Modern India is no stranger to politically powerful women. There were women who took part n the struggle to oust the British, fought against them and occupied political positions in the new political dispensation. We have , of course, had Indira Gandhi as the Prime Minister even if for dynastic reasons and many other state chief ministers who run their own states like fiefdoms. In the context of Nirmala Sitharaman being made the Defence Minister this discussion seems even more apt.

What would we see if we swept an eye across the ages and looked at India in the past? Did women aspire to political power, hold it, wield it and make their marks on the political and administrative firmament?

This is by way of a neglected area of historiography and it is only now that there is an awakening of inter disciplinary interest in historical gender studies. Research is patchy and many original sources have to be restudied and put in their proper context.

There are many aspects of gender studies one can concentrate on while looking at the past. Here I would like to commence with a look at women, politics and power.

In that ultimate treatise on politics, the Arthashastra, women have various roles in the complicated structure of the state. They are queens, spies, soldiers, guards, king’s advisers et al. The role of ganikas or courtesans in shaping power politics is legendary, the reverberating story of Amrapali of Vaishali  and Bimbisara of Magadha had an effect on the emergence of Magadha as a paramount power and then the seat of an empire which ruled India.

Let us start this series with a woman who has not been given her due because of the vagaries of historiography. Prabhavati Gupta, the Queen Regent of the Vakataka empire , the daughter of Kuberanaga and Chandragupta II of the Gupta dynasty ,the sister of Kumaragupta and the mother of Pravarsena II of the Vakatakas.

Sources for information on the Gupta-Vakatakas include the archaeological sites of Udaigiri, Ramtek, Mandhal and Mansar all in Maharashtra; numismatic evidence; inscriptions and copper plate grants of Rudrasena II, Prabhavati Gupta and her sons; numerous inscriptions of Prabhavati Gupta’s son Pravarsena, including those at the Ajanta Caves complex, and also an inscription ascribed to her daughter

Chandragupta II was the puissant son and worthy successor of Samudragupta. His chief queen was called Dhruvadevi, who is very much worthy of her own story, but the woman we are discussing today was born of his marriage to Kuberanaga, a princess of the Nagas of eastern Malwa and Udaigiri-Vidisa, old enemies of his father.

Prabhavati, the daughter of this union, was married to the crown prince of the Vakatakas, Rudrasena II, in about 388 AD. There was therefore a network of relationships between the powerful Guptas who ruled a large part of India, the Nagas and the eastern Vakatakas of the south through this marriage.

Her power and influence in matters of the Vakataka kingdom through her husband are evidenced by inscriptions such as those of Mandhal in Maharashtra. It was her impact on her husband which led him to carry on the social ,cultural and religious policies of her natal family of the Guptas and her illustrious father Chandragupta. He initiated the same system of large scale religious patronage across religions and sects in the Vakataka regions as was prevalent in the Gupta empire.

There is also evidence to show that she helped her father, Chandragupta, with resources and support in his final defeat of the Sakas of Gujarat , a very real threat to the Gupta empire.

Prabhavati Gupta , very interestingly , though a queen of the Vakatakas, identifies herself not just with her natal family but more so, with the lineage of her mother Kubernaga. In her inscriptions she mentions her gotra as Dharana, the gotra of the Guptas, and not Vishnuvriddha, that of the Vakatakas. The special mention of the Naga family of her mother is also significant. This cannot be characterized either as matriarchy or matrilineal but the importance given to the female line is obvious. Her importance and her power, her dominance are clear in the inscriptions and the prashastis both during her husband’s life and after it.

Around 405 AD Rudrasena II was dead and Prabhavati had assumed power as the regent for her three minor sons.

After his death, she put her stamp on the Vakatakas , drawing them even closer to the vision of the Guptas during her almost two decade regency period and even after. During the regency she was the de facto ruler of the Vakatakas. Of the imperial Guptas, her father ruled till 415 AD after which her brother Kumaragupta I, the son of Dhruvadevi, became the King and remained so until 455 AD.

On her assumption of the regency she moved her residence from Padmapura, northwards, to Nandivardhana at the foot of the Ramagiri hills. Her three sons grew up here but it is mostly of Pravarsena, who succeeded her as the sovereign, that we have useful records.

Modelling herself on the fabulous Udaigiri built by Chandragupta she built the Ramagiri and Mandhal sanctuaries which are not only unique in their iconography but also have a very distinctive idea of the co-existence of Hinduism with other Indic religions and the harmonisation of the worship of Vishnu and Shiva, a Gupta inspired ideal.

She had her sculptors experiment with new forms of iconography and had set up a workshop for the production of high quality red sandstone sculptures. This workshop continued to do exemplary work under her son as evidenced by the stunning statues at the Pravaresvara temple built by him.

Her son Pravarsena built a new capital for himself at Pravarpura but the discovery of his royal seal along with his mother’s show that she continued to be a powerful and dominant figure through her life.

When she died at an advanced age, probably in her 70s, although some inscriptions hint that she was a hundred years old, a funerary monument was built for her between Ramagiri and Pravarpura protected by the guardian of her mothers family, a Naga.

The large scale works undertaken by Prabhavati Gupta, the land grants made by her, her stewardship of the Vakatakas into the political direction she wanted all tell us that she had efficient control of the levers of power as queen, regent and queen mother.

It is fashionable historiography to stigmatize the Gupta age as one where orthodoxy strengthened its sway, ‘brahmanism’ flourished and women lost whatever little privileges they had in earlier ages.

But, a detailed study of inscriptions, grants, coins and archaeological remains certainly does not seem to bear this out. This imperial family of the Guptas and then the Vakatakas seems to have given women due importance.

From the coin commemorating the marriage of Chandragupta 1 to Kumaradevi, surely the first ever coin of its type, to the scintillating story of the marriage of Dhruvadevi and Chandragupta II and her importance in the political scheme of things, to Prabhavati Gupta and Kubernaga as well as Prabhavati Gupta’s daughter the women seem to be important in more than merely symbolic ways.

They also seem to have been an unusually creatively gifted family, Samudragupta has been shown as playing the veena in one of his coins, his son and grandson as well as his granddaughter were passionate builders and patrons of the arts. His great grandson Pravarsens was a poet and an author, writing the epic Maharashtrian Prakrit poet based on the Valmiki Ramayan, the  ‘Setubandha’. He is also said to have contributed some poems to the most famous prakrit collection of them all the Gatha Saptasai. My imagination sparkles at the thought that he would have learnt political as well as literary and creative skills at his mother’s knee, having lost his father at an early age.

A few words on the subject of women, divorce, widowhood and re-marriage.

In keeping with the laws of Parashara, Narada and Kautilya women were allowed ‘moksha’ or divorce from their husbands under certain circumstances. Evidence suggests that Dhruvadevi divorced her husband Ramgupta and then married his younger brother to be his Mahadevi. Prabhavati Gupta was widowed at an early age and then ran her kingdom with an iron hand for decades. Her daughter, too was widowed at an early age but inscriptions mention that she returned to her natal home and lived a long and useful life involving herself in many matters of the state.

It does seem obvious that issues relating to the position of women in early Indian society need to be re considered in the light of evidence.

The first four decades of the 5th century with the rule of Chandra and Kumara Gupta in the north and Prabhavati Gupta and Pravarsena ,her son, were, in the words of Hans Bakker, one of the most peaceful and stable periods in the  sub continent which resulted in a cultural flowering of the highest degree and an unprecedented development of the literary and visual arts which still stun today.

To put it another way, at this point of time, most of the Indian sub continent was ruled by the father daughter duo of Chandra and Prabhavati Gupta and then the brother sister duo of Kumara and Prabhavati Gupta. This, a most fascinating phase of history which seems to have been ignored in our history books.

It is time to re-appraise the roles of these powerful women from the past and place them where they should belong in our mind space. I shall hope to contribute to this objective in future articles, too.

Image Credits: By Ganesh Dhamodkar (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons