Tribes in Ancient India c50.150

c50.150

His son and successor Samudragupta often felt pride in describing himself as the son of the daughter of the Licchavis. Before his death, Candragupta selected Samudragupta, his son by the Licchavi princess, as his successor. It is clear from the Allahabad praśasti and from the epithet ‘tatpādaparigṛhīta’ applied to Samudragupta in other inscriptions that the prince was selected by Candragupta I from among his sons, as the best fitted to succeed him. It was the aim of Samudragupta to bring about the political unification of India and to make himself an Ekarāṭ (sole sovereign) over this united empire; but his only permanent annexation was that of portions of Āryāvarta, the Gangetic plain.¹ Samudragupta made the rulers of the Āṭavika rājyas (‘forest kingdoms’) his servants, led an expedition to the south, and made his power felt by the powerful rulers of the Eastern Deccan. Here he defeated the kings, but following the pre-Mauryan Hindu policy he did not annex their territory. According to Dr. Flect,² the Āṭavika rājyas were closely connected with Dabhāla, i.e. the Jabalpur region.³ The Eran inscription of Samudragupta bears testimony to the conquest of this region and to the fact that the Vākāṭakas of the Western Deccan were deprived of their possessions in Central India by the Emperor.⁴ The kings (mostly of Dakṣiṇāpatha) who came into conflict with the great Gupta conqueror were Mahendra of Kośala, Vyāghrarāja of Mahākāntāra, Maṇṭarāja of Kaurāla, Svāmidatta of Piṣṭapura and of Koṭṭūra of Mahendragiri, Damana of Eraṇḍapalla, Viṣṇugopa of Kāñcī, Nīlarāja of Avamukta, Hastivarman of Veṅgī, Ugrasena of Palakka, Kuvera of Devarāṣṭra, and Dhanañjaya of Kusthalapura.¹ The tribal States of the Punjab, W. India and Malwa are also said to have obeyed his compelling mandate or decree (pracaṇḍa-śāsana) ‘by giving all kinds of taxes, obeying his orders and coming to perform obeisance’. The most important among the eastern kingdoms which submitted to the mighty Gupta emperor were Samataṭa (part of E. Bengal bordering on the sea), Davāka (not yet satisfactorily identified) and Kāmarūpa (in Assam).² The Dāmodarpur plates inform us that Puṇḍravardhana or N. Bengal formed an integral part of the Gupta empire and was governed by a line of Uparika Mahārājas as vassals of the Gupta emperor. The dominion under the direct government of Samudragupta in the middle of the fourth century comprised all the most populous and fertile provinces of N. India. It extended from the Brahmaputra on the east to the Jumna and Chambal on the west, and from the foot of the Himalaya on the north to the Narmadā on the south. Beyond these wide limits, the frontier kingdoms of Assam and the Gangetic delta, as well as those on the southern slopes of the Himalaya, and the free tribes of Rājputāna and Mālwa, were attached to the empire by bonds of subordinate alliance; while almost all the kingdoms of the south had been overrun by the emperor’s armies and compelled to acknowledge his irresistible might.³