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The Indian Analyst
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North Indian Inscriptions |
POLITICAL HISTORY tion, is also applicable to this Chandragupta can scarcely be doubted, because we have pointed out above that Chandragupta II destroyed the power of the Kshatrapas who were Śakas. But the Śakāri of the tradition was also the founder of the Vikrama era. How could Chandragupta be connected with this era? In this connection it is worthy of note that most dates of the Gupta era can be worked out correctly even by taking them as Vikrama years. The necessary calculations involved in this supposition have already been set forth before us by Dhirendranath Mukhopadhyaya in the case of many dates of the Gupta era. How these Gupta dates can work out correctly even though they are treated as Vikrama years may appear somewhat singular and almost incredible at this stage, but this matter has been dealt with fully in a separate chapter. Here it is sufficient to note that this fact adequately explains why the name of a Gupta king, a (Chandragupta-) Vikramāditya above all, should be connected with the inauguration of an era starting from 57 B.C., which for that reason must have been called Vikrama Saṁvat. The third important point connected with the traditional Vikramāditya is that he was a patron of arts and sciences. And one tradition recorded in the Jyōtir-vidābharaṇa associated with him nine gems of litterateurs and scientists, the most resplendent of whom was Kālidāsa, the prince of poets. Most of the literates huddled together in a verse of this work were tenth-rate people and pertained again to different periods. The nine gems referred to therein could not thus have flourished in one age, or, for the matter of that, during the reign of Chandragupta II. Nevertheless, there is good reason to suppose that Kālidāsa lived and wrote in the fifth century A.D., and was a contemporary not only of Chandragupta II, but of Kumāragupta I, if not also of Skandagupta.
The Rājataraṅgiṇī1 informs us that there lived at Ujjayanī as the sole sovereign of the world
the glorious Vikramāditya who also bore the second name of Harsha and destroyed the Śakas.
A poor poet, Mātṛigupta, sought the court of this Vikramāditya, and, after long futile endeavours, attracted the attention of the king who sent Mātṛigupta to Kashmir and had him installed there on the vacant throne. On the death of his patron and after a just rule of about five
years Mātṛigupta abdicated in favour of Pravarasēna II and retired as a recluse to Banaras,
where he died, supported to the end by the donations of his generous rival and successor.
This account of Kalhaṇa is an amalgam of truth and fiction, as all traditions in India are
bound to be. That this Vikramāditya is Chandragupta II can scarcely be seriously doubted;
because Kalhaṇa represents him to be “the sole sovereign of the world”.2 It is true that Kalhaṇa
further tells us that Pravarasēna II “replaced Śīlāditya-Pratāpaśīla, son of Vikramāditya,
who had been dethroned by enemies, in the kingdom of his father”,3 the capital of which,
we have seen above, was Ujjain. This Śīlāditya has been identified with a king of that name
mentioned by Yuan Chwang as having ruled about 580 A.D. in Mālava, that is, sixty years
before the time of the Chinese pilgrim.4 It is forgotten, however, that this Mālava was situated
on the south-eastern side of the Mo-ho (verse 1, Mo-hi=Mahī) river and is distinghished from
the country of Ujjayinī.5 Śīlāditya mentioned by Kalhaṇa as son of Vikramāditya, ruler of
Ujjain, cannot possibly be identified with Śīlāditya referred to by Yuan Chwang as a ruler
of Mālava whose capital was not Ujjain. On the other hand, we have pointed out above, on
the strength of the Meharauli pillar inscription that Chandragupta made himself master of
the country through which flowed the Sindhu with her seven mouths, that is, of the country
which comprised not only the Panjab but also Kashnir. Whether tradition had in Kashmir 1 Book III, verses 129-320; Stein’s Trans, Intro., pp. 83-84.
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