Political History of Ancient India, from the Accession of Parikshit to the Extinction of the Gupta Dynasty c22.s1.10

c22.s1.10

⁵ "Mālava" was graced by the presence of the Guptas as early as the fifth century. This is proved by the Udayagiri inscriptions of Chandragupta II and the Tumain inscription of Ghatotkacha Gupta. In the latter part of the sixth and the commencement of the seventh century, it seems to have been under the direct rule of a line of Guptas whose precise connection with the Great Guptas is not clear. Magadha was probably administered by local rulers like Kumārāmātya Mahārāja Nandana (A. D. 551-2?) of the Amauna plate, Gayā Dist., Ep. Ind., X, 49, and the Varmans (cf Nāgārjunī Hill Cave Ins., CII, 226; also Pūrṇavarman mentioned by Hiuen Tsang and Deva-varman, IA, X, 110). For a detailed discussion see Ray Chaudhuri, *JBORS*, XV, parts iii and iv (1929, pp. 651 f.). The precise location and extent of the "Mālava" of the "later Guptas" cannot be determined. In Ep. Ind., V, 229, the Daṇḍanāyaka Anantapāla, a feudatory of Vikramāditya VI, is said to have subdued the *Sapta Mālava* countries up to the Himālaya Mountains. This suggests that there were as many as seven countries called Mālava (cf, also Rice, *Mysore and Coorg*, 46). These were probably: (1) The country of the 'Mālavas' in the Western Ghats (*Kanarese Districts*, p. 569), (2) Mo-la-po (Mālavaka *āhāra* of Valabhī grants) on the Mahī governed by the Maitrakas, (3) Avanti in the wider sense of the term ruled by the Kaṭachchuris or Kalachuris of the Abhona plates (sixth century) and by a Brāhmaṇa family in the time of Hiuen Tsang Chinese pilgrim, (4) *Pūrva Mālava* (round Bhilsa), (5) District round Prayāga, Kauśāmbī and Fatehpur in U. P. (Smith, EHI, 4th ed., p. 350n.; IHQ. 1931. 150f.; *cf.* JRAS. 1903. 561), (6) part of eastern Rājputāna, (7) Cis-Sutlej districts of the Pañjāb together with some Himālayan territory. The later Guptas probably held (4) and (5) and at times, Magadha as well. The *Bhāgvata Purāṇa* (xii. 1. 36) whose date is not probably far removed from that of the later Guptas, associates Mālava with Arbuda (Abu) and distinguishes it from Avanti. The rulers of Mālava and Avanti are also distinguished from each other by Rājaśekhara in his *Viddhaśāla bhañjikā*, Act IV (p. 121 of Jīvānanda Vidyāsāgara's edition). Early, in the seventh century the Guptas seem to have lost Eastern Mālwa to the Kaṭachchuris. In the Vaḍner plates issued from Vidiśā (Besnagar) in or about A. D. 608, a Kaṭachchuri king, Śaṁkaragaṇa receives epithets that are palpably borrowed from the Allahabad *Praśasti* of Samudra Gupta. The overthrow of the Kaṭachchuris was effected by the early Chalukyas of Badami and South Gujarāt. Fleet points out (CII, 14) that three of the epithets of Samudra Gupta are applied to the Chalukya chieftain Vijayarāja in the Kaira grant of the year 394 (IA. VII. 248). Ādityasena of the later Gupta family, who ruled in the second half of the seventh century A. D., seems to be referred to in Nepalese inscriptions as 'King of Magadha'. Magadha, now replaced Eastern Mālwa as the chief centre of Gupta power.