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The Indian Analyst
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South Indian Inscriptions |
TRAIKUTAKAS Āmrakūta or Amarakantaka in the former Rewa State, Sālakūta in the Balaghat District and Madhukūta in the Chhindwara District.1 As shown below, the inscriptions and coins of the Traikūtakas have been found only in South Gujarat, North Konkan and Maharashtra. Traikūta, from which they derived their name, cannot, therefore, be located in the north, east, south or centre of India, but must be looked for in the west. Kālidāsaâs description, which, as already stated, is supported by a lexicon, clearly indicates that it was situated in Aparānta or North Konkan. Bhagvanlal Indraji suggested its identification with Junnar, in the Poona District, which is encircled by three ranges of hills.2 The matter is now placed beyond doubt by the mention of the Pūrva-Trikūta vishaya (East Trikūta District) in the Anjaneri plates of Bhōgaśakti,3 which shows that there was a district named after the mountain which divided it into two parts. A tax levied on the inhabitants of the eastern sub-division was assigned for the worship of the god Bhōgēśvara at Jayapura near Nasik. This clearly shows that Trikūta was probably the name of the range of hills that borders the Nasik District on the west.4 This identification squares with the provenance of Traikūtaka inscriptions and coins.
The earliest mention of the Traikūtakas occurs in the Chandravalli inscription of Mayūraśarman.5 This record includes Trēkūta (i.e., The Traikūtakas) among the contemporaries of Mayūraśarman, the founder of the Kadamba dynasty, which shows that the Traikūtakas were a power of some importance in the beginning of the fourth century A.C., to which period the Chandravalli inscription can be referred on palæographic grounds, The country of Trikūta had previously been included in the Sātavāhana kingdom. The Traikūtakas seem, therefore, to have risen into prominence on the decline of the Sātavāhana power in Konkan and Maharashtra. The coins of the Traikūtakas are closely imitated from those of the Western Kshatrapas which were current in Maharashtra. On the obverse, there is the kingâs face to the right as on Kshatrapa coins, but without any date, while on the reverse, inside a circle of dots and a circularly written legend, appear the usual Kshatrapa symbols, the chaitya, the sun and the moon.6 This close resemblance suggests, as Rapson has remarked,7 that the coins were intended for circulation in the districts which had previously been under the rules of the Kshatrapas. Though the Traikūtakas rose into prominence about the middle of the third century
A.C., we have no Traikūtaka records during the first two centuries of their rule. On the
other hand we find an Ābhīra record of about the middle of the third century A.C. in the
Nasik District,8 which, as we have seen above, was the home province of the Traikūtakas.
The names of the two Ābhīras, Sivadatta and his son Rājan Īśvarsēna, resemble those of
the later Traikūtaka kings, which end in either datta or sēna. Pandit Bhagvanlal, therefore,
first propounded the theory that the Traikūtakas were identical with the Ābhīras.9 The
Chandravalli inscription, however, mentions the Traikūtakas separaetly from the Ābhīras,
thus indicating that the two royal families, though contemporary, were not identical. The
1 A.B.O.R.I., Vol. IX, pp. 283-84.
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