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The Indian Analyst
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North Indian Inscriptions |
POLITICAL HISTORY this work. Verse 80 tells us that all the lords of the Nāgas looked up to Gaṇapati, being afraid of the Mayūras, presumably the Mauryas. As he has again been called Dhārādhīśa in verse 62, it appears that his capital was Dhārā,1 apparently modern Dhar, headquarters of the Dhar District, Madhya Pradesh. The second prince of the confederacy quelled by Samudragupta is Nāgasēna. In this coneection Hall2 was the first to draw our attention to a passage in the Harshacharita of Bāṇa, which says that there was one Nāgasēna in Padmāvatī belonging to the Nāga house, whose fall was caused by the disclosure of his policy by a sārikā bird.3 This is just what Bāṇa has actually told us. And the commentator Śaṅkarārya further informs us that this Nāgasēna took counsel, in the presence of a sārikā bird, to restrain one of his ministers who had possessed himself of one-half of the kingdom but that the minister having come to know about it in confidence from the bird managed to kill the king with a club (daṇḍa). It is no doubt possible to argue that as this Nāgasēna was killed at Padmāvatī on account of some political intrigue, he cannot be identical with Nāgasēna who met with his end on a battlefield.4 There is nothing, however, in the statement of Bāṇa or his commentator to show that he was murdered in the palace. And the battle in which Samudragupta confronted the confederated kings may have taken place at or near Padmāvatī itself, and the Gupta king may have been here joined by the minister of Nāgasēna who perhaps killed his own master and thus helped the Gupta ruler to get rid of his one enemy. Padmāvatī has been satisfactorily identified with Pawāyā5 in the Gwalior territory by M. B. Garde, the Archeological Superintendent of the former Gwalior State.
The third member of the confederacy against Samudragupta was Achyutanandin. Some
copper and bronze coins, bearing the syllables achyu and found in the site of Ahichhatra (Ramnagar, Bareilly District, Uttar Pradesh), were years ago attributed by V. A. Smith and Rapson
to this Achyuta.6 In their general character they resemble the coins of the Nāga kings found
in Central India, and it is possible that Achyuta may himself have been a Nāga, but belonging
apparently to the Nāga house of Ahichhatra. Formerly the compound Achyatanandin was
divided into two parts, each part denoting a separate prince (Achyuta and Nandin) destroyed
by Samudragupta. It is, however, much better, like Gaṇapatināga, to take Achyutanandin as
one name. The Purāṇas7 represent Bhūtinandin, Śiśunandin and Yaśōnandin as ruling over
Vidiśa after the Śuṅgas. The second component of these names is –nandin, and, so far as we can
judge, they seem to have pertained to the Nāga clan. This strengthens the conclusion that
Achyutanandin is one name and that he was in all likelihood a member of the Nāga race. The
fourth ruler who had joined the coalition, as we have seen, belonged to the Kōta family.
Smith tells us that “the rude copper coins with Śiva and bull on the obverse, and the monogram
reading Kota—are common in the Delhi Bazar and in the Eastern Panjab. They are copied
obviously from the money of Vāsudēva Kushāṇa, and some of the reverse devices may be an
echo of the Sassaniam type.”8 Rapson, however, was the first to connect the Kōta coins with 1 Dhārā has been very well known ever since the ascendancy of the Paramāras. But even before the rise of
the Paramāra power, Īśvaravarman, a Maukhari king, who ruled in circa 550 A. D. is known from a Jaunpur
stone inscription to have repelled the attack of a prince of Dhārā, situated not far from the Vindhyas; CII., Vol. III, 1888, pp. 229-30.
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