North Indian Inscriptions

POLITICAL HISTORY

gifts were made to the Āryasaṁgha or confraternity of Buddhist monks, that was settled in the Great Monastery of Kākanādabōṭa, that is, pertaining to the line of teachers connected with Sāñchī Stūpa No. 1. From each of the donations five monks were to be fed daily and a lamp maintained in the Jewel-House (ratna-gṛiha), which here obviously denotes a Buddha shrine. The second of these was for the attainment of all virtues by Chandragupta (II) and the first for the enhancement of the donor’s merit. This Āmrakārdava seems to have been an Officer in the service of the Gupta monarch, because he is described as “one whose means of subsistence has been augmented through the favour of the feet” of Chandragupta and as having shown to the world how the dependent of a king should behave himself. That he was an Officer of some military rank is evident from the epithet anēka-samar-āvāpta-vijaya-yaśaḥ-patākaḥ, which means that “his banner of fame was the victories achieved in many battles.” And, further, as he was in charge of royal palaces some of which he sold off, it seems that Āmrakārdava was something like a quarter-master entrusted with the duty of marking out camps and assigning quarters there. It is not quite clear why he sold off some of the royal palaces that were in Vidiśā, on the outskirts of which, no doubt, Kākanādabōṭa was situated. But as the date of his inscription is Gupta year 93 when Chandragupta was ruling, and as his son Kumāragupta was already a king in Gupta year 96, it seems that Chandragupta abdicated the throne in or about the year 93. And it is quite possible that the palaces which were personally his own were sold off at his own bidding when the Gupta king actually retired from worldly life and became settled at Vishṇupada. This is also indicated by the fact that the assignment of Iśvaravāsaka purchased with the proceeds of the sale of the royal palaces was intended for the attainment of virtues by Chandragupta II. This "attainment of virtues” at the close of his reign practically coincided with the Vānaprastha āśrama embraced by Chandragupta soon after the date of this inscription.

        As Chandragupta was a paramount sovereign, he must have had a number of tributary princes owing fealty to him. The inscriptions, however, reveal the names of only two of them. One Udayagiri cave epigraph (No. 7 below) is dated Gupta year 82=400-01 A.D. and refers itself to his reign. It records the dedication of the excavated shrine apparently to Vishṇu made by a chief of the Sanakānīka clan, who describes himself as meditating on the feet of the Mahārājādhirāja Chandragupta. Unfortunately his full name has not been preserved, the last letter of his name, namely l, being alone legible. He was son of the Mahārāja Vishṇudāsa and grandson of the Mahārāja Chhagalaga, which looks like a Turkish name, as was pointed out by the late A. M. T. Jackson long ago. Probably Vishṇudāsa and Chhagalaga also were feudatory chieftains of Samudragupta whose suzerainty was acknowledged by Sanakānīka, as well as by the other tribes, as the Allahabad pillar inscription informs us. Then again we have to take note of an inscription¹ found at Mandasōr and dated the 5th of the bright half of Āśvōja (Āśvina) of the Mālava (or Vikrama) year 461=404 A.D. It refers itself to the reign of the Mahārāja Naravarman, son of Siṁhavarman and grandson of Jayavarman. There can be no doubt that this Naravarman is identical with the prince of that name who is mentioned as father of Viśvavarman in the Gaṅgdhār inscription² of Vikrama year 480. And further we know from another Mandasōr inscription (No. 35 below) that Viśvavarman’s son was Bandhuvarman. It will thus be seen that Naravarman belonged to the line of feudatory chieftains that ruled over Daśapura (Mandasōr) from about the middle of the fourth to about the middle of the fifth century A.D. Now one of the many epithets of Naravarman mentioned in his record is Siṁha-vikrānta-gāmin, “a follower of Siṁha-Vikrānta”. Siṁha-Vikrānta is obviously the same as Siṁha-Vikrama which, we know from Gupta coins,
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¹ Ep. Ind., Vol. XII, pp. 320 ff.
² CII., Vol. III, 1888, No. 17, pp. 72 ff.