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the text has it, by the powerful navy of its northern enemy, while that enemy was still struggling to obtain possession.
What, then, of Nahapana and Sundara? The doubt as to the indivisibility of the former has already been suggested; as to the latter, the shortness of his own reign and those of his successor and his immediate predecessors, and the length of that of his predecessor Arishta (25 years) indicate for him a long period of waiting as one of the royal heirs; which, according to the Andhra custom, was spent, at least in part, as viceroy at the western capital, Paithan. Here he exercised all the functions of a monarch, and his would be the name to appear on all proclamations issued on the western coast. “Since it came into the possession of Sandares” indicates, therefore, a date to- ward the end of the reign of Arishta Satakarni, who is referred to as “the elder Saraganus,” and who, it maybe inferred, had been, as viceroy at Paithan, a more powerful ruler than the youthful Sandares, now struggling against greater odds to maintain the Andhra power on that coast.
Between Arishta and Sundara the Vayu and Matsya Puranas are agreed in placing three other monarchs: Hala (with whose name the adoption of Sanscrit as the literary language of Northern India is so closely associated), who reigned 5 years; Mandalaka, 5 years; Purindrasena, 5 years. Then came Sundara, 1 year, and Chakora, 6 months, followed by Siva Satakarni, 28 years. These five short reigns, coming between two long ones, seem to suggest a quick suc- cession of weak and impractical sons of a strong monarch, followed in their turn by another long reign of sterner purpose ; a succession of events like the reigns of the sons of Henry II. and Catherine de Medici in France. This would account for the condition described to the author of the Periplus by some acquaintance at Barygaza: “When the old king Saraganus (now ruling at Dhanyakataka) was viceroy at Paethana, he made Calliena an active port; now that he is on the throne and his sons have tried their hand at the viceroy’s post one after the other, in the intervals of their literary and artistic pursuits, and it has finally been turned over to young Sandares, it has been an easy matter for our Saka general to send down his ships and stop its trade.” Had the story been written in 83 A. D., the informant would have said, our satrap has annexed that country to his own dominions, and closed its ports. ”
The same explanation is perfectly feasible for Nahapana, who is known to have been governor in Surashtra before he was satrap at Ujjeni. But as the great satrap lived until the Saka year 46, or 124 A. D. , it is more probable that one of that name in 60 A. D. was his predecessor.
