Political History of Ancient India, from the Accession of Parikshit to the Extinction of the Gupta Dynasty c20.s3.48

c20.s3.48

It is not a little surprising that the Allahabad *Praśasti* contains no clear reference to the Vākāṭakas who are known to have dominated part of the region between Bundelkhand and the Pengaṅgā in the fifth century A.D. The earliest reference to the Vākāṭakas occurs in certain inscriptions of Amarāvatī.¹ The dynasty rose to power under Vindhyaśakti I and his son Pravarasena I. Pravarasena appears to have been succeeded in the northern part of his dominions by his grandson Rudrasena I. Pṛithivīsheṇa I, the son and successor of Rudrasena I, may have been a contemporary of Samudra Gupta and perhaps also of his son Chandragupta II, inasmuch as his son Rudrasena II married the daughter of the last-mentioned Gupta emperor. Pṛithivīsheṇa I's political influence extended over a fairly wide territory. The Nach-nē-kī-talāî and Ganj regions² were in all probability ruled by *his* vassal Vyāghra-deva. Professor Dubreuil, however, says that the Nāchnā and Ganj inscriptions, which mention Vyāghra, belong, not to Pṛithivīsheṇa I, but to his great-great-grandson Pṛithivīsheṇa II. This is improbable in view of the fact that from the time of Pṛithivīsheṇa II's great-grandfather, if not from a period still earlier, down to at least A.D. 528, the princes of the region which intervenes between Nāchnā and Ganj and the proper Vākāṭaka territory,³ owned the sway of the Gupta empire.