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The Indian Analyst
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North Indian Inscriptions |
POLITICAL HISTORY up this view in the third edition of his Early History of India,1 and maintained with Haraprasad Sastri who edited the record that Pushkaraṇa was the same as Pokaraṇā in Marwar and that Chandravarman was identical with the sovereign Chandra of the Mehrauli pillar inscription.2 This view cannot commend itself to us, because the title borne by an overlord at this period is Mahārājādhirāja, whereas Chandravarman, like his father Siṁhavarman, is designated simply as Mahārāja. And what is strange is that Sastri maintains that Siṁhavarman was a mere chieftain and Chandravarman a supreme ruler, though both have been styled Mahārājas. What appears to be the fact is that both father and son were feudatories. Besides, Pushkaraṇa of the Susuṇiā inscription has now been satisfactorily identified by Rao Bahadur K. N. Dikshit3 with Pokharaṇ, a village situated about 25 miles to the north-east of Susuṇiā itself on the south bank of the river Damodar. It is thus more reasonable to say that this Chandravarman was a chief of Pokharaṇ in West Bengal and was identical with Chandravarman, contemporary of Samudragupta. The next three Āryāvarta rulers that have been mentioned in the Allahabad pillar inscription are Gaṇapatināga, Nāgasēna and Achyutanandin. We have already shown at length who they were and why they were exterminated by Samudragupta. Nothing need, therefore, be said about them here. The eighth and last prince of Āryāvarta, who is mentioned in the praśasti, is Balavarman. According to Dikshit4 he is most probably identical with Balavarman, an ancestor of Bhāskaravarman, who pertained to the Vajradatta family of Prāgjyōtisha.5 But Kāmarūpa or Assam has been distinguished from Āryāvarta by our epigraph. Hence Balavarman of Āryāvarta cannot be identified with Balavarman of Kāmarūpa.
The kings of Āryāvarta destroyed by Samudragupta were formerly taken to be nine in number, ant it was then suggested by Rapson that possibly they might all have been Nāgas and denoted the Nava-Nāgas of the Vishṇu-Purāṇa, which expression is taken by him to denote, not a dynasty of nine successive rulers, but rather a confederation of nine princes belonging to the Nāga race.6 But, as we have pointed out above, the actual number of the Āryāvarta rulers named is, not nine, but eight. Secondly, the Vishṇu-Purāṇa speaks of Nava-Nāgāḥ as ruling over Padmāvatī, Kāntipurī and Mathurā.7 As these are only three and not nine cities, Nava Nāgas cannot signify nine Nāgas but rather new Nāgas, the old Nāgas being those mentioned earlier by the Purāṇas in connection with Vidiśā.8 And, as a matter of fact, it was a confederation of three Nāga kings that opposed the accession of Samudragupta to the throne. One of them, namely, Nāgasēna certainly reigned at Padmāvatī, another, Achyutanandin, most probably at Mathurā, and the third, Gaṇapatināga at Dhārā which may be another name of Kāntipurī. After specifying the names of the kings of Āryāvarta who were violently uprooted by
Samudragupta, the Allahabad pillar inscription proceeds to say that the Gupta monarch
reduced to servitude all the rulers of Forest Countries. As we have pointed out above, we have
to distinguish Aṭavīrājya from Mahākāntāra mentioned in line 19. One copper-plate grant9 1 P. 290, note 1.
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