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DECEMBER, 1926] VYAGHRA, THE FEUDATORY OF VAKATAKA PRITHIVISENA
satisfactory material, for regarding this Samudragupta as the contemporary of Vâkâ. taka Prithiviśêna I, who is described as a great conqueror and who extended his authority as far as Kuntala in the south, in the Ajanta Inscription. It would be more reasonable to hold, therefore, that the Nachna and Ganj inscriptions are inscriptions of the Vyâghra, who acknowledged the authority of the Vâkâtakas under Prithivîsêna I. The contemporaneity of Prithiviśêna I and Samudragupta does not rest merely on the precarious evidence of Paleography. The Balaghat plates of Prithivisêna II were on the basis of Paleographic evidence alone referred to the second half of the eighth century by Kielhorn, while Dr. Bühler on the same evidence of paleography assigned the Ajanta inscription of Harisêna, who must have been, however, almost a contemporary of Prithiviśêna II, and came immediately after him to the first quarter of the sixth century A.D. My friend, Dr. Sukthankar, editing the Ganj Inscription, considers Bühler's dating too early, and would assign the Ganj inscription to the seventh century A.D., and relies to some extent on Prof. Kielhorn's assumption of the eighth century for the Balaghat plates. We have now much more reliable evidence for assigning dates to these rulers on the strength of recently discovered copper plate grants of a Vâkâtaka queen, who claims to have been a Gupta princess. We shall now consider how far this will take us.
A Vâkâtaka queen, Prabhâvati Gupta, has been generally known to epigraphists for some time. In the grants of Vâkâtaka Pravarasêna II, son of this queen, published by Dr. Fleet in the Gupta Inscriptions8, she describes herself as the crowned queen of Vakataka Rudra. sêna II, son of Prithivisêna I. She describes her husband only as a Mahârâja. In the same document, she describes herself as the daughter of Maharajadhiraja Devagupla. Notwithstanding the fact that this was another name of Chandragupta, Dr. Fleet sought to identify this Dêvagupta with the ruler of that name among the later Guptas 10, to bring the dating in line with palæographic estimates. It was Professor Pathak who drew attention for the first time in the Indian Antiquary for 1912, from another grant of this Prabhavati Gupta since published,11 to the fact that she described herself as the daughter of a Maharajadhiraja Chandragupta, carrying the genealogy of the Guptas down to Chandragupta II. Another grant since discovered1 confirms this, and it may be now taken as beyond doubt that Prabhavati Gupta, the crowned queen of Rudrasêna II and mother of Pravarasena II, was the daughter of Chandragupta II, the great emperor, son of Samudragupta. Rudrasena's father Prithivisêna must have beer: contemporary with Chandragupta II, Vikramaditya. As Prithivîsêna I's reign is described in the Ajanta inscription as having been a comparatively long and prosperous one, we may take it that he was a contemporary of Samudragupta as well. It is just possible that he was contemporary even with Samudra. gupta's father.13 That is not very material to our position here.
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Among the southern monarchs that Samudragupta conquered and set free, the second prince in the list happens to be a Vyâghra, the ruler of Mahâkântara. The first name is that of the ruler of Kosala. Where was the Mahakântara of which Vyâghra was the ruler? In the period to which these documents have reference almost up to the days of Harsha, Mahâkântara must have included the Sagar division of the Central Provinces extending northwards certainly to the Ajaighad state in Bundelkhand. It is likely therefore that this Vyaghra is the chief under reference in the Nachna and Ganj inscriptions, both of which are in the Ajai. ghad state, and this Vyâghra must have acknowledged the authority of Prithivisena 1 Vakataka before Samudragupta conquered and set him free, obviously on the understanding that that Vyaghra changed his fealty from the Vâkâtakas to the Guptas. We require A.S.W.I., vol. IV, p. 138.
F.G.I., p. 33. Sanchi Ins, note.
AA.S.W.I., vol. IV, p. 128. 7 E.I., vol. XVII, p. 30. 10 F.G.I., p. 215 and n. 7 on the page. 13 Indian Antiquary.
5 E.I., vol. IX, p. 270. F.G.I., Nos. 55 and 56.
11 Ep. Indi., XV, p. 39.
13 Annals of the Bhandarkar Institute, vol. IV, p. 41.
