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The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v1.c8.s2: The Home of the Vākāṭakas

The Early History of the Deccan (Parts I–XI) v1.c8.s2

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English

The Home of the Vākāṭakas

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SEVERAL problems connected with early Vākāṭaka history would be satisfactorily solved if we could determine their original home and the scene of their early military activity. Unfortunately we are not yet able to do so with definite certainty. The formation of the name Vākāṭaka suggests that the family originally hailed from a place called Vākāṭa or Vakāṭa, but there is as yet no certain knowledge concerning the whereabouts of this place.

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Dr. Jayaswal has suggested that the Vākāṭakas were inhabitants of Bundelkhand and hailed from the village of Bijaur-Bāgāṭ, situated in the Tahrauli Tehsil of the former Orchha state, about six miles east of Chiragaon in the Jhansi District.¹ The obvious phonetic resemblance between Vākāṭa and Bāgāṭ lends plausibility to this suggestion, and Dr. Jayaswal has adduced three more arguments to support it.

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¹ Jayaswal, History of India, A.D. 150-350, pp. 66-68 and App. A.

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1. There is a pillar at Dureha, four miles south of Jaso in Bundelkhand, with the inscription Vākāṭakānām, accompanied by a wheel, showing that the wheel was the insignia of the Vākāṭakas and that they were ruling in Bundelkhand at the time when the pillar was set up.

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2. The Kilakila country with which the Purāṇas connect the earliest Vākāṭaka ruler, Vindhyaśakti, is the territory drained by the river of the same name in Punna State in Bundelkhand.

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3. Nāchnā, where the inscription of Vyāghradeva, a feudatory of the Vākāṭaka king Pṛthivīsheṇa, has been found, is also in Bundelkhand and is to be identified with Chaṇakā, which figures as a Vākāṭaka capital in the days of Pravarasena I.²

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² Ibid.

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All the above arguments are unconvincing. A glance at the facsimile of the inscription on the Dureha pillar, as published by Jayaswal himself, shows that it cannot possibly be read as Vākāṭakānām.³ The Purāṇas state that Vindhyaśakti came after the Kilakila kings, and did not come from Kilakila territory. To identify Nāchnā with Chaṇakā is questionable; if it was indeed a Vākāṭaka capital, how can we explain the presence of a feudatory ruler at the same place as his sovereign? It is important to note that we have no records of the early Vākāṭakas in Bundelkhand. This would be rather difficult to explain if their original home was actually at Bijaur-Bāgāṭ.

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³ The reading is clearly Vaṅkattrikānām, which cannot be interpreted.

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The phonetic resemblance of Bijaur-Bāgāṭ with Vākāṭa is very striking. It would have supplied very strong evidence for placing the home of the Vākāṭakas at that place, had we not come across a Vākāṭaka householder in a third-century votive inscription at Amraoti⁴ in Andhra country. It is very improbable, though not impossible, that a householder from Bijaur-Bāgāṭ in Bundelkhand should have gone to distant Amraoti to make a votive donation. It is more likely that the place Vākāṭa may have been nearer to Amraoti, somewhere in the Eastern Deccan, rather than to the north of the Vindhyas. It cannot, however, be identified in our present state of knowledge, and we must await further discoveries.

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⁴ ...gāme vāthavasa gahapatisa Vākāṭakasa. EI, xv, 267.

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Whatever may have been the home of the Vākāṭakas, the sphere of their early military activity seems to have been rather in the Western than in the Eastern Deccan. The name of the founder of the family, Vindhyaśakti, obviously suggests that his early military exploits resulted in the establishment of his rule over a portion of the Vindhya territory. Purikā, which was one of the early Vākāṭaka capitals,¹ eventually gave its name to a province which has been coupled with Daśārṇa by the *Bṛhatsaṃhitā*² and mentioned along with Vidarbha and Aśmaka by the *Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa*.³ Nay, the *Purāṇas* place Vindhyaśakti himself among the kings of Vidiśā in Eastern Malwa. The nucleus of the original Vākāṭaka principality must therefore have been somewhere in the eastern Madhya Pradesha or in Berar, and the exploit of Vindhyaśakti must have consisted in incorporating in it a portion of the Eastern Malwa after crossing the Vindhyan passes.

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¹ Pargiter, *DKA*, 49-50.

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² xiv, 10.

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³ lvii, 48.

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Vindhyaśakti c. A.D. 255-75

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IN the third quarter of the third century A.D., when the Vākāṭakas rose to power, political conditions were favourable for the rise of a central and powerful state in the Deccan. The Sātavāhanas, who had been ruling over the Deccan, had fallen, and none among the new states which had subsequently risen to power in the territories they had dominated had shown the capacity to take over their imperial responsibilities. The Ikshvākus had carved out a kingdom for themselves in a portion of the Andhra country, but they were not able to extend their rule much to the north of the Krishṇā. The Chuṭu Sātakarṇis of Mysore were mere local chiefs, who had neither the ability nor the resources to rise to the imperial position. In the Northern Koṅkaṇ, the Ābhīras had founded a principality and had for a short time succeeded in ousting the Western Kshatrapas from their capital. They, however, soon sank into insignificance and abandoned any effort to expand over the Deccan. The Western Kshatrapas had once defeated the Sātavāhanas and had annexed a part of the Deccan to their kingdom; but during the latter half of the third century their power too was on the decline, and they had lost all hope of controlling the politics or the destinies of Southern India. In Northern India, the Nāgas of the Uttara Pradeśa and the republics of Rajputana and the Punjab had reasserted their independence and repudiated the Kushāṇa supremacy. Their interest was, however, confined to their own homelands¹ and they had no ambition to bring the Deccan under their hegemony. The political situation was thus quite favourable for an adventurous chief to attempt to found a new house, which might eventually take the place of the great Sātavāhanas as the paramount power of Southern India.

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¹ The theory that the Bhāraśiva Nāgas of Bundelkhand had founded an empire embracing Madhya Pradeśa and Central or Eastern U.P. during c. A.D. 180-250 is altogether unfounded. The Bhāraśivas were the Nāga rulers of Padmāvatī near Gwalior and their kingdom never included any part of the Deccan. It is doubtful whether Virasena, who is said to have founded this empire, was a Nāga ruler at all. His coins are found only in the northern Uttara Pradeśa and never in the Madhya Pradeśa and Central or Eastern U.P.; this fact shows that the Deccan was never included in this kingdom.

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Vindhyaśakti, the founder of the Vākāṭaka family, undertook this enterprise in about A.D. 255.² As with the founders of many other dynasties, we do not possess much information about him personally. It is an irony of fate that even his descendants should have usually omitted his name from the genealogy of the house. He is mentioned only in the Ajanta record as the founder of the family;¹ all the copper plates of the house begin the family genealogy with his illustrious son, emperor Pravarasena I. At one time, therefore, even the historic existence of Vindhyaśakti was doubted by some scholars. There is, however, no longer any doubt that it was in fact Vindhyaśakti who first carved out the Vākāṭaka principality somewhere in the western Madhya Pradesha. The *Purāṇas*, like the Ajanta record, expressly mention him as the founder of the family and the father of the illustrious emperor Pravarasena I.² His name is omitted in the genealogy of the Vākāṭaka copper plates, probably because throughout his life he was a mere general and was never consecrated to kingship by any formal religious coronation. The draft of the Vākāṭaka charters was determined in the reign of Pravarasena II, and it is but natural that he should have started the genealogy with his namesake Pravarasena I, who indeed first raised the family to an undisputed imperial position in the Deccan.

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² For the determination of this date, see *ante*, pp. 151 ff. Pai's view that Vindhyaśakti asserted independence in c. A.D. 185 after the death of Gautamīputra Yajñaśrī Sātakarṇi pre-supposes that he assumed the title of *mahārājādhirāja*, for which in fact there is no evidence; the Ajanta record gives him no regal title at all.

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¹ *Vākāṭaka Inscription in Cave XVI, HAS, No. 14.*

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² The identity of the Vindhyaśakti of the *Purāṇas* with the ruler of the same name in the Ajanta record was first pointed out by Dr. Bhau Daji, but doubted by Bühler. It is now accepted by all. The *Purāṇas* give Pravīra as the name of the son of Vindhyaśakti; he is obviously the same as the Pravarasena of the inscriptions.

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Vindhyaśakti was a Brāhman of Viṣṇuvṛddha *gotra*. This was not, however, the first time that Brāhmans had exchanged sacrificial implements for weapons of war. The Śungas, the Kaṇvas, and the Sātavāhanas had done the same a few centuries earlier and the Kadambas were soon to emulate the example of the Vākāṭakas. Whether personal ambition alone was the guiding motive of Vindhyaśakti, or whether he desired to found a purely Hindu state in order to encourage the Vedic or the Brāhmanic faith and practices, we simply do not know.

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It was somewhere in Berar or in the western Madhya Pradesha that Vindhyaśakti first carved out a small principality. His capital Purikā was certainly situated somewhere in this part of the country, but has not yet been identified. Probably Vindhyaśakti was originally a local officer or *zamindār*, who gradually increased his sphere of influence, taking advantage of the absence of any strong central power. No specific exploits of his are, however, known. It is unfortunate that the Ajanta record, while growing eloquent over the bravery of this ruler, which, we are told, extorted the admiration of gods and made him the oriflamme and hero of his family, should have kept us in the dark about the names of the enemies defeated or the territories annexed by him. His name Vindhyaśakti, however, suggests that his military activities resulted in giving him control over a portion of the Vindhyan territory. The *Purāṇas* mention him among the kings of Vidiśā, the capital of Eastern Malwa. We may therefore safely conclude that the warlike achievements of Vindhyaśakti resulted in the annexation of the districts of Betul and Itarsi and Hoshangābād to his kingdom, which probably comprised a portion of Berar only in the beginning. The districts annexed by Vindhyaśakti were a kind of no-man's-land in his time, and he had probably to encounter no serious opposition during his career of expansion. Vindhyaśakti, however, did not, it would seem, assume any regal titles during his lifetime and received no formal religious consecration. His achievements were soon completely eclipsed by the more glorious exploits of his illustrious son. His name therefore was omitted from the genealogy of the family, when it was first formally set out and written down 125 years after his death.

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In spite of his military preoccupations, Vindhyaśakti retained the Brāhmanic traits in his character. We are told that he was always anxious to undertake meritorious religious works, probably of the nature of the performance of sacrifices, the construction of temples, wells, and *serais*, and the endowments of schools and colleges. He ruled for about twenty years and we may place the end of his reign in *c.* A.D. 275.

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