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History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v1.c18.s1: (1) The Guptas of Gauda

History of Mediaeval Hindu India (being a History of India from 600 to 1200 A.D.) v1.c18.s1

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(1) The Guptas of Gauda

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We now turn to the kingdoms of the east. This eastern portion of India naturally divides itself into three parts, Behar with Magadha, western Bengal and Eastern Bengal. The ancient names of eastern countries in India were Anga, Vanga and Kalinga; but Magadha and Odra are also ancient names and all these were usually subject to one and the same great power. When the name Gauda first came into use for this part cannot well be determined. That it was a new name we have not the smallest doubt. The Mahābhārata does not mention it nor even, it seems, Varāhamihira of the 5th century A D. Gauda or Guda is strangely enough mentioned by him as the name of the country round Thanesar,[*] but we had forgotten this fact so completely that it was a discovery indeed of Jackson. Gauda according to our present notions is nothing but Bengal. We must, however, recognise the fact that Gauda is a name which originally belonged to the country to the north-west of Delhi. The Brahmins of that part of the country still call themselves Ādigauda or the original Gaudas. It seems probable that some time about the 5th or 6th century A. D. many of these Brahmins, probably under the stress of the Huns, migrated eastward and settled in Western Bengal. The country thus came to be called Gauda. In the inscriptions of the seventh and eighth centuries this part is certainly called Gauda. Bāṇa for instance (620 A. D.) in the Harsha Charita calls Śaśānka king of Gauda while Hiuen Tsang calls him king of Karṇasuvarṇa. Karṇa-Suvarṇa then was certainly Gauda in about 600 A.D. And Gupta kings probably a branch of the Gupta imperial line ruled here. Śaśānka’s rule continued for a long time even after 606 A. D. i. e. after he had killed Rājyavaradhana by treachery and it seems probable that Harsha though he must have conquered Śaśānka pardoned him and married his daughter who had been offered to Rājya. When Hiuen Tsang visited it, Śaśānka was probably dead. He describes the people of Karṇasuvarṇa (modern Murshidabad) as fond of learning, with 50 monasteries and 100 Deva temples, showing that Buddhism was in a minority in western Bengal even then.

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∗ Varāhamihira mentions Guda among middle countries while among eastern countries he mentions Bhadra Gaudaka along with Paundra and others.

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The next mention we have of Gauda in ancient records found so far is that of the Gupta family of Ādityasena. This must be another Gupta branch. According to our view already detailed it was a branch Gupta line which had come from Malwa, after Deva-gupta the enemy of Grahavarman had been slain. Mādhava Gupta, his half brother, was a friend and follower of Harsha and during or after Harsha's rule, his own Mālava kingdom having been seized and forfeited, he founded a kingdom in Magadha. The Aphsad inscription describes Ādityasena the donor as a son of Mādhava-gupta "a friend of Harsha" in 66 H. E. or 672 A. D. The inscription was drawn out by a Gauda named Sūkshma Śiva. The literary excellence of the Gaudas may be seen even at that time in this inscription an excellence which coutinues down to this day. Magadha and Gauda or western Bengal appear then to have been under one ruler and the same thing appears from the Gaudavaho which we next proceed to notice. In this poem, as we have said before, Yaśovarman of Kanauj is said to have invaded Gauda and killed the Gauda king in battle. The king is said to be Magadhādhipa also. Who was this king? We have placed Yaśovarman between 675 and 715 A.D. following S. P. Pandit. From the Deo-Barnak inscription of Jivita-gupta we get the following line from Mādhava-1 Madhava 2 Ādityasena (672 A. D.) 3 Devagupta 4 Vishnugupta and 5 Jivitagupta. The date of the latter is not given and we have to surmise it. The king killed in the battle with Yaśovarman is said by some to be Jivitagupta himself This battle was fought before Yaśovarman was conquered by Lalitāditya of Kashmir in about 700 A. D. Hence according to our dates the king killed in Gauda must have been Devagupta. Of course as there was no annexation of kingdoms practically in those days his son succeeded. And perhaps it may have been his son Vishnugupta who was conquered by Lalitāditya and who in some year later than 700 having again taken up arms against the distant Lalitāditya was again conquered and taken a prisoner to Kashmir where, inspite of an oath to the contrary, he was murdered as related in Kashmir history. He was succeeded by Jivitagupta whose record, the Dev-Barnak inscription, has been found. This line of the Guptas we have identified as the Mālwa branch for many reasons and two names properly recur Devagupta and this name Jivitagupta. (See Gupta pedigree given in Book I). The date of Jivitagupta approximately may be taken to be 732 A.D. taking 20 years for each generation and Muktāpīda’s reign Kalhana has rightly assigned as lying between 699 and 735 A. D. (see Kashmir pedigree Chap. I). We take it as very probable that Jivitagupta was not the king murdered in Kashmir. From the Dev-Barnak inscription of this king we find that Ādityasena was a worshipper of Vishnu (परमभागवत) and his queen was Kônadevī (both facts appear from the Apsad inscription also), that their son Devagupta was a worshipper of Śiva (परममाहेश्वर) and his queen was Kamalādevī, that his son was Vishnugupta also a worshipper of Śiva and his wife was Ijyādevī and that their son Jivitagupta was probably a worshipper of the sun (the word here after parama is unfortunately not readable) for he made or rather confirmed a grant for the worship of the sun. Thus it will appear that these Guptas were not Buddhists. Perhaps Mādhava may have been a Buddhist like and following Harsha, but as after Harsha’s death Buddhism was everywhere supplanted, in Gauda too we have a revival of Hinduism or Aryanism and the worship of Śiva, Vishnu and the sun was re-established. The story of the vengeance which according to the Rājataranginī the loyal servants of the Gauda king murdered in Kashmir took on the god Parihāsa-Keshava whose oath was violated is touching and illustrative of the great love and personal affection which loyal servants often bore towards their royal masters in India.

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The next reference to the Guptas of Gauda is in an inscription of the Nepal king Jayadeva dated Harsha era 153 equivalent to 769 A. D. (Ind. Ant. IX p. 178). This inscription gives two important facts. Jayadeva’s father Śivadeva had married a daughter of king Bhogavarman of the warlike Maukhari line and she was “the grand-daughter of the great Magadha king Ādityasena” Now this mention of the grand-father shows that the Magadha king was the greater of the two. We think that this was the same Gupta line continued, the name Ādityasena recurring in 769 A. D. from 672 A. D. This further shows that there was a line of Maukhari kings contiguous to Magadha probably in Bihar to whom the Guptas usually gave their daughters in marriage and this Maukhari king gave his daughter in marriage to the Kshatriya Lichhavi king of Nepal which is contiguous to Bihar. This Maukhari king Bhogavarman probably belonged to the same subsidiary line as gave the kings Śardūla and others already mentioned and was an offshoot very probably from the chief Maukhari line of Kanauj (see Book I). We have as yet discovered no further mention of the Guptas of Gauda in inscriptions. Probably these later Guptas, descendants of Mādhava of about 650 A. D. disappeared about 800 A. D. when a new line of kings appeared in Magādha as we shall show in our next volume.

Cites (4)