Ārjunāyana

The evidence

The Ārjunāyanas are attested by a modest series of copper coins, found principally in the Bharatpur and Alwar districts, with a legend declaring the victory of the Ārjunāyanas in the same corporate form used by the Yaudheyas and Mālavas. The name suggests a claimed descent from Arjuna, of the kind several lineages of the region asserted.

They appear once in a major inscription: the Allahabad pillar of Samudragupta, in the fourth century CE, lists them with the Mālavas, Yaudheyas, Madrakas and others among the frontier peoples who paid tribute and rendered obedience. That list is the single best index of which corporate polities were still politically significant on the eve of Gupta supremacy.

Nothing else about them is documented — no capital, no constitution, no events. They belong to the group of Rajasthan and Punjab republics whose existence is certain and whose history is not recoverable.