The Indian Analyst
 

North Indian Inscriptions

 

 

Contents

Introduction

Contents

Preface

List of Plates

Abbreviations

Additions and Corrections

Images

Introduction

Political History

Administration

Social History

Religious History

Literary History

Gupta Era

Krita Era

Texts and Translations

The Gupta Inscriptions

Index

Other South-Indian Inscriptions 

Volume 1

Volume 2

Volume 3

Vol. 4 - 8

Volume 9

Volume 10

Volume 11

Volume 12

Volume 13

Volume 14

Volume 15

Volume 16

Volume 17

Volume 18

Volume 19

Volume 20

Volume 22
Part 1

Volume 22
Part 2

Volume 23

Volume 24

Volume 26

Volume 27

Tiruvarur

Darasuram

Konerirajapuram

Tanjavur

Annual Reports 1935-1944

Annual Reports 1945- 1947

Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum Volume 2, Part 2

Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum Volume 7, Part 3

Kalachuri-Chedi Era Part 1

Kalachuri-Chedi Era Part 2

Epigraphica Indica

Epigraphia Indica Volume 3

Epigraphia
Indica Volume 4

Epigraphia Indica Volume 6

Epigraphia Indica Volume 7

Epigraphia Indica Volume 8

Epigraphia Indica Volume 27

Epigraphia Indica Volume 29

Epigraphia Indica Volume 30

Epigraphia Indica Volume 31

Epigraphia Indica Volume 32

Paramaras Volume 7, Part 2

Śilāhāras Volume 6, Part 2

Vākāṭakas Volume 5

Early Gupta Inscriptions

Archaeological Links

Archaeological-Survey of India

Pudukkottai

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.

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       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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