Political History of Ancient India, from the Accession of Parikshit to the Extinction of the Gupta Dynasty c26.37.1

c26.37.1

Like the Maukharis, the rulers of Bengal, too, seem to have thrown off the Gupta yoke in the second half of the sixth century A.D. In the fourth and fifth centuries Bengal undoubtedly acknowledged the suzerainty of the Gupta Empire. The reference to Samataṭa in Eastern Bengal as a *pratyanta* or border state in the Allahabad Pillar Inscription of the emperor Samudra Gupta proves that the Imperial dominions must have embraced the whole of western and central Bengal, while the inclusion of northern Bengal (Pauṇḍravardhana *bhukti*) within the empire from the days of Kumāra Gupta I (A. D. 443-44) to A. D. 543-44¹ is sufficiently attested by the Dāmodarpur plates. Samataṭa, though originally outside the limits of the Imperial provinces, had, nevertheless, been forced to feel the irresistible might of the Gupta arms. The Harāhā Inscription of Iśānavarman, however, shows that the political situation had changed completely about the middle of the sixth century A.D. A new power, *viz.*, that of the Gauḍas, was fast rising to importance in the valley of the Lower Ganges. Gauḍa was already known to Pāṇini² and the *Kauṭilīya Arthaśāstra*.³ The grammarian seems to associate it with the East.⁴ A passage occurring in the *Matsya*, *Kūrma* and *Liṅga Purāṇas*⁵ has, however, been taken to mean that the Śrāvasti region was the cradle of the Gauḍa people.