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The Indian Analyst
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South Indian Inscriptions |
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA his son was Bhagîratha. Bhagîratha’s sons, again, were Raghu and Kâkustha (Kâkusthavarman). Nothing of note is recorded of these later chiefs, excepting that Kâkusthavarman is intimated to have married his daughters to the Gupta and other kings. When in the course of the above story Kubja, in verse 20, tells us that Mayûraśarman, after entering the service of the Pallavas, pleased them by his acts of bravery in battles, I understand him to mean that at first Mayûraśarman became a daṇḍanâyaka or general of theirs ; and I believe this view to be supported by the fact that in verse 3 the poet describes the Kadamba family generally as ‘ the great lineage of the Kadamba leaders if armies (sênânî),’ as well as by the circumstance that according to verse 22 Mayûraśarman was anointed by Shaḍânana (the six-faced god of war) after meditating on Sênâpati, i.e. the general of the gods (Kârttikêya). With regard to the territory afterwards given to him, there is the difficulty that the word Prêhara or Prêharâ, which indicates its boundary on apparently the east, is entirely unknown to us. The present inscription is at Tâḷagunda, and one of the chief places of the Kadambas mentioned in their copper-plates is Vaijayantî, i.e. Banavâsî, which is not far from the former. Assuming that the eastern boundary of their territory was about as distant from Tâḷagunda and Banavâsî as the sea is from them on the west, that boundary would probably have been formed by the river Tuṅgabhadrâ ; but I cannot in any way connect the word Prêhara or Prêharâ with this river,[1] and am in fact unable to suggest any explanation of it.
The word Gupta in verse 31, which implies that Kâkusthavarman gave his daughters in marriage to the Gupta and other kings, has been understood[2] to refer in all probability to the Mahârâjâdhirâja Samudragupta who ruled in the second half of the fourth century A.D. But beyond the fact that Samudragupta conquered many kings of Southern India, nothing has been adduced to prove this. Granted that Kubja’s account cannot be due solely to poetical exaggeration, the Gupta king or kings mentioned by him might, irrespectively of other considerations, be any of the Gupta rulers down to the seventh century A.D., and the reference to them cannot in my opinion be used to establish the time of Kâkusthavarman with any degree of accuracy. When the poet Bâṇa[3] tells us that the lotus-feet of his great-grandfather Kuvêra were adored by many Guptas, we may infer that these Guptas were kings who ruled about the beginning of the sixth century, because we know Bâṇa himself to have lived at the beginning of the seventh. But if nothing were known regarding Bâṇa’s own time, the statement would not help us in the least to fix in any definite way the time of his great-grandfather. Another royal family of importance is referred to in verses 33 of the inscription, where we are told that the Śiva shrine near which Kâkusthavarman constructed his tank had been worshipped by Sâtakarṇi (or the Sâtakarṇis) and other pious kings. I need hardly say that Sâtakarṇi is a well-known name or surname of several kings of the Andhrabhṛitya or Sâtavâhana dynasty who ruled over part of Southern India during the first centuries of the Christian era. An inscription of a Sâtakarṇi has years ago been found, not far from Tâḷagunda, at Banavâsî which has already been mentioned.[4] And Mr. Rice has been fortunate enough to discover, and has publishd,[5] another inscription of apparently the same Sâtakarṇi at Maḷavaḷḷi, in the Tâḷagunda subdivision of the Shikârpur tâluka. The existence of these inscriptions shows that, what Kubja tells us, is not at all improbable, and that the poet really knew something of the history of his country.
Kâkusthavarman is the earliest king known to us from the published copper-plates of the
Kadambas. The present inscription carries the family back by three more generations ; from it
[1] There is of course no a priori reason why the word should denote a river more than anything else.
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