________________
Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailassagarsuri Gyanmandir
NOTES
269
the subsequent phase of Indian History the universal custom became to date all public and private records and works in the term of an era known as the Saka-era.
V Kbāravela was the greatest known king among the monarchs of the Meghavāhana or Aira-mahāmeghavāhana dynasty who exercised their suzerainty over the kingdom of Kalinga, nay, among all the monarchs who reigned in Kalinga before King Aśoka and after the Meghavāhana kings. The memory of his predecessors in the Meghavähana line would have been completely obliterated from the pages of history but for allusions to them in his inscription as his predecessors.
With regard to the part played by his predecessors in the Meghavahana line, it may be clearly inferred from certain statements in his inscription that since the first king of this line succeeded in freeing the kingdom of Kalinga from the yoke of a foreign rule, they successfully maintained its independence till they safely handed it on to him in the third generation of two kings (tatiye purisa-yuge). If our reading āhatapuva in the sense of āhrtapūrva, "previously annexed," be accepted as correct, the HāthiGumphā record of his fourth regnal year (I. 5) may be so interpreted as to imply that the Vidyādhara-country was already annexed to the kingdom of Kalinga by some one of his predecessors, while the task that was left to him was just to consolidate the Meghavāhana rule over it. In the absence of any clear record in his icscription as to his conquest of Pāņdya kingdom, the record of his twelfth regnal year stating that the king of Pāadya supplied him with pearls, gems, jewels and rich apparels cannot be accounted for without some such supposition that either the king of Padya was an old ally of the Meghavāhana kings or the king of Pāņdya was compelled to acknowledge his supremacy, even as an ally, in fear of the consequences of an invasion contemplated by him. Further, he could not have used Mathurā as a military base of his attacks on Uttarāpatha, on one hand, and on Anga-Magadha, on the other, as it appears from the records of his eighth and twelfth regnal years (I. 9, 1.13) that he did so, if either he himself had not conquered it or it had not been an old dependency of the kingdom of Kalinga.
It is very clear from the record of his first regnal year (I. 2) that the city of Kalinga with its gates, walls, residential houses, deep and cool tanks and all kinds of gardens was used as the capital of the Kalinga kingdom also by his predecessors. If Danta pura-Paloura was the most ancient known capital of Kalinga, and no evidence be forthcoming as to the city of Kalinga being used as the capital by any pre-Meghavāhana
For Private And Personal Use Only
