History of Kanauj to the Moslem Conquest c9.s1.t1: Decline of the Guptas and its effect
History of Kanauj to the Moslem Conquest c9.s1.t1
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Decline of the Guptas and its effect
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The latter half of the fifth century A. D. was a period of great ferment in Northern India, as it saw the beginning of that process which ultimately undermined the stability of the Imperial Gupta dynasty. The empire became involved in a disastrous war with the Puṣyamitras or Puṣpamitras who “had developed great power and wealth”,¹ and although the danger of immediate subversion was averted by the energy and military strategy of Skandagupta, the shock of the struggle, during the course of which he was reduced to such straits that he had to spend “a whole night on the bare ground,” was none the less serious. It was closely followed by a greater menace to the safety of the empire; this was the “irruption of the savage Hūṇas,” who at this time began to pour down the North-Western passes like an irresistible torrent. At first Skandagupta, “by whose two arms the earth was shaken, when he ……… joined in close conflict with the Hūṇas,”¹ succeeded in stemming the tide of their advance into the interior; but the repeated attacks of these nomadic hordes eventually broke the stubborn resistance, and the Gupta dynasty began to totter to its fall.² History undoubtedly records the continuance of the rule of the Guptas till long afterwards,³ but the Hūṇa onrush appears to have brought to the surface the latent disruptive forces, which readily operate in India at the least manifestation of a slackening of the grip of the central power upon the outlying provinces.
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¹ *Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum*, vol. III, pp. 54, 55: Bhitari stone pillar inscription. Fleet locates the Puṣyamitras in Central India “somewhere in the country along the banks of the Narmada” (*Ind. Ant.*, 1889, p. 228), but Smith places them in the North (*Early Hist. of India*, 4th ed., p. 326, Note 2). Mr. H. R. Divekar, on the other hand, suggests a different reading (*Ann. Bhand. Res. Inst.*, 1919-20, p. 99 f).
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¹ C. I. I., III, pp. 54, 55. Cf. “Hūṇair-yyasya samāgatasya samare dorbhyāṃ dharā kampitā bhīmāvarttakarasya.........”
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² *Early Hist. of India*, 4th ed., p. 328.
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³ Raychaudhuri, *Pol. Hist. of India*, 3rd ed., p. 391f.
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The earliest defections from the empire were evidently Saurāṣṭra and Western Malwa. There is a curious break in the silver currency after Skandagupta, and we have no inscriptions to prove that his successors, had any direct connection with these regions.⁴ Besides, it is almost certain that towards the last quarter of the fifth century the Maitrakas rose to power in Valabhī under the leadership of Senāpati Bhaṭṭāraka. This is obvious from the fact that the first known record of this family belongs to Mahārāja Dhruvasena I, the third son of Bhaṭṭāraka, and bears the Gupta-Valabhi date 206 = 525 A. D. Between them there intervened the other two sons of Bhaṭṭāraka-Senāpati Dharasena I and Mahārāja Droṇasiṃha. If we, therefore, roughly assign 40 to 45 years for the first three reigns, the kingdom must have been founded in *circa* 480-85 A. D. We know from the inscriptions that the first few Maitraka rulers were not absolutely independent,⁵ but it is not clear whose suzerainty they acknowledged. Possibly they owed allegiance to the Hūṇas, who gradually overwhelmed the western and central parts of India. Or perhaps, for sometime they nominally kept alive the tradition of Gupta paramountcy.
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⁴ *Ibid.*, p. 390; see also Allan’s *Gupta Coins*, Introd., p. xlix.
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⁵ We learn, for instance, from the Maliya copperplate that
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Presumably about the same time the Maukharis also, who, as we shall see below, originally governed as feudatories certain parts of Magadha, taking advantage of the weakness of the central government established themselves at Kanauj, and initiated a line which was destined to play a very important rôle in the politics of Northern India.
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We learn from the Madhuban plate¹ that in Thāneśvar Naravardhana became the founder of a dynasty immortalised by the deeds of Harṣa. The latter is definitely known to have ascended the throne in A. D. 606, and as he represented the fifth generation in descent, we may well feel certain that Naravardhana must have carved out the kingdom about the close of the fifth or the beginning of the sixth century.
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¹ *Ep. Ind., I*, pp. 72, 73. According to Bāṇa the founder of the house was the shadowy Puṣyabhūti or Puṣpabhūti.
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But the greatest disturbing factors were doubtless the Hūṇas, who by the year 510 A. D. advanced into the heart of India under the leadership of Toramāṇa,² and established their settlements in Central India, where they
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² This date rests on the evidence of three inscriptions:
(a) Fleet, *C. I. I., III*, No. 19, pp. 88-90; Eran stone pillar inscription of Budhagupta, dated Gupta year 165.
(b) *Ibid.*, No. 20, pp. 91-93; Eran posthumous inscription of Goparāja, dated Gupta year 191.
(c) *Ibid.*, No. 36, pp. 158-61; Eran inscription dated in the first year of Toramāṇa. See also *Gupta Coins*, p. lxii, where Mr. Allan rightly remarks that “it was in resisting the invader (Toramāṇa) that Goparāja fell.”
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Mahārāja Droṇasiṃha was installed as king “by the paramount master in person.” (*C. I. I., III*, pp. 165, 168).
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ruled practising the most horrible cruelties till a new chief arose to deliver the land from an intolerable foreign thraldom. This was the *Janendra* Yaśodharman, who won a powerful position for himself by inflicting a crushing defeat on the tyrannical Hūṇa chief, Mihiragula, “the Attila of India.” His Mandasor inscription¹ further claims that he brought under his sway lands which even the Guptas and the Hūṇas could not subdue, and made himself master of India from the Brahmaputra to the western ocean, and from the Himalayas to the Mahendragiri, i.e., Kaliṅga (cf. the Allahabad Pillar Inscription. According to Smith, however, it denotes the southernmost peak of the Travancore Ghats; *E. H. I.*, 4th ed. p. 339). Making due allowance for hyperbole in this contemporary epigraph, it appears that Yaśodharman exercised some sort of loose hegemony over the north during the heyday of his power, but his success was short-lived and the Guptas soon emerged from their temporary eclipse. For, the Khoh inscription of Saṃkṣoba, dated in the Gupta year 209=528 A. D. “in the enjoyment of sovereignty by the Gupta kings”,² and according to Mr. R. G. Basak, another record of Ucchakalpa Mahārāja Sarvanātha of the Gupta year 214=533 A. D.,³ show that at that time Gupta authority was recognised, even though nominally, in Central India. Besides, Dr. Raychaudhuri has well pointed out that “in A. D. 543-44, ten years after the Mandasor inscription, which mentions the *Janendra* Yaśodharman as victorious, the son (?) and Viceroy of a Gupta Paramabhaṭṭāraka Mahārājādhirāja Prithivipati, and not any official of the Central Indian *Janendra*, was governing the Puṇḍravardhana *Bhukti*—a province which lay between the Indian interior and the Lauhitya."¹
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¹ C. I. I., vol. III, No. 33, pp. 146, 148.
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² Ibid., pp. 114, 115.
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³ Ibid., No. 31, pp. 135-39; *Ep. Ind.*, XV, p. 125.
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¹ *Pol. Hist. of India*, 3rd ed., p. 403. Compare the Damodarpur Copper-plate inscription of 543-44 A. D., (*Ep. Ind.*, XV, p. 113f.).
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Thus, amid these political convulsions the Later Guptas tried to revive their lost glories, but what they achieved was only the ghost of their former existence, as the process of disintegration had gone too far, and fresh complications had arisen owing to the growth of new powers. The Maukharis, who had grown rich and prosperous by their possession of the fertile Doab, were also at this time bidding for supremacy in the north, and they had now to be reckoned with before the Guptas could reclaim the allegiance of the greater part of Northern India. This contest for overlordship between the Maukharis and the Later Guptas forms the most arresting feature of the major portion of the sixth century A. D. It was a struggle between the waning glories of Magadha and the rising power of Kanauj. It ended in transferring the political centre of gravity to the latter; and the credit for effecting this mighty change is due to the Maukharis, who reaped a rich harvest out of the prevailing confusion, and suddenly leaped from obscurity to great importance.