Political History of Ancient India, from the Accession of Parikshit to the Extinction of the Gupta Dynasty c21.s3.3

c21.s3.3

We should, however, remember that there was no rule prohibiting the mention of ordinary queens in inscriptions. The mother of Princess Prabhāvatī, Kuberanāgā, was not the chief queen of Chandra Gupta II.² No doubt the title *Mahādevī* is once given to her in the Poona plates of her daughter in the year 13, but it is not repeated in the Riddhapur plates of the year 19, where she is called simply Kuberanāgā *devī* without the prefix *Mahādevī*, whereas Kumāra-devī, Datta-devī and even her own daughter, Prabhāvatī-guptā are styled *Mahādevīs*. The contrast is full of significance and we know as a matter of fact that the real *Mahādevī* (chief queen) of Chandra Gupta II was Dhruva-devī or Dhruva-Svāminī. Though Kuberanāgā was not the principal consort (*agramahishī*) of her husband, she is mentioned in the inscriptions of her daughter. On the other hand the names of queens, the mothers of kings, are sometimes omitted.¹ In the genealogical portion of the Banskhera and Madhuban plates the name of Yaśomatī as *Harsha's mother* is not mentioned, but in the Sonpat and the Nālandā *seals*² she is mentioned *both as the mother of Rājya-vardhana and as the mother of Harsha*. Therefore it is not safe to draw conclusions from a comparison of genealogies given on seals and those given in **ordinary praśastis.** From a comparative study of the seals and plaques referred to above on the one hand and ordinary panegyrical epigraphs on the other, two facts emerge, *viz.*, (*a*) genealogies given by the records of the former class are *fuller* than those given in the others, and (*b*) names of mothers of reigning kings that are invariably given (even though this meant repetition) in documents of the first group are sometimes omitted by the writers of *praśastis*, even though they be the names of the chief queens. There is no real analogy between the genealogy on the Bhitarī seal and that in the **Pillar** Inscriptions. *A seal should be compared to another seal and an ordinary praśasti with another document of the same class.*³