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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[OCTOBER, 1913.
On the basis of the occurrence of the Hûnas in the play, it might be argued that the play must be dated after the Hun irruptions into India, which are believed to have taken place a generation later than the reign of Chandragupta II". But the Huns had been known to this country before they came in as invaders. The Lalitavistara mentions the Húna-lipi. They came to be known through the intercourse between India and Tartary and China, which had been well-established and frequent in the 1st and 2nd century A. D. A series of Hindu missionaries of Buddhism10 to China bad already preceded Dharma-raksha (d. 313 A.D.), the translator of Lalitavistara. The Questions of Milinda, (ii. pp. 203-4) describes "people from Scythia, Bactria, China and Vilata (Tartary)" coming here. We do not know exactly where the Huns stayed immediately after they were driven away by China in the 1st century A.D. But this much is certain that they must have remained in the neighbourhood of Transoxiana through which the route to China lay. Before their attack on Persia (420 A. D.) they had already occupied Bactria. At Balkh and Bamian they had their head-quarters from which they raided south-west and south-east11. In view of these circumstances there is nothing contradictory in having an author under Chandragupta II mentioning the Huns. The very mention shows that up to that time the Huns had not yet occupied any part of India, for they are associated with the Chinese or China (China-Hanaiḥ, Mudra-Ra. Act V, verse 11). By Kâlidâsa they are described as occupying Kashmir (the land producing saffron)12; their Chinese association was completely forgotten in his days. It is also worthy of note that they do not figure in the first army of invasion which came to help Chandragupta against the Nanda (Act II, P. 124); they only appear in the army of Malayaketu, and there too not prominently, but as mere auxiliaries to Saka monarchs (the northern Sakas = the Kushâpas) 13. They had not yet shown themselves superior to their Scythian neighbours, whom they actually overthrew about 465 A.D.
The conclusion, therefore, to which we are led is that the play knows the Hûnas of a time when they had not yet acquired any territory in India, although an attack from them was considered probable. We may roundly put it down on chronological considerations c. 410. A. D. This also would confirm the view that the reigning Chandragupta of the bharata-vákya must be Chandragupta-Vikramaditya (d. c. 413 A. D.) And the annoyance caused to the country by the mlechchhas at the time of the composition of the drama would refer, if the composition, as it seems probable, took place after the suppression of the Western Satrap (c. 390 A. D.), to the Kushanas, or possibly to the new element of the Hans, who might have already made some incursions, possibly in league with the Kushanas, during the last years of Chandragupta's reign.
266
"Malayaketu." All the nations, which help the mlechchha king Malayaketu, in his invasion of Pâtaliputra, belong, as the late Mr. Telang has pointed out, one and all' except the name Malaya' to the northern parts, and most to the northern frontier of India,' to be more accurate,
V. Smith, Early History of India, 2nd ed., p. 284.
10 6.9., Mahabala (c. 197 A. D.), Dharmapala of Kapilavastu (c. 207 A. D.), Dharmakala (222 A. D.), Vighna (c. 224 A. D).
11 Sir C. N. Eliot, Ency. Brit, 11th ed., Vol. IX, p. 680.
It is very probable that the invasion of Balkh by Chandra of the Delhi Iron Pillar inscription (who has been now conclusively identified with Chandravarma (c. 400 A. D.) by M. M. Haraprasad Sastri in the light of his new Mandasor inscription) was in response to an early Hun inroad in territories, which were not subject to Samudragupta.
13 Raghuvamia, IV, 67-68. The Hunic occupation of Kashmir comes over a century later, i. c., after Mihirakula's defeat (c. 530, A. D.) by BAIAditya and Yasodharman. This would place Kalidasa about 540-550 A. D., or some 130 years at least later than the composition of the Mudra-Rakshasa. (I may mention here that I have come across a Han caste at Almora, Himalayas.) [For a different interpretation of these verses of Kalidasa about Hapas, see Prof. Pathak's note, Ante, vol. XLI.-D. B. B.]
13 गान्धारर्मध्ययाने यवन पतिभिः संविधेयः प्रयनः ।
पश्चातिष्ठन्तु वीराः शकनरपतवः संह [१] ताचीनहूः ॥
14 Mudra-Rakshasa, Introduction, p. 33.
