POLITICAL HISTORY
Baijanath or Kārtikēyapura as the capital of the Katyūri Rājās in the Almora District, as we
shall see later on.
It will thus be seen that the pratyanta kingdoms bordered the Gupta dominions on the east
and the north and that they were called pratyanta because they were on the frontiers of Āryāvarta. But on the west and north-west of these dominions were many tiny states which in this
period seem to have been governed by various tribes of whom as many as nine have been
named. The list is headed by the Mālavas, who were originally the same as the Malloi of the
Greek writers and were living in the time of Alexander near the confluence of the Akesinos
(Chenab) and the Hydraotis (Ravi) in the erstwhile Panjab. They appear afterwards to have
migrated southwards and were in occupation of a province called Nāgarchāl in the south-eastern portion of the Jaipur State, where their coins are found in numbers. As these range
approximately from B.C. 150 to 250 A.D., they seem to have been settled in that province
during that period.1 In the Gupta epoch, however, they appear to have migrated still further
southward. This is indicated by the findspots of the inscriptions of this period which are dated
according to Mālava-kāla. At this time they seem to have occupied Mewar and Kotah in
Rajasthan and parts of Madhya Pradesh adjoining them, in fact, the whole of the region
indicated by long. 75-76° and lat. 24-25°.2 Originally they no doubt were a gaṇa or tribal
oligarchy, as is clearly indicated by their coins, but in the later period they seem to have assumed a monarchical constitution, because there are some inscriptions where their Mālava-kāla is spoken of as being the era Mālavēśānām ‘of the Mālava lords’.3 The Ārjunāyanas are
known from Varāhamihira’s Bṛihatsaṁhitā4 and also from their coins, of which, however,only
a few specimens have been found. The joint cabinets of the Asiatic Society of Bengal and the
Indian Museum contain only two which may be assigned to circa 100 B.C.5 They are closely
related, in one way or another, to the money of the Northern Kshatrapas, Yaudhēyas and
other ancient powers. “And the Ārjunāyana country,” says Smith, “may reasonably be regarded as corresponding to the region, . . . roughly speaking, the Bharatpur and Alwar States,
west of Agra and Mathura, the principal seat of the Northern Satraps.”6 “Cunningham classed
the Ārjunāyana coins with those of Mathurā, because they are procurable in that city.”7 But
the exact provenance of their coins has not been recorded. In these circumstances, as they
have been placed by our inscription between the Mālavas and the Yaudhēyas, they may be
taken as occupying the region consisting of the erstwhile Bundi and Karauli States and the
eastern half of Jaipur.8
The Yaudhēyas seem to have been in existence from the time of Pāṇini, who speaks of
them as an āyudha-jīvin Saṁgha.9 This expression is the same as śastr-ōpajīvin used by Kauṭalya.
And both denote a tribal corporation “subsisting on arms”. Originally they seem to have
been a tribal band of mercenaries and constituted one kind of a king’s army. In the time of
Pāṇini they were an ēka-rāja Kshatriya tribe which means that so far as their tribal
constitution was concerned they were governed by one ruler, but exercised no political ____________________
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1 Car. Lec., 1921, pp. 12-13. Read, in this connection, an excellent article by A. C. Banerji on The Mālavas in
ABORI., Vol. XIII, pp. 218-19.
2 Ind. Ant., Vol. XX, p. 404; D. R. Bhandarkar’s A List of the Inscriptions of Northern India, Nos. 3, 5-7 and 9.
3 D. R. Bhandarkar, A List of the Inscriptions of Northern India, Nos. 18 and 346.
4 Ind. Ant., Vol. XXII, pp. 172-73.
5 V. A. Smith, Catalogue of the Coins in the Indian Museum, Vol. I, pp. 160 and 166.
6 JRAS., 1897, p. 886.
7 Catalogue of the Coins in the Indian Museum, Vol. I, p. 160.
8 B. C. Law suggests that as Yaudhēya is given as one of the sons of Yudhishṭhira in Ādi-P., ch. 95, v. 76,
Ārjunāyana may be taken as a descendant of Arjuna (NIA, Vol. I, p. 460). Prārjuna may similarly be connected
with Arjuna. The same thing happened in the case of the Ikshvākus.
9 Car. Lec., 1918, pp. 165-67.
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