Person · Gupta emperor · India
Samudragupta
Also known as Samudragupta, Allahabad pillar inscription, Prayaga prashasti
The Gupta emperor whose campaigns are listed on the Allahabad pillar in a Sanskrit prashasti composed by his court poet Harisena — the single most important document for fourth-century Indian political geography, naming the kings he defeated, those he reinstated and those who sent tribute.
- Date
- 335–375
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Confidence
- Not assessed
- Location
- 25.431, 81.875
Worth knowing
His gold coins show him playing the vina, which is the only Indian ruler to put himself on his coinage as a musician, and others record the ashvamedha he revived. Harisena cut the eulogy onto a pillar Ashoka had already inscribed six centuries earlier, so two empires' claims share one shaft.
About the place
Placed at Prayaga, where the pillar carrying Harisena's eulogy of his reign now stands inside Allahabad fort.
Connections (2)
- Court associationHarisena
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.
- Imperial inscription atPrayāga / Prayagraj/ Allahabad
Harisena's eulogy of Samudragupta is cut on an Ashokan pillar at Prayaga, later moved into Allahabad fort, and Jahangir added his own inscription to the same shaft a thousand years after that. One column carries a Mauryan edict, a Gupta dynastic claim and a Mughal accession note, which makes it the single most reused object in Indian political history.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Samudragupta”. The Allahabad pillar inscription of Samudragupta, in J.F. Fleet, Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum vol. III (1888), no. 1; Ashvini Agrawal, Rise and Fall of the Imperial Guptas (1989).
Open Samudragupta in the repository →