimitra reigned | 8 | „ | 7. Ghosha reigned | 3 | „ |
| 3. Vasujyeshṭha (Sujyesṭha) r. | 7 | „ | 8. Vajramitra reigned | 9 or 7 | „ |
| 4. Vasumitra (Sumitra) reigned | 10 | „ | 9. Bhāga (Bhāgavata) reigned | 32 | „ |
| 5. Odraka (Andhraka etc.) r. | 2 or 7 | „ | 10. Devabhūti reigned | 10 | „ |

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When allowance is made for the uncertainty as to the length of the fifth and eighth reigns and for the fact that the computation is by whole years without regard to fractions, the total duration ascribed to the dynasty, viz. 112 years, may well be correct; and, if so, the rule of the Çuṅgas came to an end c. 72 B.C.

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In Buddhist literature Pushyamitra figures as a great persecutor of the Buddhists, bent on acquiring fame as the annihilator of Buddha's doctrine. He meditated the destruction of the Kukkuṭārāma, the great monastery which Açoka had built for 1000 monks to the south-east of Pāṭaliputra; but, as he approached the entrance, he was met with the roar as of a mighty lion and hastily withdrew in fear to the city. He then went to Çākala (Siālkot) in the E. Punjab and attempted to exterminate the Buddhist community there, offering a reward of 100 *dīnāras* for the head of every monk. The end of this persecutor of the faith was brought about by superhuman interposition¹.

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¹ *Divyāvadāna*, pp. 433–4.

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Underlying such legends we may no doubt recognise certain historical facts. Pushyamitra was regarded as a champion of the Brāhman reaction which set in after the triumph of Buddhism during Açoka's reign. He was remembered as a king of Magadha and as suzerain over dominions in the Punjab which had owned the sway of his Maurya predecessors. The subsequent fate of his chief capital, Pāṭaliputra, is obscure; but Çākala was soon—within his own lifetime as it would seem—to be wrested from the Çuṅgas by the Yavanas and to become the capital of king Menander (p. 549).

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Some of the events of Pushyamitra's reign are also reflected in the earliest of Kālidāsa's dramas, the *Mālavikāgnimitra*, the plot of which turns on the love of Agnimitra, king of Vidiçā and the viceroy of his father Pushyamitra, for Mālavikā, a princess of Vidarbha (Berār) living at his court in disguise. The play was produced before another viceregal court at Ujjain on the occasion of the Spring Festival in some year c. 400 a.d. during the reign of Chandragupta II Vikramāditya. Like nearly all Sanskrit dramas, it is little more than a story of intrigue. Its main interest is anything but historical; but some of its characters represent real personages, and certain references to the history of the adjacent kingdom of Vidiçā are appropriately introduced in the last Act. It would be unreasonable to suppose that these had no foundation in fact.

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The first of these references is to a war between Vidiçā and Vidarbha in which the former was victorious. As a result Vidarbha was divided into two provinces separated by the river Varadā, the modern Wardhā, which is now the boundary between Berār and the Central Provinces. It seems clear from what is known of the general history of this period that any such incursion of the Çuṅgas into this region must inevitably have brought them into collision with the Andhras, whose power had at this time extended across the Deccan from the eastern coast (p. 530). It has been assumed therefore with much probability that Yajñasena, the prince of Vidarbha in the play, must have been either an Andhra or a feudatory of the Andhras².

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² See Chapter xxiv, p. 600.

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The other incidental reference in the *Mālavikāgnimitra* confirms the account of a Greek invasion of the Midland Country given by the Yuga Purāṇa and supported by statements which appear as grammatical illustrations in Patañjali's commentary on Pāṇini (p. 544). The Yavana successors of Alexander the Great in the Punjab had evidently forced their way through the Delhi passage and attacked the very centre of the Çuṅga dominions. In the play a messenger comes to Agnimitra with a letter from Pushyamitra announcing his intention to perform the horse-sacrifice, the traditional Kshatriya rite whereby a king asserted his title to exercise suzerainty over his neighbours. The horse, as was the custom, had been set free to roam whithersoever he would for a year as a challenge to all opponents; and he was guarded by Pushyamitra's grandson, Vasumitra, the son of Agnimitra, attended by a hundred princes. The challenge was accepted by a body of Yavana cavalry, who tried to capture the horse as he wandered along the right bank of the river Sindhu; and a conflict ensued in which the Yavanas were defeated by the Çuṅgas. Pushyamitra's claim was thus maintained; and he proposed to celebrate this triumph by the performance of the sacrifice which Agnimitra, as one of the monarchs of his realm, was invited to attend. An allusion to this sacrifice may perhaps be preserved in another grammatical example used by Patañjali¹; and, as we have seen (p. 302), it is probably to the solemn recitation of the suzerain's lineage on such occasions that we owe the dynastic lists preserved in the Purāṇas.

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¹ Bhandarkar, *Ind. Ant.*, 1872, p. 300.

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Unfortunately we cannot be certain as to the river on whose banks the encounter between the Yavanas and the Çuṅgas took place; but the choice seems to lie between the Kālī Sindhu, a tributary of the Charmaṇvatī (Chambal) flowing within a hundred miles of Madhyamikā (near Chitor), which was besieged by the Yavanas (p. 544), and the Sindhu, a tributary of the Jumna which would naturally be passed by invading forces on the route between Mathurā (Muttra) and Prayāga (Allahābād).

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Of Agnimitra nothing is known beyond such information as may be gleaned from the *Mālavikāgnimitra* and the Purāṇas. The combined evidence of these two sources may be interpreted to mean that, after ruling at Vidiçā as his father's viceroy, he was his successor as suzerain for a period of eight years. Whether the Agnimitra, whose coins are found in N. Pañchāla and who was therefore presumably king of Ahicchatra, can be identified with the Çuṅga king of that name is uncertain (p. 525; Pl. V, 3).

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The fate of the fourth king in the list, Vasumitra or Sumitra, who as a youthful prince guarded the sacrificial horse and defeated the Yavanas, is told in the Harshacharita: ‘Sumitra, son of Agnimitra, being over fond of the drama, was attacked by Mitradeva in the midst of actors, and with a scimitar shorn, like a lotus stalk, of his head’¹. Who Mitradeva was we can only conjecture; but it seems not improbable that he may have been the king’s minister and a Kaṇva Brāhman of the same family as Vasudeva, who is said to have brought about the fall of the dynasty through the assassination of the last king Devabhūti. It may be that we have here an indication of the growth of that influence, which so often in Indian history has transferred the real power in the state from the prince to the minister, from the Kshatriya to the Brāhman.

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¹ Trans. Cowell and Thomas, p. 192.

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The next name in the list appears in many disguises in the MSS. as Odruka, Andhraka, Bhadraka, etc. Mr Jayaswal has given good reasons for supposing that the original form from which all these varieties are derived was *Odraka*, and he has shown further that this name is most probably to be restored in the Pabhosā inscr. no. 904, which should therefore be regarded as dated ‘in the tenth year of Odraka.’ If these acute and plausible suggestions may be accepted, we must conclude that the region of Pabhosā—the ancient kingdom of Kauçāmbī, as seems most likely (p. 524)—was included at this period in the sovereignty of the Çuṅgas; but at the same time we must recognise that an error has crept into the text of the Purāṇas, which, as they stand, assign either two or seven years to this king².

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² Cf. Jayaswal, *Jour. of the Bihar and Orissa Research Soc.*, Dec. 1917, pp. 473–5, with Führer, *Ep. Ind.* II, pp. 240–3, and Pargiter, *Kali Age*, p. 31.

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There appears to be no reason for doubting that the last king but one, the Bhāga or Bhāgavata of the Purāṇas, is the Bhāgabhadra, in the fourteenth year of whose reign the Besnagar column was erected by Heliodorus, son of Dion, the Yavana ambassador who had come to the court of Vidiçā from Antialcidas, king of Takshaçilā (p. 558). This identification enables us to bring the histories of the Çuṅgas and the Yavanas into relation with each other, and to determine, naturally within limits of possible error, a fixed point in their chronology. If the duration of reigns as given in the Purāṇas, confused though it is by textual corruptions, be approximately correct, the fourteenth year of king Bhāgabhadra (within a few years of 90 B.C., whether earlier or later) may well have fallen within the reign of Antialcidas, if, as seems not unlikely, he was the successor of Heliocles and came to the throne c. 120 B.C.¹

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¹ See Chapters XVII, p. 461 and XXII, p. 559.

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The name of this Çuṅga king appears as Bhāgavata on a fragment of another column which was found at Bhilsa, but which is supposed to have been taken there from Besnagar. The inscription was engraved when the king was reigning in his twelfth year². Another king of the same name is known from the Pabhosā inscr. no. 905; but the two cannot be identified as their metronymics are different: the king at Pabhosā is the son of Tevaṇī, while the king at Vidiçā is the son of Kāçī, i.e. a princess from Benares.

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² R. D. Bhandarkar, *Arch. Sur. of Ind., Annual Report*, 1913–4, p. 190; Ramaprasad Chanda, *J.R.A.S.*, 1919, p. 396; *Memoirs of the Arch. Sur. of Ind.*, 1920 (no. 5), p. 152.

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With the assassination of the dissolute Devabhūti the line of the Çuṅgas comes to a close. Of the deed the Harshacharita gives a fuller account than the Purāṇas: 'In a frenzy of passion the over-libidinous Çuṅga was at the instance of his minister Vasudeva reft of his life by a daughter of Devabhūti's slave woman disguised as his queen' (Trans. Cowell and Thomas, p. 193). This minister was a Kaṇva Brāhman; and the Purāṇas, in their present form, make him the founder of a line of Kaṇva kings, who were themselves succeeded by the Andhras. But, as we have seen (pp. 317–8), this is history distorted. The Purāṇas have been edited, and, in the process, much of their value as records has been destroyed. Certain incidental statements, however, have escaped the editor; and these seem to show that the Kaṇvas and the Çuṅgas were contemporary. The Kaṇvas, who are expressly called 'ministers of the Çuṅgas,' are, in some versions, said to have become kings 'among the Çuṅgas'³; and, as has been observed already, the Andhras are credited with sweeping away not only the Kaṇvas, but also 'what was left of the Çuṅgas' power' (*ibid.*). With regard to the Andhras, the more certain evidence of inscriptions assigns them to a period which is in flagrant contradiction to the position which they occupy in the Purāṇas (p. 530).

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³ *Kali Age*, pp. 34, 71.

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We may conclude, then, that the Çuṅgas were a military power, and that they became puppets in the hands of their Brāhman counsellors. They ruled originally as feudatories of the Mauryas at Vidiçā, the modern Besnagar, on the Vetravatī (Betwa), near Bhīlsa and about 120 miles east of Ujjain. In the letter, which is read in the last Act of the *Mālavikāgnimitra*, both Pushyamitra and Agnimitra are ‘of Vidiçā’; and Vidiçā remained their western capital after no small portion of the Maurya empire had fallen into their hands, and many, perhaps most, of the kings of Northern and Central India had become their feudatories.

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The importance of Vidiçā, the chief city of Ākara or Daçārṇa (E. Mālwa), was due to its central position on the lines of communication between the seaports of the western coast and Pāṭaliputra, and between Pratishṭhāna (Paithan), the western capital of the Andhras on the S.W., and Çrāvastī (Set Mahet) on the N.E. The ancient monuments in its neighbourhood are among the most remarkable and extensive to be found in India. At various villages within a radius of about twelve miles of the present town of Bhilsa there are groups of Buddhist *stūpas*, numbering some sixty in all, which are known collectively as the Bhilsa Topes, and of which the most celebrated are those of Sānchī. The inscriptions as well as the style of the architecture and sculpture of these monuments show that they belong to the three successive periods of Maurya, Çuṅga, and Andhra supremacy. But the importance of this region may be traced back to a still earlier date; for at the ancient site of Eran, about forty miles N.E. of Bhilsa, are found the finest specimens of the early punch-marked coinage, and here too was discovered the earliest known example of an Indian inscribed coin, which records the name of a king Dharmapāla (Pl. V, 1). Its Brāhmī legend runs, like Kharoshṭhī, from right to left, and was supposed by Bühler to represent an earlier stage in the history of this alphabet than that which appears in the edicts of Açoka¹.

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¹ *Indische Palaeographie*, p. 8.

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Some of the feudatories of the Çuṅgas are known from their inscriptions and coins. The only ancient monuments, on which the tribal name of the imperial dynasty has yet been found, came from the Buddhist *stūpa* at Bhārhut, in the Nāgod State of Central India, about 185 miles N.E. of Vidiçā². Here two gateways were dated ‘in the sovereignty of the Çuṅgas.’ One of these (inscr. no. 687) was erected by Dhanabhūti ‘Vācchiputa,’ i.e. ‘son of a princess of Vatsa (Kauçāmbī),’ and the other (inscr. no. 688) by some member of the same family. The name Dhanabhūti occurs also in an inscription at Mathurā (no. 125) and may be restored with certainty in the record of a donation made by his queen, Nāgarakhitā, at Bhārhut (no. 882). From these sources combined we may reconstruct the family tree of this king from his grandfather, king Visadeva, to his son, prince Vādhapāla; and we may conclude that this family ruled at Bhārhut, and that it was connected in some way with the royal family at Mathurā, more than 250 miles to the N.W. As none of the four names is found in the list of Çuṅgas given by the Purāṇas, it is most probable that the kings of this line were feudatories, though they may have been related to the imperial house by family ties.

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² Chapter XXVI, p. 624.

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Acting on Mr Jayaswal’s illuminating suggestion (p. 521), we may perhaps venture to trace the feudatory kings of this dynasty to Kauçāmbī, 80 miles N.E. of Bhārhut, and to Ahicchatra, 250 miles N.W. of Kauçāmbī. The question of the site of Kauçāmbī has been much debated, chiefly because of the impossibility of reconciling Cunningham’s identification (Kosam on the Jumna in the Allahābād District of the United Provinces) with the descriptions of Chinese Buddhist pilgrims. But in all this controversy it seems to have been forgotten that such descriptions may either have been incorrect originally or may have been misinterpreted subsequently. The tangible facts seem undoubtedly to support the identification of Kosam with Kauçāmbī. It must have been a city of great military strength. ‘The remains at Kosam include those of a vast fortress with earthern ramparts and bastions, four miles in circuit, with an average height of 30 to 35 feet above the general level of the country’ (*Imp. Gaz.* xv, p. 407). It was also an important commercial centre, as is indicated by the extraordinary variety of the coins found there; and at a later date the name of the place was unquestionably Kauçāmbī, as is proved by at least two inscriptions which have been actually discovered on the site¹. At a distance of two or three miles to the north-west of Kosam stands the sacred hill of Pabhosā (Prabhāsa), the solitary rock in this region of the doab between the Jumna and the Ganges; and on its scarp, in a position wellnigh inaccessible, there is a hermit’s cave ‘cut into the vertical face of a precipice 50 feet high’ (*J.A.S.B.* LVI, p. 31). In the seventh century a.d. it was believed to be the abode of a venomous dragon which was subdued by the Buddha, who left his shadow in the cave. Hiuen Tsiang, who tells the story, adds that the shadow was no longer visible in his day; but the most recent editor of the inscriptions, which are engraved inside and outside the cave, informs us that the country folk still believe in the dragon². One of these inscriptions (no. 904) records—if Mr Jayaswal’s reading is correct—that the cave was excavated in the tenth year of the reign of Odraka, the fifth of the Çuṅga kings. The donor was Āshāḍhasena, the maternal uncle of Bahasatimitra, who was presumably the feudatory king then ruling at Kauçāmbī and whose coins (Pl. V, 2) are found at Kosam. Bahasatimitra was thus, it seems, contemporary with Odraka, whose reign, according to the Purāṇas, began 61 years after the accession of the first Çuṅga king, i.e. c. 123 B.C.; and this date is in agreement with the period to which numismatists have, from entirely different considerations, assigned the coins of Bahasatimitra. The coinage of the kings of Kauçāmbī seems to begin in the third century B.C. and to extend over a period of about three hundred years¹.

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¹ *J.R.A.S.*, 1898, p. 504; *Ep. Ind.* II, p. 244.

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² Watters, *On Yuan Chwang*, I, p. 371; Führer, *Ep. Ind.* II, p. 241.

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¹ Cunningham, *Coins of Ancient India*, p. 73, Pl. V, 7–18; Rapson, *Indian Coins*, pp. 12, 13.

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The donor of the cave at Pabhosā traces his descent from the kings of Ahicchatra, the northern capital of the Pañchālas in the Bareilly District; and the inscriptions give the genealogy of his family for five generations beginning with his great-grandfather, Çonakāyana, and ending with his nephew, Bahasatimitra. The line is carried two stages farther by the Morā inscription which describes the daughter of Bahasatimitra (Bṛihāsvātimitra) as the wife of the king (of Mathurā) and 'the mother of living sons' (*J.R.A.S.* 1912, p. 120). In the patronymic, Çonakāyana, 'the scion of the house of Çonaka,' we may perhaps see an allusion to the glories of Pañchāla in the heroic age, when, as is recounted in one of the ancient verses preserved by the Çatapatha Brāhmaṇa, king Çoṇa Sātrāsāha celebrated his triumphs by the performance of the horse-sacrifice². No detailed list of the earlier historical kings of Pañchāla occurs in the Purāṇas; but coins found in the neighbourhood of Ahicchatra—now a vast mound three and a half miles in circumference on the north of the village of Rāmnagar—have preserved the names of about a dozen of their successors in the Çuṅga period³. Among the kings thus known there appears an Agnimitra (Pl. V, 3), who has often been supposed to be identical with the second Çuṅga king. There seems to be no evidence at present either to prove or to disprove the suggestion. The identity of name may well be accidental, or, perhaps more probably, it may indicate that the royal families of Vidiçā and Ahicchatra were related. The name of another king of Ahicchatra, Indramitra, has been recognised in an inscription at Buddh Gayā (p. 526; Pl. V, 4).

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² *Vedic Index*, II, p. 395.

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³ Cunningham, *Coins of Ancient India*, p. 79, Pl. VII; Rapson, *Indian Coins*, p. 13.

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We may infer from the inscriptions at Pabhosā that, in the second century B.C., Pañchāla (Ahicchatra) and Vatsa (Kauçāmbī) were governed by branches of the same royal family, and that both kingdoms acknowledged the suzerainty of the Çuṅgas. The history of Kauçāmbī may be traced back to the time when the Pūrus (Kurus) removed thither after their capital, Hastināpura, had been destroyed by an inundation of the Ganges¹. We now find this city under the rule of a house in which Kurus and Pañchālas had no doubt long been merged.

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¹ Chapter XIII, p. 308.

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Mathurā (Muttra) on the upper Jumna, about 270 miles in a straight line N.W. of Kauçāmbī, may perhaps have been another of the feudatory kingdoms. This sacred city, the Μόδουρα ἡ τῶν Θεῶν of Ptolemy (VII, 1, 50), was a stronghold both of the worship of Kṛishṇa and of Jainism; and it was the capital of the Çūrasenas, one of the leading peoples of the Midland Country. Its earlier rulers find a place in the Purāṇas, but only in the general summary of those dynasties which were contemporary with the Pūrus (p. 316); and coins have preserved the names of at least twelve later kings who reigned during the Çuṅga period². One of these, Balabhūti, is associated by the style and type of his coinage with Bahasatimitra of Kauçāmbī, whose daughter was married to a king of Mathurā (p. 525). The two kings were almost certainly ruling at about the same time; and it seems reasonable to assume, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, that they were both feudatories of the Çuṅgas. Another king of Mathurā, Brahmamitra (Pl. V, 6) was probably contemporary with king Indramitra of Ahicchatra (Pl. V, 4); for both names are found in the dedicatory inscriptions of queens on pillars of the railing at Buddh Gayā, which is assigned by archaeologists to the earlier part of the first century B.C. (p. 626).

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² Cunningham, *Coins of Ancient India*, pp. 85–90, Pl. VIII; Rapson, *Indian Coins*, p. 13; *J.R.A.S.*, 1900, pp. 109–11.

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Inscriptions show that in the second half of the first century B.C. the region of Mathurā had passed from native Indian to foreign (Çaka) rule³; and their evidence is confirmed and amplified by that of the coins. The characteristic type of the kings of Mathurā is a standing figure, which has been supposed to represent the god Kṛishṇa (Pl. V, 5, Gomitra); and this type is continued by their conquerors and successors, the satraps of the Çaka King of Kings. Rañjubula (Rājuvula) and his son Çoḍāsa (Pl. V, 9, 10) are known also from inscriptions; and the date on the Āmohinī votive tablet, if it has been rightly interpreted, shows that the latter was ruling as great satrap in 17–6 B.C. (pp. 575–6). Çoḍāsa was preceded by his father, Rañjubula, who ruled first as satrap and afterwards as great satrap; and Rañjubula appears to have been the successor of satraps who are known only from their coins—Hagāmasha (Pl. V, 7), and Hagāna ruling conjointly with Hagāmasha (Pl. V, 8). These numismatic indications all tend to support the conclusion that by about the middle of the first century B.C. the Çaka dominion was fully established in that region of the Jumna river which lies beyond the south-eastern limits of the Punjab.

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³ See Chapter XXIII, pp. 575–6.

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By c. 72 B.C., according to the chronology of the Purāṇas, the dynasty of the Çuṅgas had come to an end. In the present state of Indian archaeology it seems impossible to trace the extension of the rule of those kings of Vidiçā who reigned after Pushyamitra beyond the region in which the Jumna and the Ganges meet, i.e. the ancient kingdom of the Vatsas (Kauçāmbī) and the present district of Allahābād. The investigation of ancient sites may no doubt some day throw light on the contemporary history of the countries which lay to the north and east of Kauçāmbī—Kosala (Oudh), Videha (N. Bihār), Kāçī (Benares), Magadha (S. Bihār), and Aṅga (Monghyr and Bhāgalpur); but the available evidence is not sufficient to enable us to determine whether the kingdoms in these countries were still united under one sovereignty, as in the time of Açoka, or whether they had become independent. Kosala is represented by coins of this period which are found on the site of Ayodhyā; but from these little information can be gleaned at present. They represent a line of about ten kings, of whom nothing is known but their names (Pl. V, 11, Āryamitra; 12, Mūladeva)¹. A king of Magadha and a king of Rājagṛiha are also mentioned in the inscription of Khāravela; but whether the former was still a powerful suzerain at this time, and whether the latter was anything more than a local prince ruling over the old capital of Magadha must remain doubtful until more definite evidence can be discovered (p. 537). The history of the famous kingdom of Magadha, once the centre of the empire, becomes utterly obscure. That for some time Pushyamitra continued to occupy the imperial throne which he had seized is a natural inference from those passages of the literature in which he is mentioned in connexion with Pāṭaliputra; but that he was able to hold it to the end, and to hand it down to his successors is at present not capable of proof. No certain traces of the later Çuṅgas or of their feudatories have yet been found in the region of Magadha.

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¹ Cunningham, *Coins of Ancient India*, p. 90, Pl. IX; Rapson, *Indian Coins*, p. 11; *J.R.A.S.*, 1903, p. 287.

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But in addition to the powers which dominated the kingdoms on the great highways of communication, there were in less accessible regions numerous independent states; and of some of these the coins of this period have preserved a record. These communities were military clans or groups of clans; and they were governed sometimes by kings, but more often by tribal oligarchies. They were Kshatriyas; and by this name, the common designation of them all, they are known to the historians of Alexander the Great in two districts—in the north of the Punjab to the east of the Rāvi (p. 371), and in the south-west where the Indus and the Sutlej meet (Xathri, p. 376). They were the ancestors of the Rājputs who played a most important part in the history of Northern India at a later date, and their coins are found throughout the regions to which modern ethnologists trace the origin of the Rājputs:

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The cradle of the Rājput is the tract named after him (Rājputāna), not, however, as it is limited in the present day, but extending from the Jamnā to the Narbadā and Satlaj, including, therefore, the whole of Mālva, Bundelkhand, and parts of Agra and the Panjāb. From the northern parts of this tract there seems to have been an early movement of conquest up the western rivers of the Panjāb, as far as the Himālaya and Kashmīr, whereby was laid the foundation of the predominance of the tribes still in possession. (Baines, *Ethnography*, p. 29.)

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Examples of such early Rājput states are the Yaudheya confederation in 'the southern portion of the Punjab...and the northern parts of Rājputāna' (*J.R.A.S.*, 1897, p. 887), and the Ārjunāyanas in the Bhartpur and Alwar States of Rājputāna (*ibid.* p. 886). Both the Yaudheyas, 'Warriors,' and the Ārjunāyanas, 'Descendants of Arjuna,' are mentioned by Pāṇini in the fourth century B.C.; both issued coins as early as the first century B.C.; and both appear among the peoples on the frontiers of the Gupta empire in the Allahābād inscription of Samudragupta c. 380 A.D. Other states struck coins with the bare legend 'Of the Rājanya (Kshatriya) Country.' It is impossible at present to determine with much precision the localities in which these coins were issued; but similarity of type suggests that one variety may belong to the same region as the coins of the Ārjunāyanas and the kings of Mathurā (Pl. V, 13)¹.

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¹ Rapson, *Indian Coins*, pp. 11–13, and Pll. III, 20 and IV, 1.

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The mountainous fringe of country on the north of the Punjab and the United Provinces was also occupied at this period by independent native Indian states; and the names of some of them have similarly been preserved by the coins, which were no doubt the result of commerce between these peoples of the hills and the lowlanders. In the Gurdāspur District of the Punjab there lived the Udumbaras, who claimed to be descended from Viçvāmitra, the rishi of the third book of the Rigveda¹. His figure appears on the coins of their king, Dharāghosha, whose reign must probably be assigned to the latter half of the first century B.C., since his coinage is evidently imitated from that of the Çaka king Azilises (Pl. V, 14, Dharāghosha; 15, Azilises). Of a somewhat later date, perhaps of the first or second century A.D., are the coins of the Kulūtas, the eastern neighbours of the Udumbaras, in the Kulū valley of the Kāngra District; and to the same period as the coins of the Udumbaras belong the earlier issues of the Kuṇindas who inhabited the country of the Sutlej in the Simla Hill States (Pl. V, 16, Amoghabhūti). These three peoples, the Udumbaras, the Kulūtas, and the Kuṇindas, lived on the border between the regions in which the two ancient alphabets, Brāhmī and Kharoshṭhī, prevailed: they accordingly used both of them in their coin-legends. To a branch of the Kuṇindas (or Kulindas, as they are called in the Purāṇas), whose territories 'extended further east along the southern slopes of the Himalayas as far as Nepal' (Pargiter, *Mārk. Pur.* p. 316), are probably also to be attributed the coins of two kings which have been found in the Almora District (Pl. V, 17, Çivadata)².

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¹ Cf. Pargiter, *Mārk. Pur.* p. 355. For the connexion between Viçvāmitra and the country of the Beās, see *Vedic Index*, II, p. 310.

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² For the coins of Kulūta, see Bergny, *J.R.A.S.*, 1900, p. 415; for other coins mentioned in this paragraph see the references in Rapson, *Indian Coins*, pp. 10–12.

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The 'unsubdued' peoples on the southern borders of the Maurya dominions were, during the Çuṅga period, united under the suzerainty of the most powerful among them, the Andhras, whose home was in the coastal region of the Madras Presidency between the rivers Godāvari and Kistna³. The dynasty, which is known by its tribal name in the Purāṇas and by its family name or title, Çātavāhana, in inscriptions, is traced back to king Simuka, who was succeeded by his younger brother, Kṛishṇa. At some date in the reign of Simuka or Kṛishṇa the Andhra conquests had extended up the valley of the river Godāvari for its whole length, a distance of some nine hundred miles, to the table-land of the Nāsik District. This is proved by the inscription (no. 1144) in one of the Nāsik caves which was excavated when Kṛishṇa was king. Already the Çātavāhanas had justified their claim to the title, 'Lords of the Deccan (Dakshiṇāpatha),' which they bear in their later inscriptions. The third of the line and the best known of the earlier kings was called Çātakarṇi, a name which, to the perplexity of modern students of Indian history, was borne by several of his successors on the throne.

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³ See Chapter XXIV, pp. 598–9. The inscriptions from Bhaṭṭiprolu near the mouth of the Kistna in the Guntūr District (*c.* 200 B.C.) mention a king Khubiraka or Kubiraka (Kuvera) who is otherwise unknown; see Bühler, *Ep. Ind.* II, pp. 323 ff.

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The exact date of the establishment of the Andhra suzerainty cannot be determined from the discrepant accounts given by different Purāṇas of the kings and the duration of their reigns; but it is clear that the most complete of the extant lists can only be interpreted as indicating that the founder, Simuka, began to reign before 200 B.C.¹ To this extent the evidence of the Purāṇas confirms the opinion of Bühler, who from epigraphical considerations assigned the Nāsik inscription of the second king, Kṛishṇa, to 'the times of the last Mauryas or the earliest Çuṅgas, in the beginning of the second century B.C.'² It is therefore possible that Kṛishṇa's immediate successor, the third Andhra king, Çātakarṇi, may have been contemporary with the first Çuṅga king, Pushyamitra (c. 184–148 B.C.). As we shall see (p. 535) this same Çātakarṇi was probably also contemporary with Khāravela, king of Kaliṅga.

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¹ The accession of the twenty-third king, Gautamīputra Çātakarṇi, must be dated 106 A.D. or a few years later; see Rapson, B.M. Cat., *Coins of the Andhra Dynasty &c.*, p. xxx. If a calculation be made from this fixed point, the maximum readings of the Purāṇas would indicate c. 244 B.C., and the minimum readings c. 202 B.C., as the date of Simuka's accession; cf. *Kali Age*, pp. 38–42, 71, with B.M. Cat., pp. lxvi, lxvii.

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² *Arch. Sur. West. Ind.* IV, p. 98.

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For the history of this period the cave-inscriptions of Nānāghāt (nos. 1112–20) are of the highest importance. They prove by their situation that the Andhras now held the Nāna pass, which leads from Junnar in the Deccan to the Konkan, the coastal region of Western India. Most of them describe statues of members of the royal family—Simuka, the founder of the line, Çātakarṇi himself and his queen Nāganikā, a Mahāraṭhi, and three princes. But most valuable of all is the inscription, unfortunately fragmentary, of the queen (no. 1112). She was the daughter of a Mahāraṭhi, i.e. a king of the Rāshṭrikas; and we must conclude therefore that the incorporation of the Marāthā country in the Andhra empire had been ratified by a matrimonial alliance between the two royal houses. The inscription records the performance of certain great sacrifices and the fees paid to the officiating priests—fees which testify eloquently to the wealth of the realm and to the power of the Brāhman hierarchy at this date—tens of thousands of cows, thousands of horses, numbers of elephants, whole villages, and huge sums of money (tens of thousands of *kārshāpaṇas*). Twice, it appears, had Çātakarṇi proclaimed his suzerainty by the performance of the horse-sacrifice; and, on one of these occasions at least, the victory thus celebrated must have been at the expense of the Çuṅgas, if we are right in supposing that the appearance of the Andhras of Southern India in the dynastic lists of the Purāṇas indicates that, at some period, they held the position of suzerains in Northern India (p. 318). That the Andhras did actually come into conflict with the Çuṅgas during the reign of Pushyamitra appears probable from the *Mālavikāgnimitra* (p. 519). On this occasion the Çuṅgas were victorious; but this was no doubt merely an episode in the struggle in which the Andhras were finally triumphant. The progress of this intruding power from its western stronghold, Pratishṭhāna, first to Ujjayinī and subsequently to Vidiçā seems to be indicated by the evidence of coins and inscriptions.

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Pratishṭhāna, the modern Paithan on the north bank of the Godāvari in the Auraṅgābād District of Hyderābād, is famous in literature as the capital of king Çātakarṇi (Çātavāhana or Sālivāhana) and his son Çakti-kumāra; and there can be little doubt that these are to be identified with the king Çātakarṇi and the prince Çakti-çrī of the Nānāghāt inscriptions. The Andhras in this region were separated by the rivers Tāptī and Narbadā from the kingdoms of Ujjayinī and Vidiçā, which lay along the central route from the coast to Pāṭaliputra; and the lines of communication between Pratishṭhāna and these kingdoms passed through the city of Māhishmatī (Mandhātā on the Narbadā in the Nimār District of the Central Provinces). Numismatic testimony, if it has been rightly interpreted, shows that at this period the Andhras had traversed the intervening territories and conquered the kingdom of Ujjayinī. Their earliest known coins bear the name of a king Sāta, who is probably to be identified with Çātakarṇi; and they are of what numismatists call the ‘Mālwā fabric’ and of that particular variety which is characteristic of the coins of W. Mālwā (Avanti), the capital of which was Ujjayinī¹. If we may suppose, then, that Çātakarṇi was the actual conqueror, his performance of the horse-sacrifice is evidently explained; for Ujjayinī was one of the most famous of all the cities of India, and its conquest may well have entitled the Andhra kings to a place in the imperial records preserved by the Purāṇas. It was, and still is, one of the seven holy places of Hinduism². Such fragments of its ancient

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¹ Rapson, *B.M. Cat., Coins of the Andhra Dynasty &c.*, p. xcii.

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² The seven are recorded in the couplet:

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*Ayodhyā, Mathurā, Māyā, Kāçī, Kāñcī, Avantikā,*
*purī Dvāravatī caiva, saptaitā mokṣadāyikāḥ.*

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history as may be recovered from the past are given elsewhere¹; and the indigenous coins which can be attributed to this period add little to our knowledge. The only inscribed specimen yet discovered bears the name of the city in its Prākrit form, *Ujeni* (Pl. V, 18). Other coins have a type which has been supposed to represent the god Çiva (Pl. V, 19), whose temple stood in the Mahākāla forest to the north of the city. It was destroyed by the Muhammadans in the thirteenth century A.D., and the present temple was built on its site.

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¹ Chapters VII, pp. 185–7; XIII, pp. 310–1.

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It appears most likely, then, that Ujjayinī was wrested from the first Çuṅga king, Pushyamitra, by Çātakarṇi. Of its history for many years to come we have no information. We can only infer from the conditions of the time that its politics cannot have been dissevered from those of the neighbouring kingdom of Vidiçā; and early in the first century, c. 90 B.C., we find evidence of the existence of diplomatic relations between Vidiçā, which was still under the rule of the Çuṅgas, and the Yavana house of Eucratides at Takshaçilā in the north-west of the Punjab (p. 521). There were therefore at this period three powers which were politically important from the point of view of Ujjayinī—the Yavanas in the north, the Çuṅgas on the east, and the Andhras of Pratishṭhāna in the south; and it is probable, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, that Ujjayinī remained in the possession of the last of these. But a few years later, c. 75 B.C., there arose another formidable power on the west. The Scythians (Çakas) of Seistān had occupied the delta of the Indus, which was known thereafter to Indian writers as Çakadvīpa, 'the doāb of the Çakas,' and to the Greek geographers as Indo-Scythia. The memory of an episode in the history of Ujjayinī as it was affected by this new element in Indian politics may possibly be preserved in the Jain story of Kālaka, which is told in Chapter VI, pp. 167–8. The story can neither be proved nor disproved; but it may be said in its favour that its historical setting is not inconsistent with what we know of the political circumstances of Ujjayinī at this period. A persecuted party in the state may well have invoked the aid of the warlike Çakas of Çakadvīpa in order to crush a cruel despot; and, as history has so often shown, such allies are not unlikely to have seized the kingdom for themselves. Both the tyrant Gardabhilla, whose misdeeds were responsible for the introduction of these avengers, and his son Vikramāditya, who afterwards drove the Çakas out of the realm, according to the story, may perhaps be historical characters; and, from the account which represents Vikramāditya as having come to Ujjayinī from Pratishṭhāna, we may infer that they were connected with the Andhras¹. It is possible that we may recognise in this story the beginnings of that long struggle between the Andhras and the Çakas for the possession of Ujjayinī, the varying fortunes of which may be clearly traced when the evidence of inscriptions becomes available in the second century A.D.² With the imperfect documents at our disposal, we can do little more than suggest such possibilities. It is hopeless to attempt to discriminate between the elements which may be historical and others which are undoubtedly pure romance in the great cycle of legend which has gathered around the name, or rather the title, Vikramāditya, 'the Sun of Might.' Many kings at different periods and in different countries of India have been so styled; and it seems that the exploits of more than one of them have been confused even in those legends which may be regarded as having some historical basis. While it is possible, nay even probable, that there may have been a Vikramāditya who expelled the Çakas from Ujjayinī in the first century B.C., it is certain that the monarch who finally crushed the Çaka power in this region was the Gupta emperor, Chandragupta II Vikramāditya (380–414 A.D.). Indian tradition does not distinguish between these two. It regards the supposed founder of the era, which began in 58 B.C. (p. 571), and the royal patron of Kālidāsa, who lived more than four hundred years later, as one and the same person.

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