North Indian Inscriptions

POLITICAL HISTORY

than any one of his preceding brothers, reigning as he did for eighteen years from Gupta year 157 to 175. But, though he checked their ingress into this country longer than his brothers, the pressure of the barbarian hordes so long held back in check accumulated such a momentum that they swept off all barriers and overwhelmed the Gupta power for some time in Northern India soon after Gupta year 175, the last date of Budhagupta. This appears to be pretty clear from a critical study of three inscriptions found in Ēraṇ, Sagar District, Madhya Pradesh. One of these is engraved on a pillar in a temple at Ēraṇ. It is dated Gupta year 165, in the reign of Budhagupta (No. 39 below), and states that the pillar was a gift to the temple by the two Brāhmaṇa brothers, Mātṛivishṇu and Dhanyavishṇu the former of whom was a chief of the province round about Airikiṇa (Ēraṇ). As the inscription bears the date Gupta year 165 and the latest of his coins, Gupta year 175,¹ the former seems to belong to the early part of Budhagupta’s reign. A second inscription² from Ēran, which is worthy of note in this connection, is on the lower part of the neck of a huge Boar or Varāha image in a corner shrine of the same temple, which records the date as follows: “the tenth day of Phālguna in the first year of the reign of the Mahārājādhirāja Tōramāṇa” and states that it was the gift of the younger brother of Dhanyavishṇu whose elder brother Mātṛivishṇu is described as gone to heaven. Since Mātṛivishṇu is mentioned as alive in the Budhagupta and dead in the Tōramāṇa epigraph, it follows that Tōramāṇa wrested the Gupta kingdom from Budhagupta about the end of his reign. It was this Sagar District which formed the eastern fringe of Hūṇa dominions and was the principal theatre of war between the Hūṇas and allied tribes on the one hand and the Guptas and their chiefs on the other. Though the Ēraṇ pillar inscription is dated in the first regnal year of Tōramāṇa, we cannot take it that it was the first year of the Hūṇa rule.

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For, as we learn from Yuan Chwang, the Hūṇa capital was Śākala in the Panjab. What the Ēraṇ inscription may be taken to mean is that Tōramāṇa was the first Hūṇa king to conquer the eastern part of the Gupta empire and that he did so in the first year of his reign. That Tōramāṇa was ruling already in the Panjab is clear from his epigraph found in Kura, Salt Range, Panjab, and deposited in the Lahore Museum.³ Unfortunately, the date portion of it is lost, but is refers itself to the reign of the Rājādhirāja Mahārāja Tōramāṇa Shāhi Jaūlva. No less a scholar than F. Kielhorn refers it to “the fourth or fifth century A.D.” Further, what we have to note about Tōramāṇa is that at least two silver coins of his are known which bear the date 52. It seems that the Hūṇa inscriptions specified two kinds of dates—one denoting the year of the Hūṇa rule and the other, the regnal year of the particular king. The year 52 which figures on the coins of Toramāṇa indicates the year of the Hūṇa era. From this it is also evident that some Hūṇa kings ruled over the Panjab and Central India prior to the time of Tōramāṇa and that the Hūṇas established their sway in India circa 440 A.D. Ever since that time fights were going on between the Hūṇas and the Gupta kings, whether the Gupta king was Skandagupta, Vainyagupta, Kumāragupta (II) or Budhagupta. It is true that in the time of Budhagupta the Hūṇas were held at bay for a long time, but it was soon after Gupta year 175, whether it was in the reign of Budhagupta or soon after his demise, that the Hūṇas under Tōramāṇa penetrated through the eastern part of the Gupta dominions, as far east as Ēraṇ. How long the Hūṇa power lasted in this region, we do not know. But in this connection we have to take note that the Hūṇa monarch after him was his son Mihira-
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¹ JRAS., 1889, pp. 134-35; Allan’s Catalogue of the Coins of the Gupta Dynasty, p. 153. It is somewhat doubtful whether the date 175 is certain as read on Budhagupta’s silver coins. The symbol for 70 reads here like pu which is a sign for 60 and not pri for 70, as seems from Tafel IX in Bühler’s Siebzenn Tafeln Zur Indischen Palaeographic. In that case, we have to suppose that the Hūṇa incursions began soon after Gupta year 165.
² CII., Vol. III, 1888, No. 36, pp. 158 ff.
³ D. R. Bhandarkar, A List of the Inscriptions of Northern India, No. 1809.