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ECLIPSE OF GUPTA RULE IN BENGAL 597 Line 6 of the Mandaśor Stone Pillar inscription leaves the impression that in the time of Yasodharman Mihirakula was the king of a Himālayan country ("small kingdom in the north"), i.e., Kaśmira and that neighbourhood, who was compelled “to pay respect to the two feet” of the victorious Janendra probably when the latter carried his arms to "the mountain of snow the tablelands of which are embraced by the Gargā."
Yasodharman claims to have extended his sway as far as the Lauhitya or Brahmaputra in the east. It is not improbable that he defeated and killed Vajra, the son of Bālāditya, and extinguished the viceregal family of the Dattas of Pandra-vardhana. Hiuen Tsang mentions a king of Central India as the successor of Vajra. The Dattas, who governed Pundra-vardhana from the time of Kumāra Gupta I, disappear about this time. But Yasodharman's success must have been short-lived,
Gandhāra ( Beal, II, 171). To the court-poet of Yasodharman Mihirakula was pre-eminently a king of the Himālayan region. This is clear from the following passage which was misunderstood by Fleet whose interpretation has been followed by Father Heras (p. 8 n) :
"He (Yasodharman) to whose feet respect was paid...by even that (famous) king Mihirakula, whose head had never previously been brought into the humility of obeisance to any other save (the god) Sthānu (and) embraced by whose arms the mountain of snow falsely prides itself as being styled an inaccessible fortress" (Kielhorn in Ind. Ant., 1885, p. 219). Kielhorn's interpretation was accepted by Fleet. [The statement that Mihirakula's head 'had never been brought into the humility of obeisance to any other save (the god) Sthānu" shows that he refused to do homage to Bālāditya, and probably accounts for the order, given for his execution by that king.)
1 CII, pp. 146-147 : Jayaswal, The Historical Position of Kalki, p. 9,
2 If the identification of Bālāditya with Bhānu Gupta first proposed in these pages is correct, his son Vajra may be identified with Vakārākhya, the younger brother (anuja) of the Prakațāditya of the Sārnāth Inscription (Fleet, CII, 284 ff.)-the Pakārākhya of the Arya-Manjusri-müla-kalba who is represented as the son of Bhakārākhya, i. e., Bhānu Gupta (ed. G. Šāstri, pp. 637-44). Prakațāditya is represented in the inscription named above as the son of Bālāditya by Dhavalā. Cf. now Jayaswal, An Imperial History of India, pp. 47, 53, 56, 63.
