The Dynastic History of Northern India (Early Mediaeval Period) v1.c16.4

Language: English

v1.c16.4.1

It is now generally agreed that the Gupta empire survived the shock of the Hūṇa invasions and continued up to the beginning of the 6th century A.D. There is evidence to show that at least in the east its disintegration began soon after that time. Thus the absence of the word Gupta, in *Mahārāja-Rājaputra-Deva Bhaṭṭāraka*, the name of the governor in the fifth Damodarpur plate may indicate that he was the son of a local *rājā* of Northern Bengal who in 543 A.D. perhaps acknowledged only a nominal suzerainty of the Gupta sovereigns.¹ The discovery of the Faridpur plates, which are referred to the 6th century A.D. reveals the presence of a line of independent rulers in Southern Bengal,² while the Vappaghoṣavāṭa inscription of Jayanāga³ seems to indicate the presence of another line of independent rulers in Karṇasuvarṇaka in the latter half of the 6th century A.D. Whether they had any connection with the Gupta governors of Northern Bengal referred to above is a question that cannot be answered in the present state of our knowledge. But that there grew up an independent power in Bengal side by side with the decadent Gupta power in Magadha is shown by the references to the clash of the Maukharis and the ‘Gauḍas living on the seashore’ in the Harāhā inscription of Iśānavarman (554 A.D.).⁴ It remained for Saśāṅka to extend the power of the Gauḍas from Kanauj in the west to Ganjam in the south.⁵ But his empire was short-lived.

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Attacked on both flanks by Harṣa and Bhāskaravarman, he appears to have retreated into the hill-tracts of Orissa. The former annexed Magadha, while the latter to judge from the position of his victorious camp at Karṇasuvarṇa, overran North and West Bengal.⁶ During the reign of Harṣa, the rest of Bengal and Bihar appears to have been divided into a number of independent and semi-independent states. These were (1) *I-lan-na-po-fa-to* (Hiraṇyaparvata?, country round the hill of Monghyr), (2) *Chan-p'o* (Campā, Bhagalpur District), (3) *Ka-chu-wên* (?) *k'i-lo* (Kajaṅgala, area round Rajmahal), (4) *Pun-na-fa-tan-na* (Puṇḍra-vardhana, North Bengal to the west of the Karatoya), (5) *San-mo-ta-t‘a* (Samataṭa, Bengal delta between the Hugli and Hill Tippera), (6) *Tan-mo-lih-ti* (Tāmralipti, portions of Midnapore and the 24-Parganas) and (7) *Kie* (*ka*)*-lo-na-su-fa-la-na* (Karṇasuvarṇa, probably portions of Nadia, Burdwan, Birbhum and Murshidabad districts).¹ A critical study of Yuan Chwang's account seems to indicate that though Harṣa sometimes passed through these tracts in the course of his invasions, they did not form a part of his empire.² After the death of Harṣa, the troubled state of the Ganges valley appears to have helped the extension of Tibetan power in the south. The Chinese and Tibetan documents however never tell us whether Tibet actually held Bengal and Bihar;

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and it seems likely that whatever influence Tibet had over these tracts, came to an end about the year 703 A.D., when, according to the T'ang annals, Nepal and India threw off the suzerainty of Tibet.³ During the second half of the 7th century, we have the records of two important lines of princes ruling in Bengal and Bihar. These were the Guptas of Magadha⁴ and the Khaḍgas of Samataṭa.⁵ As the Shahpur image-inscription of Ādityasena gives for him the date A.D. 672-73, and as a Deoghar epigraph preserves the memory of his performing ‘Aśvamedha and other great sacrifices’ and of having ruled ‘the whole earth up to the oceans,’ it is not unlikely that it was this Gupta sovereign who was instrumental in throwing off the yoke of Tibet in 703 A.D. The extent of the rule of these later Guptas is not exactly known. All their inscriptions have been so far discovered in the districts of Gaya, Patna, Bhagalpur and Shahabad of Bihar. But their conflict with the Maukharis of the U. P., their wars on the banks of the Lauhitya, and the possible identification of Mādhavagupta of the Aphsad stone inscription with the Malwa prince Mādhavagupta of Bāṇa's *Harṣacarita*, would indicate a wider extent of power than the distribution of their inscriptions suggests.¹ In this connection it is interesting to note that the *Kumārāmātya* Lokanātha of the recently discovered Tippera grant dated in year 44 (Harṣa era? = A.D.

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650) has been referred to by some scholars as a feudatory of this Gupta prince Ādityasena.² But he was more probably a vassal of the Khaḍgas. The inscriptions of the Khaḍgas have been so far found in the Dacca and Comilla districts in Bengal. The possible identification of Rājabhaṭa,³ king of Samataṭa at the time of Seng-Chi's visit to India (*c.* 650—700 A.D.) with Rājarāja of the Ashrafpur plate (B) and the suggested reading of the date in the same plate as 73 or 79 (=679 or 685 A.D.), which has now been found to be not inconsistent with the palaeographic data of the records, would tend to place these rulers in the periods *c.* 650-700 A.D.⁴ Karmanta, the place of residence of these princes has been identified with modern Kamta near Comilla.