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The Indian Analyst
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South Indian Inscriptions |
THE MAIN BRANCH
by that time become the lord paramount of a large part of North India, launched his attack on the Śaka Kshatrapas of Mālwā and Saurāshṭra.1 The causes of this war are not known. The Kshatrapas were the northern neighbours of the Vākāṭakas. They had held the fertile provinces of Mālwā, Northern Gujarāt and Saurāshṭra for more than three centuries and had become very powerful. It is therefore not unlikely that Chandragupta II sought the alliance of his powerful neighbour, the Vākāṭaka king Pṛithivīshēṇa I, in his war against the Kshatrapas. The combined strength of the Guptas and the Vākāṭakas was sufficient to wipe out the Western Kshatrapas, who disappear from history about this time, Chandragupta II then annexed Mālwā and probably made Ujjayinī a second capital of his vast empire. He sought to cement the political alliance with the Vākāṭakas by giving his daughter Prabhāvatīguptā in marriage to the Vākāṭaka prince Rudrasena II, the son of Pṛithivīshēṇa I. This matrimonial alliance between the ruling families of Mālwā and Vidarbha recalled a similar event which had occurred more than five centuries earlier in the time of the Śuṅgas. Kālidāsa’s Mālavikāgnimitra, which draws its theme from the latter event, was probably staged first at Ujjayinī on the occasion of the marriage of Prabhāvatīguptā and Rudrasēna II.2 ...Like is father, Pṛithivīshēṇa I was a Śaiva. During his time the Vākāṭaka capital seems to have been shifted to Nandivardhana, modern Nandardhan (also called Nagardhan) near Rāmṭēk, about 28 miles from Nāgpur. This place is surrounded by strongly fortified forts like Ghughusgaḍh and Bhivagaḍh, which may have been the reason for its selection as a site for the royal capital.3
...Pṛithivīshēṇa I was succeeded by his son Rudrasēna II, the son-in-law of the illustrious Gupta king Chandragupta II-Vikramāditya. Unlike his ancestors who were all Śaivas, this prince was a devotee of Chakrapāṇī (Vishṇu), to whose grace he ascribed his prosperity. This change in religious creed may have been due to the influence of his Prabhāvatīguptā, who, like her father, was a devotee of Vishṇu. She greatly venerated the pādamūlas (foot-prints) of Rāmachandra on the hill of Rāmgiri, where she made both of her known grants.4 This Rāmagiri is modern Rāmṭēk, a well-known place of pilgrimage near Nāgpur, which lay about three miles from the then Vākāṭaka capital Nandivardhana.
...Rudrasēna II died soon after his accession, in circa 405 A.C., leaving behind two sons,
Dīvākarasēna and Dāmodarasēna, who succeeded him one after the other.5 Divakārasēna
was a minor at the time of his father’s death. The dowager queen Prabhāvatīguptā
therefore looked after the affairs of the State as regent for her little son. Her Poonā plates,
which were issued from Nandivardhana in the thirteenth year evidently of the boy prince’s
reign, revealed for the first time that she was a daughter of the famous Gupta king Chandra-
1The last known date of the Western Kshatrapas is Ś. 310 or Ś. 31x (i.e. 388 A.C. or 388 +x A.C.)
while the earliest date of Chandragupta II noticed in the inscriptions of Mālwā is G. 82 (401-2 A.C.).
V. Smith therefore conjectured that the war against the Kshatrpas must have occurred in circa 395 A.C.
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