Political History of Ancient India, from the Accession of Parikshit to the Extinction of the Gupta Dynasty c26.30

c26.30

Mandaśor, the ancient Daśapura, was one of the most important Viceregal seats of the Early Gupta Empire. It was the Capital of a long line of margraves belonging to the Aulikara family¹ who governed part of Western Mālwa on behalf of the Emperor Chandra Gupta II Vikramāditya and his son Kumāra Gupta I Mahendrāditya. With the sixth century A.D., however, a new scene opened. Yaśodharman, ruler of Mandaśor about A.D. 533, emboldened no doubt by his success over the Huns, defied the power of the Gupta lords (*Guptanātha*), and set up pillars of victory commemorating his conquests, which, in the words of his court panegyrist, embraced the whole of Hindusthān from the river Lauhitya, or the Brahmaputra, to the Westrn Ocean, and from the Himālayas to the mountain Mahendra or the Eastern Ghāṭs. After his death the Guptas figure again as lords of Mālava (Eastern Mālwa) in literature and possibly in inscriptions of the time of Harsha. But Western Mālwa could not be recovered by the family. Part of it was, as we have already seen, included within the dominions of the Maitrakas. Another part, *viz.*, Avanti or the district round Ujjain, the proud capital of Vikramāditya and Mahendrāditya in the fifth century A.D.,² is found in the next centuries in the possession of Saṁkaragaṇa of the Kaṭachchhuri or Kalachuri dynasty¹ and Kharagraha. I of the Maitraka line which gave way to a Brāhmaṇa family in the days of Hiuen Tsang.² which in its turn, was replaced by the Rāshtrakūṭas, the Gurjara Pratihāras and other families.³