POLITICAL HISTORY
the Kota-kula of our epigraph.1 The Kotas may thus be placed in some region where North-Eastern Rajputana and Eastern Panjab meet.
It will thus be seen that the confederacy that sprang up against Samudragupta soon
after his accession to the throne consisted of four members, three of whom belonged to the
Nāga race and one to the Kōta clan. At the head of this coalition was Gaṇapati, who was a
Ṭāka Nāga by extraction and who ruled over Dhārā. Where the battle actually took place is
not known with any certainty. Probably it came off in the vicinity of Padmāvatī, the capital
town of Nāgasēna, himself a Nāga and one of the confederate princes. It seems that the fourth
ruler, a Kōta by clan, was not allowed to meet the Nāga kings, as perhaps their armies rein-forced by the troops of the Kōta king would have proved too formidable a combination for
Samudragupta to encounter and vanquish. Like a clever tactician Samudragupta therefore
seems to have given battle to the Nāga rulers before the Kōta could join them, and not only
worsted but actually killed them in the fight. The game was thus practically over, and Samudragupta returned triumphant to Pāṭaliputra, taking care, however, to see that the fourth
member of the confederacy was not allowed to remain free and unpunished. He therefore
sent some forces in pursuit of him. The Kōta king was before long captured and presumably
taken in chains to Pāṭaliputra where Samudragupta had already plunged himself into his usual
round of pleasures and amusements. That the formation of this confederacy2 was a great
menace to the Gupta power and that its destruction was consequently regarded as the greatest
of Samudragupta’s military feats is inferred from the fact that this achievement alone has been
described in the verse portion with which the Allahabad pillar inscription begins although the
Nāga princes of this coalition have again been mentioned in the prose portion of the same
record enumerating the list of the Āryāvarta rulers whom this Gupta sovereign exterminated.
Two records are known of Samudragupta, one engraved on the Aśōkan pillar, now standing in the Allahabad fort, and, the other, on a stone originally found at Ēraṇ in the Sagar
District, Madhya Pradesh. The latter is not only a fragment but a small inscription and tells
us hardly anything about him. The former, on the other hand, is a very long record, and
although the upper part of it has suffered very much, partly from the peeling off of the stone
surface in several places and partly from the mediaeval inscriptions indiscriminately engraved
on and between the original lines, nothing of historical importance has been obliterated. Practically speaking, it is our only and most important source of information for Samudragupta,
and, for the matter of that, for the political condition of India in the fourth century A.D. The
inscription is a historical composition of the praśasti or panegyric type setting forth not only
the mighty monarch’s military achievements but also his personal accomplishments. It calls
itself a kāvya or poetic composition, and was drawn up by Harishēṇa, son of Dhruvabhūti.
Harishēṇa was doubtless an officer of high position, as he bears the threefold designation,
Sāndhivigrahika, Kumārāmātya and Mahādaṇḍanāyaka. His father also was a man of no mean
rank, because he, too, was a Mahādaṇḍanāyaka. As Harishēṇa was a Sāndhivigrahika or Minister
of Peace and War, he must have come into intimate contact with Samudragupta. It is, therefore, no wonder if he has described himself as “the slave of the very same venerable Bhaṭṭāraka,
whose mind has expanded through the favour of staying near (him).” Harishēṇa also calls
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1 JRAS., 1898, p. 450.
2 Krishnaswami Aiyangar is the first to suspect the formation of this confederacy against Samudragupta.
He says: “The achievement of Samudragupta against Achyuta, Nāgasēna and the ruler of the Kōta family in
Pushpapura may have been an attack by these monarchs in combination against the capital Patna” (Studies in
Gupta History, JIH., Vol. VI, University Supplement, p. 27; also p. 37). K. P. Jayaswal has taken up the idea
and in his own way developed it by saying that Samudragupta confronted the Nāga rulers at Kauśāmbī, while
another Gupta army laid seige to Pushpapura and captured Kōta’s descendant who ‘was the ruler of Pāṭaliputra
at the time’ (History of India 150 A.D., to 350 A.D., pp. 132-33).
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