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EXALTATION OF MONARCHY 517 purging it of the evils of the Kali Age, probably to distinguish themselves from the unbelieving foreigners and barbarian outcastes of the North-West.
The assumption of big titles! by kings and emperors was paralleled by the use of equally exalted epithets in reference to their chief consorts. Aśoka's queens appear to have been styled merely Devī. The mother of Tīvara, for instance, is called “Dutīā Devī” (the second queen) and the implication is that the elder queen was Prathamā Devī. But in the Scythian epoch we come across the titles of Agra-Mahishi and Mahādevī which distinguished the chief queen from her rivals. Among such chief consorts may be mentioned A yasi-Kamuia, Nāganikā, and Balasri.
The apotheosis of deceased rulers is strikingly illustrated by the practice of erecting Devakulas or "Royal galleries of portrait statues.” The most famous of these structures was the Devakula of the Pitāmaha (grandfather) of Huvishka referred to in a Mathurā inscription. The existence of royal Devakulas as well as ordinary temples,
1 It is a characteristic of Indian history that imperial titles of one period became feudatory titles in the next. Thus the title Rājā used by Aśoka became a feudatory title in the Scythian and Gupta periods, when designations like Rājarājā, Rājādhirāja, Mahārājādhirāja, Parama-Bhattāraka and ParamaRajadhirāja (Allan, 63), came into general use. But even Mahārājādhirāja became a feudatory designation in the age of the Pratibāras when the loftier style of Paramabhattāraka, Mahārājādhirāja, Parameśvara was assumed by sovereign rulers,
2 JRAS, 1924, p. 402. For images of later kings, cf. Beginnings of South Indian History. 144, 153 ; Raverty, Tabaqāt, I, 622 (effigy of Bikramajit); C. S. Srinivasachari, The Evolution of Political Institutions of South India, Section IV ("The Young Men of India." June and July, 1924), p. 5. Images of Sundara Chola and one of his queens were set up in the Tanjore temple and deified. C. V. Vaidya (Mediaeval Hindu India, I, 98) refers to the prevalence of the custom of raising some temple at the place of burning the dead body of the kings. But it is not clear if the temples contained images of the dead king and his queens. The deification and worship of the dead kings may be compared to devapitripūjā referred to in the Kauţiliya (I1. 6).
