SPREAD OF THE MALAVA ERA
Dr. D. C. Sircar
The well-known Malwa tract in Central India was named after an ancient Indian people known as the Malavas, considerably after the second century A.D. when its eastern part was known as Akara (later also Dasarna) with Vidisa as its capital and its western part Avanti with Ujjayini as its capital. The name Malava is known also to be applied to certain other far away areas like Malwa in the Fatehpur District (U.P.) and Malavan subdivision of the Ratnagiri District (Bombay). There are also references to the existence of tribes called Malava (not exactly ‘Malava’) in the Tamil and Kannada areas.
There were Malava settlements in ancient times in the Punjab and Rajputana. In the seventh centuiy A.D., the Chinese pilgrim Hiuen Tsang applies this name to South Lata (Gujarat). The Tibetan author Taranatha locates a Malava in Prayaga, i.e. the Allahabad region. Anantapala, a feudatory of Chalukya Vikramaditya VI, claims to have subdued the seven Malava countries up to the Himalayas. Thus there is hardly any doubt about that of various Malava settlements in different parts of the country.
The earliest known Malava settlement was in the Punjab, in the fourth century B.C. The Malavas (called Malloi by the Greeks) lived in the land lying to the north of the confluence of the Ravi and the Chenab. Their probable confederation with the Kshudrakas, then inhabiting the Montgomery Region of the Punjab, is known to the Mahabharata and the early grammarians who class both these tribes among peoples living by the profession of arms. From the Punjab, the Malavas, or at least a large section of them, migrated to Rajputana. Beginning during the Indo-Greek occupation of the Punjab, it appears to have continued down to the Scythian conquest of that country. The capital of the Malava Republic in Rajputana was at Malava-nagara, the modern Nagar or Karkota-nagar in the Uniyara Tahsil, about 25 miles south-east of Tonk and about 45 miles to the north-east of Bundi.
The Malavas, settled in Rajputana, are the earliest Indian people known to have used an era which has been identified with the so-called Vikrama Samvat of 58 B.C. We have shown elsewhere (The Age of Imperial Unity, 123-25 ; cf. Vikrama Volume, 1948, pp. 557-86), that the Malavas probably adopted the use of the east Iranian era of 58 B.C. from the Sakas in the Punjab and carried it to their new settlement in Rajputana. It was designated by the name Krita, the real ¿significance of which is unknown. Krita is a fairly well-known personal name in ancient Indian literature, and possibly there was an illustrious leader of the Malava people named Krita whose name came to be associated with this era after he had thrown offthe yoke of the Kushanas using the Kanishka era (i.e. the Sakabda of 78 A.D.), just as in a still later age it was named after Vikramaditya and the Saka era after Salivahana. As subordinates of the Kushanas, the Malavas possibly were for sometime required to use the Kaniskha era. Eflorts of powerful kings to institute new eras to substitute others already in the field may have induced the Malavas to be the champions of the era that was already in use among them in preference to its rival, viz. the Kaniskha era of 78 A.D., which was associated with their erst- while overlords. Another probability is that the name Krita is a Sanskritised modification of one Scytho-Parthian name or word. It is interesting to note that, according to a Buddhist tradition recorded by Hiuen Tsang, some barbarian kings of the north-western parts of India including Gandhara and Kashmir were known to the Indians as Krita or ‘the purchased’. It is not improbable that both Krita and Kritã are Indian adaptations of some foreign terms. But nothing definite can be said on this point until further evidence is forthcoming.
As early as the beginning of the second century A.D., the Malavas of Nagar region in Rajputana are known to have been fighting with their neighbours, the Uttamabhadras of the Ajmer area, and the latter’ s allies, the Kshaharata Sakas of Western India, who were probably feudatories of the Kushanas of Kanishka’s house. With the gradual decline of Kushana power, the Malavas appear to have extended their dominions over wide regions of Rajputana at the expense of the Kardamaka Sakas who succeeded the Kshaharatas. This is suggested by the use of the Krita era in the records of the third and fourth centuries found in the former Bharatpur, Kotah and Udaipur States. Slightly later records of western India not only endow the era with the name Krita but also associate it with the Malava people till soon afterwards the old name Krita is gradually forgotten. With the growth of the Sakari Vikramaditya saga on the basis of the exploits of the Gupta Vikramadityas, especially of Chandragupta II (376-414 A.D.), the Krita-Malava era came to be associated, about the eighth century A.D., with Raja Vikrama who was often specially regarded as a king of Malava or the Malavas. There was probably a long drawn struggle between the Malavas using the Krita era of 58 B.C. and the Kardamaka Sakas using the Kanishka or Saka era of 78 A.D. in the third and fourth cehturies A.D. But both the powers had soon to submit to the imperial Guptas of Magadha. The Allahabad pillar inscription mentions the Malavas and the neighbouring peoples as the feudatories of the Gupta emperor Samudragupta, while thè Sakas were subjugated by that monarch and totally extirpated by his son Chandragupta II. After the extinction of the Sakas, the Aulikaras, apparently a Malava dynasty or clan like the Sogins of the Nandsa inscriptions of Nandisoma and Bhattisoma, flourished at Dasapura (modern Mandasor in West Malawa previously in the dominions of the Sakas) under the vassalage of the Guptas. It was probably the Aulikaras, who were responsible for the name Malava being applied to a wide region of central and western India including the old territory of Avanti (district round Ujjayini) and probably also Akara or Dasarna (district round Vidisa). It has to be noted that the Aulikara kings, even when they acknowledged the suzerainty of the Gupta emperors, used the Krita-Malava era in preference to the Gupta era of 319 A.D. The favour shown to the Malava family of the Aulikaras and the Krita-Malava era by the Guptas in contradistinction to the attempt of Chandragupta II and probably also his father Samudragupta to extirpate both the Sakas and their era might have contributed to the growth of the Sakari Vikramadity legend attributing the foundation of the era of 58 B.C. to Raja Vikrama. The application of the name Malwa to the ancient janapada of Akera or Dasarna may also have been due to the so-called later Guptas who may have represented another Malava family like the Aulikaras of West Malwa.
The earliest reference to the application of the name Malava to the present Malwa tract can be traced in the Harshacharita of Bana, composed in the first quarter of the seventh century A.D. The Harshacharita represents Prabhakaravardhana as an enemy of the Malavas, a possible reference to the Pushyabhuti king’s hostile Telation with Devagupta, apparently mentioned there as Malava-raja. Kumaragupta and Madhavagupta, sons of Mahasengupta, are called Malava-raja-putra. It seems that the so-called later Guptas originally ruled over some parts of east Malwa but after wrested west Malwa from the Aulikaras. Both these ruling fámilies may have been Malwa by nationality, as otherwise it is difficult to explain the application of the name Malawa to the old Avanti-Akara region from about the seventh century A.D. In the eighth century A.D., the Krita-Malava eta became associated with the king Vikramaditya of Indian legends representing the monarch as the lord of Malava with Ujjayani as his capital. The name Malâva.to indicate the country round Ujjayani in the ancient Avanti janapada began to be popular from this time. But it appears to have been fairly established before the eighth century owing to the rule of the Malava dynasty of the Aulikaras who continuously used the Malava era. Unfortunately no early inscriptions of the later Guptas belonging to the period when they were ruling in Malwa are as yet known. The Khajurąho inscription (954 A.D.) of Dhanga places a Malava-nadi on the borders of the Chandella dominions covering Bundelkhand, probably in east Malwa. Vatsyayanas Kamasutra (VI, 5, 22-24), possibly of the early Gupta age in its present form, distinguishes Avanti from Malava as the Malavas were then living in Rajputana. But its commentary, the Jayamangala (middle of the thirteenth century), explains Avanti as west Malwa and Malava as east Malwa. In connection with the popularity of the name Malava as applied to the modern Malwa tract, reference should also be made to the occupation of the country by the Paramaras. The Paramara king Vakpati II Munja is known from the Dharampuri inscription to have made Ujjayini his residence as early in 975 A.D. His great-grandfather Vakpati I and his immediate successors were governors of the Khetaka (modern Kaira) region of Gujarat, called Malava by Hiuen Tsang. Harsha Siyaka, father of Munja, claims to have defeated the Rashtrakuta king Khottiga (968-73 A.D.}, younger brother of Krishna III, and the same event is apparently referred to by Dhanapala in the Paiyalachchhi (972-73 A.D.) when he speaks of the burning of Manyakheta (the Rashtrakuta capital) by the Malavas. The same event is further mentioned in the Arthuna inscription which speaks of Harsha as the Malava king. It is unknown whether the Paramara power extended to the present Malwa tract before the days of his son Munja, but it is during the nlle of these Paramaras that Malava came to be the most popular name of the ancient Avanti-Akara region. Munja’ s successor Sindhuraja assumed a name of the traditional Sakari Vikramaditya of Malwa and the latter’s son Bhoja, who held his court at Dhara in west Malwa, contributed considerably to the popularisation of the Vikramaditya saga.
The earliest use of the Krita-Malva era outside the western and north-western parts of India is found in the Haraha (Bara Banki District, U. P.) inscription of Maukhari Isanavarman, dated in the year 611. The use of the era by the Maukharis of the U.P. and Bihar is clearly explained by the Badva inscriptions of the third century A.D., found in the Kotah region of Rajputana. These records belong to the Maukharis and are dated in the Krita-Malava era. The Maukharis, therefore, appear to have carried the use of the above era from their home in Rajputana to their new settlements in the east. It is not known whether they belonged to the Malava stock, but there is no doubt that they were originally subordinate to the Malavas. Another factor that contributed to the expansion of the era was probably the Ujjayini school of astronomers who appear to have favoured both the Saka and Vikrama eras, while some astronomers specially favoured the era of 58 B.C. the foreign association of which had been long ago forgotten. Its use was continued in the U.P. by the Malayaketus and the Gurjara-Pratiharas. That the era was introduced in the Maukhari age m Bihar as well seems to be suggested by the date Samvat 898, quoted in Maithila Vachaspati Misra’s Nyayasuchi as the year of its composition. A manuscript of the Ramayana is known to have been copied in Tirabhukti (Tirhut) in Samvat 1076. With the gradual extension of the Gurjara-Pratihara power over wide regions of northern India, the popularity of the era of 58 B.C. increased considerably. Another contributing cause of the popularity of the era was the development of the Vikramaditya saga.
