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548 POLITICAL HISTORY OF ANCIENT INDIA
1
existence of a Murunda power in the Ganges valley a couple of centuries before Samudra Gupta is vouched for by Ptolemy. The Jaina Prabhavaka-charita testifies to the control that a Murunda family once exercised over the imperial city of Pataliputra.2
Samudra Gupta's Ceylonese contemporary was Meghavarna. A Chinese writer, Wang Hiuen ts'e, relates that Chi-mi-kia-po-mo (i. e., Sri Meghavarman or Meghavarna) sent an embassy with gifts to Samudra Gupta and obtained his permission to erect a splendid monastery to the north of the holy tree at Bodh Gaya for the use of pilgrims from the Island.3
Allan thinks that it was at the conclusion of his campaigns that the Gupta conqueror celebrated the horse-sacrifice which, we are told in the inscriptions of his successors, had long been in abeyance. But it should be noted that the Asvamedha was celebrated by several kings during the interval which elapsed from the time of Pushyamitra to that of Samudra Gupta, e.g., Pārāśariputra Sarvatata, Satakarni, the husband of Nayanikā, Vasishṭhiputra Ikshvaku Śri-Chamtamula, Devavarman Salankayana, Pravarasena I Vākāṭaka, Śiva-skandavarman Pallava and the Naga kings of the house of Bharaśiva. It is probable, however, that the court poets
1 Ind. Ant., 1884, 377; Allan, xxix.
2
C. J. Shah, Jainism in N. India, p. 194; cf. Indian Culture, III, 49. 3 Geiger, the Mahavamsa (trans.), p. xxxix; Lévi, Journ. As., 1900, pp. 316 ff, 401 ff.; Ind. Ant., 1902, 194.
4 Cf. Divekar, Annals of the Bhandarkar Institute, VII, pp. 164-65, "Allahabad Prasasti and Aśvamedha." In the Poona plates Samudra Gupta receives the epithet anekäśvamedhayajin. He was believed to have celebrated more than one horse sacrifice, Some of the campaigns described in the Allahabad. panegyric may have been actually conducted by Princes or officers who kept guard over the sacrificial horse that was allowed to roam at large. In the inscription of Harisheņa the credit for capturing some of the vanquished chieftains is given to the army. Among the great commanders were men like Tilabhaṭṭaka and Harishena himself, who was the son of Dhruvabhuti,
