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534 POLITICAL HISTORY OF ANCIENT INDIA
himself an Ekarat or sole ruler like Mahapadma. But his only permanent annexation was that of portions of Aryavarta in the upper valley of the Ganges and its tributaries, together with certain districts in Central and Eastern India. Following his "Sarvakshatrāntaka”1 predecessor, this Sarva-rujo-chchhetta, "exterminator of all kings," uprooted Rudradeva, Matila, Nagadatta, Chandravarman, Ganapati Naga, Nagasena, Achyuta, Nandi, Balavarman, and many other kings of Áryāvarta,2 captured the scion of the family of Kota and made all the kings of forest countries (aṭavika-raja) his servants. Rudradeva has been identified by Mr. Dikshit with Rudrasena Vākāṭaka. But the Vākāṭakas can hardly be regarded as rulers of Aryavarta, and they were far from being uprooted in the time of Samudra Gupta.3 Equally untenable is the indentification of Balavarman with a prince of Assam, a province that was then looked upon as a border state (Pratyanta) and not as a part of Aryavarta. Matila has been identified with a person named "Mattila" mentioned in a seal found in Bulandshahr in the Central Doab. The absence of any honorific title on the seal leads Allan to suggest that it was a private one. But we have already come across several instances of princes being mentioned without any honorific. Chandravarman has been identified with the king of the same name mentioned in the Susunia inscription, who was the ruler of Pushkarana and was
1 Destroyer of all Kshatriyas, an epithet of Mahāpadma.
2 Father Heras thinks (Ann. Bhan. Ins., IX, p. 88) that Samudra Gupta undertook two campaigns in Aryavarta. But his theory involves the assumption that Achyuta and Nagasena were "violently exterminated" in the second campaign after being "uprooted" in the first. To obviate the difficulty he takes "uprooted' to mean "defeated". This is, to say the least, unconvincing.
3 Cf. IHQ, I, 2, 254, Rudrasena is connected with Deotek in the Chanda Dist. of C. P. Eighth Or. Conf. 613 ff. Ep. Ind. xxvi. 147, 150.
4 "A sandstone hill 12 miles to the north-west of Bankura."
