Epigraphia Indica Vol 34

Author(s): D C Sircar
Publisher: Archaeological Survey of India

Page 48

No. 41 TWO INSCRIPTIONS PROM NAGARJUNIKONDA
21 the Puri inscription of the time of Anantavarman Chodaganga edited above. In this connection it is interesting to note that the stone piller on which our inscription is engraved bears certain figures to which reference has been made above. As we have seen, the scene depicted is that of a seated lady attended by two females. This lady seems to be no other than the deceased queen Varmabhatā. She has a head-dress; but her locks are not tied in a knot. She wears an upper garment covering her bust and a long scarf covers her right shoulder and upper right arm and also her left forearm. The queen appears to be dressed like a foreign lady which she really was as we shall see below. Her extended right hand seems to hold a darpana. The sculpture thus depicts a toilet soene.
Varmabhata is described as the mother of the said king, as the wife of Maharaja Ehavala Chantamüla, as the daughter-in-law of Mahārāja Virspurshadatta and as granddaughter-in-law of Mahārāja Chanta mūla. She is further stated to have belonged to the Bahapala (i.e. Bțihatphala or Brihatphalayana) gotra and to have been the daughter of a Mahākhatapa (Mahākshatrapa). Thus the record supplies us with a second instance of the relations of the Iskhvaku family of the Krishna-Guntur region with that of the Saka Mahakshatrapas of Western India, the first being that of Mathariputra Virapurushadatta's marriage with Mahadevi Rudradhara-bhatānka described as the Ujanikā-mahara[ ja*]-balika (Ujjayinika-mahārāja-bālikā, i.e. daughter of the Mahārāja of Ujjayini) known from an inscription from the same place. The discovery of a big hoard of the coins of the Saka rulers at Patlūripālem in the Guntur District is also interesting to note in this connection. The presence of Sakas at the Ikshvāku capital is also indicated by the epigraphic and sculptural records discovered at Nagarjunikonda. Though the identity of the Mahākshatrapa who was the father of queen Vammabhatā is not disclosed, a very interesting information supplied for the first time by the inscription under study is that the Saka Mahākshatrapas of Western India claimed to have belonged to the Bțihatphala or Brihatphalāyana gotra. While the Hinduization of these Sakas is clearly indicated by the records of Rishabhadatta and Rudradáman, the Sakas in general were regarded in ancient India either as clean Südras or as degraded Kshatriyas.
Rudapurisadata, whose mother Varmabhata is stated to have been and in whose 11th regnal year the record is dated, is described as a Vāsishthiputra. The paternal gotra of the king's mother was therefore Vasishtha. It is thus clear that the Saka princess Varmabhată was a step-mother of the king and not his real mother.
King Rudapurisadata (Sanskrit Rudrapurushadatta?) of this record is no doubt the same as Rulapurisadata in whose fourth regnal year the Gurzala Brāhmi inscription is dated. It may be noted that Gurzala is only a few miles to the east of Nägärjunikonda. The palaeography and provenance of the two epigraphs and the similarity of the two names appear to establish the identity of Ruda purisadata of our epigraph and Rulapurisadata of the Gurzala inscription. The use of da and la for the same sound in these records may be the result of an attempt to render the
Cf. Vol. XXIII, pp. 181 ff. .There is really no mention of a king named Srivarman of the Bahaphala gotra as reported in the Indian Archaeology Review, referred to above. . Above, Vol. XX, pp. 4-6: p. 19 (B 5).
Cf. 4.R.Ep., 1966-67, pp. 21 ff., 128 ff. For an Inscription mentioning a Baka, of. above, Vol. XX, p. 37; for soulptural representation of a Seka, 1. Mem. A81, No. 58, Plato X.o.
The Age of Imperial Unity, pp. 121-22, 181, 186. The reference does not appear to be to the queen's husband's gotru.
Sanskrit rudru may be both rudda and rudda in Prakrit.
. Abovo, Vol. XXVI, p. 123. The correct reading of the king's Demo in Rusal and not Rufa as read by Prof. K. A. Nakanta Sastri,