Person · Gupta emperor · India
Skandagupta
Also known as Skandagupta, Kramaditya
The Gupta emperor who met the first Huna invasion and, by his own Bhitari pillar inscription, restored the fortunes of a shaken house. His Junagadh inscription records the repair of the Sudarshana reservoir at Girnar, a dam first built under the Mauryas — the same document doing dynastic claim and public works at once.
- Date
- 455–467
- Function
- Authority & administration
- Confidence
- Not assessed
- Location
- 21.522, 70.458
Worth knowing
His silver and gold coinage is markedly debased compared with his predecessors', which is the physical evidence that the Huna wars cost more than the inscriptions admit. The Gupta succession fragments after him, and no later Gupta ruler holds the whole territory.
About the place
Placed at Junagadh, below Girnar, where his inscription on the Ashokan rock records the rebuilding of the Sudarshana dam in 455–458.
Connections (2)
- Imperial inscription atBhitarī pillar
The Bhitari pillar is Skandagupta's own account of his accession and of restoring a family whose fortunes had been upset, and it names the Hunas and the Pushyamitras as the enemies he met. It is the single most important document for the Gupta collapse, and it is a dynastic claim rather than a chronicle: the defeat it implies is only visible in the wording and in the coins.
- Imperial inscription atGirnār rock inscriptions (Junāgaḍh)
Skandagupta's Junagadh inscription records that his governor Parnadatta and Parnadatta's son Chakrapalita rebuilt the Sudarshana reservoir below Girnar after a flood in 455 — a dam first built under Chandragupta Maurya and repaired under Rudradaman three centuries earlier. Three empires maintained one lake, and each recorded the work on the same rock as the last.
On these journeys
Sources
Wikipedia, “Skandagupta”. The Bhitari pillar and Junagadh rock inscriptions, in J.F. Fleet, Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum vol. III (1888), nos. 13–14.
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