Person · Western Kshatrapa ruler · India
Rudradāman I
Also known as Rudradaman, Rudradaman I, Junagadh rock inscription
The Western Kshatrapa ruler of Gujarat and Malwa in the mid-second century, whose Junagadh rock inscription of about 150 CE is the earliest substantial inscription in Sanskrit rather than Prakrit — which makes one rock the turning point in the epigraphic history of the language.
- Date
- 130–150
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Confidence
- Not assessed
- Location
- 21.522, 70.458
Worth knowing
The inscription records that a cyclone burst the Sudarshana reservoir, first built under Chandragupta Maurya and faced with stone under Ashoka, and that he rebuilt it from his own treasury without levying a tax or forced labour — and says so in elaborate ornate prose, because the point was the Sanskrit as much as the dam.
About the place
Placed at the Girnar rock below Junagadh, where his inscription stands on the same boulder as Ashoka's edicts.
Connections (1)
- Imperial inscription atGirnār rock inscriptions (Junāgaḍh)
Rudradaman's inscription of about 150 CE stands on the same boulder as Ashoka's fourteen major rock edicts, and it is the earliest substantial inscription in Sanskrit rather than Prakrit. It records that a cyclone burst the Sudarshana reservoir and that he rebuilt it from his own treasury without levying a tax or forced labour, in prose ornate enough that the language is part of the claim.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Rudradaman I”. The Junagadh rock inscription of Rudradaman, in Epigraphia Indica vol. VIII; Sheldon Pollock, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men (2006), on the Sanskrit turn.
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