Person · Gupta court poet · India
Harisena
Samudragupta's court poet and a senior official — by his own titles master of the household, minister for peace and war, and chief justice — and the author of the Allahabad pillar prashasti. It is the single most important document for fourth-century Indian political geography and was written by the man running the administration it describes.
- Date
- 335–375
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Patron dynasty
- Gupta
- Condition
- historical person
- Confidence
- Established / referenced
- Location
- 25.610, 85.140
Worth knowing
He cut the eulogy onto a pillar Ashoka had already inscribed six centuries earlier, without effacing the edict, so two empires' statements about themselves share one shaft of stone; Jahangir then added his own accession note a thousand years after that. The inscription names the kings Samudragupta destroyed, those he defeated and reinstated, and those who sent tribute.
About the place
Placed at Pataliputra, Samudragupta's capital. His surviving work, the Allahabad pillar prashasti, is cut on a pillar now in Allahabad Fort — a separate entry — but he was the Gupta court's officer.
Connections (2)
- PatronageBanabhatta
Harisena's Allahabad prashasti for Samudragupta and Bāna's Harshacharita for Harsha are the two great court eulogies of early India and the principal sources for their respective empires — which is a difficulty, because both are poems written to praise. Bāna at least tells you who he is, describing his own village and family, which Sanskrit literature almost never does and which makes the Harshacharita the more usable of the two.
- Court associationSamudragupta
Harisena styles himself Samudragupta's khadyatapakika, sandhivigrahika and mahadandanayaka — master of the household, minister for peace and war, and chief justice — so the eulogy was written by the man running the administration it describes. That is why its list of defeated and reinstated kings is treated as an administrative document as well as a poem.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Harisena”. The Allahabad pillar inscription, in J.F. Fleet, Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum vol. III (1888), no. 1; Ashvini Agrawal, Rise and Fall of the Imperial Guptas (1989).
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