|
The Indian Analyst
|
|
South Indian Inscriptions |
TRAIKUTAKAS resemble those of his father, are, however, rare and of one variety only. Like his father, he calls himself Mahārāja, and describes himself as paramavaishnava as well as Bhagavat-pāda-karmakara. His Surat plates were issued from the victorious Aniruddhapura. As no affix like vāsakāt is added to it, the place may have been the royal capital. The plates record the grant of a village in the Iksharakī āhāra. Iksharaki may be identical with Achchhāran, about 9 m. north of Surat . The date of the plates, the year 241, must be referred to the Kalachuri era, and corresponds to 490-91 A.C. Vyāghrasena may, therefore, be assigned to the period from circa 465 A.C. to 492 A.C. One more inscription, consisting of a single plate, was found inside a Buddhist stūpa at Kanhēri in North Konkan. It records the construction of a chaitya (i.e., the stūpa in which the inscription together with some relics was found) dedicated by a pilgrim from Sindh to the venerable Śāradvatiputra, the foremost disciple of the Buddha. The inscription mentions only the increasingly victorious reign of the Traikūtakas, but does not name any reigning king. It is dated in the year 245 (494-95 A.C.). As a period of as many as 36 years intervenes between the date of the Pārdi plates of Dahrasēna and that of the Surat plates of his son Vyāghrasēna, it seems that the latter were probably issued towards the close of Vyāghrasēnaâs reign. The Traikūtaka king during whose reign the Kanhēri plate was issued may, therefore, have been the successor of Vyāghrasēna. During his reign the Trikūta country was invaded by Harishēna, the last known Vākātaka king who flourished in circa 457-500 A.C. In the inscription in the Ajantā cave XVI, Harishēna is credited with a victory over Trikūta,1 but it is not known if he supplanted the ruling dynasty. He was possibly content with exacting a tribute from it as he must have done from the other countries mentioned in the same inscription, viz., Kuntala, Avanti, Kalinga, Kōsala, Lāta and Andhra.
After the Vākātakas, the Kalachuris became supreme in Gujarat, North Konkan
and Maharashtra. The coins of Krishnarāja, the earliest known king of the Kalachuri
dynasty, have been found in the islands of Bombay and Sāshti as well as the districts of
Nasik and Satara.2 Copper-plate inscriptions of the Early Kalachuris recording grants of
villages in South Gujarat and the Nasik District have also been discovered. In the Kalachuri
inscriptions Śankaragana, the son of Krishnarāja, is described as the lord of the countries
between the eastern and western seas.3 Konkan also must, therefore, have been included
in the Kalachuri Empire. But no grants of land made by the Kalachuris have yet been
discovered in Konkan, which seems to have ruled by a feudatory family. For about
a century after the date of the Kanhēri plate, however, we have no definite information
about the history of Konkan.4 From the Aihōle inscriptions5 of Pulakēśin II we learn
that his father Kīrtivarman was âthe night of destruction to the Mauryasâ, and that
Pulakēśin himself stormed their capital Puri and probably annexed their kingdom. As the
Traikūtakas vanish from history in the beginning of the sixth century A.C. and the Mauryas
come on the scene within about fifty years, it has been conjectured that the Traikutakas 1 H.A.S., No. 14, p. 11. The passage mentions Trikūta and Lāta separately. Does this show
that the Traikūtaka kingdom was at that time divided into two parts ?
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
