Abstract
To show how kingship was enacted and materialised in specific contexts within the ‘Gupta Ecumene’, writ large, this article presents a detailed analysis of two sites that served as centres for political performance, devotional practice, and artistic production between the fourth and the sixth century CE: Eran and Sondhni in the Indian heartland of Madhya Pradesh. Eran is commonly held to be a key site for the study of Gupta art and architecture and holds several important inscriptions from the beginning to the end of the Gupta period, including one issued by Samudragupta. Sondhni is marked by two inscribed columns of Yaśodharman, a former Gupta subordinate who challenged the imperial rulers using metaphors borrowed from Samudragupta’s Allahabad Pillar Inscription. Examining these two sites in dialogue presents an opportunity to identify a shared cultural realm in which local polities participated and developed a transregional ‘Gupta’ political discourse. This study normalises a Gupta-centred imperial history and, in doing so, participates in a wider departure from dynastic history by emphasising the ways in which localised polities and rulers negotiated the political idioms of their day, challenged them, and created spaces for innovation.
The Gupta Political Presence (and Absence)
In the historiography of early India, the Gupta rulers are omnipresent. Far more than just a lineage, the Guptas have become synonymous with cultural innovations that defined a historical period, that is, the ‘Gupta Period’, c. fourth to sixth century CE. These innovations include an artistic style, the flourishing of poetry (kāvya) and science (śāstra), an epigraphic script (‘Gupta Brāhmī’), as well as temple and image-centred rituals and practices of statecraft the influence of which extended far from their presumed homeland in northeast India up to the major polities of Southeast Asia. 1 Yet, while looming large in the historical memory of early South Asia, the Guptas are, paradoxically, hard to find. Their political capital and homeland are unknown. 2 Few temples or other monuments can be attributed directly to their patronage. Of the 25 inscriptions that mention members of the Imperial Gupta line and refer to their regnal years, only a handful are explicitly issued by the rulers or record actions they purportedly undertook themselves. 3 This absence ‘on the ground’ stands in striking contrast to their ubiquity in models of early South Asian polities and modes of political self-styling, including the epigraphic genre of the praśasti. It is in this respect, as a political idiom and mode of self-representation in public writings, that the Gupta lineage affected, and continues to affect, its presence. These public writings were integral components of larger spectacles of power designed to materialise royal presence in enduring ways.
The most striking and well-known example of this kind of spectacle is the Allahabad Pillar Inscription of Samudragupta. 4 Perhaps the most famous of the inscribed monuments of the Gupta period, the ‘Allahabad Pillar’ has been taken to exemplify some of the key innovations in public writing practices for which the Gupta rulers are most famous. First, it introduces the rulers and provides the earliest articulation of a royal genealogy. This genealogy does not begin in a straightforward way with an auspicious invocation or jayati verse, as one might expect, but elliptically, with an extended relative clause that is not resolved until the concluding lines, when the names of Candragupta and Samudragupta, the present ruler(s) at the time of the text’s composition, are mentioned. The Allahabad inscription is also noteworthy in that it does not present a distinctly religious vision in which the ruler declares his devotion to a deity, nor does it record an act of donation or other pious deed for which the king is eulogised. The tone of the inscription is far more totalising. Rather than commemorating a specific act of charity, Samudragupta is likened to a storehouse of every imaginable virtue, ranging from martial prowess and heroism to Śāstric eloquence and generosity. Like his political power that expands without boundaries, his good qualities are presented as limitless. The geopolitical visions of sovereignty expressed in the record are similarly grandiose. As Sheldon Pollock has discussed earlier, the column inscription articulates a universal sovereignty—one that is expansive, all-encompassing, and pervasive while, at the same time, not localised in any particular place or even a particular time. 5
While innovative in its poetic construction of a transcendent kingship, 6 the Allahabad inscription is not a singular epigraphic event. The Gupta epigraph is displayed strategically on an earlier monument to royal power, an Aśokan column. 7 Here we can see the interplay between innovation and idiom: the unique epigraphic event recorded on an iconic monument that represents prior models of kingship (Figures 1 and 2). 8 The Aśokan column was likely resurrected intentionally to be used as a medium for communicating the fame of Samudragupta. 9 We infer this by the text’s statement that ‘this column has been raised’ (ayam ucchritaḥ stambhaḥ) and by the presence of an additional Gupta Brāhmī inscription engraved horizontally, which could suggest that it was added when the monolith was lying on the ground. This act of raising the political dead displays an awareness of the efficacy of past political practices and the power of public writings that, even if they may no longer have been legible, were clearly still intelligible as acts of political spectacle. If we assume that in ancient India, as in other premodern contexts, the power of a ruler depended on public displays of presence, the inscribed monument serves as a stand-in for the ruler himself. It is invoked as a permanent instantiation in the political landscape: as the fame, glory, and ‘arm of the Earth’ (bhuvo bāhur) held up in perpetual testament to his greatness. 10 And this fame is no abstraction, it pervades the phenomenal world and is reified and experienced in a number of spectacular ways: as a monumental solidification of glory, as a purifying brilliance, as an epiphany of Bhūdevī, and in the language of the inscription itself, a versified eulogy composed for recitation. 11
Regardless of whether or not the literary message of either Aśoka or Samudragupta was widely accessible, there can be little doubt that the monument wielded a significant symbolic force in the minds of the Guptas and their contemporaries. The innovative geopolitical vision first expressed in the Allahabad Pillar Inscription became a widely deployed political idiom, as has been convincingly shown in Pollock’s model of the ‘Sanskrit Cosmopolis’. 12 This model overlooks, however, the material dimensions that communicate and perpetuate the message. The focus on the universal aspects of the expression of sovereignty also neglects the particular contexts in which these idioms were expressed and the specific local agents who employ them for their own political purposes by subsuming under the general heading ‘Gupta’ which is in fact a disparate range of historical agents, localities, and practices. 13 To show how kingship was enacted in specific contexts, within the ‘Gupta Ecumene’, writ large, which is too often conceived in terms of poetic forms and political aesthetics, 14 this article presents a detailed analysis of two ‘sites’, that, is, two particular locales that served as centres for political performance, devotional practice, and artistic production (both material and literary) between the fourth and sixth century CE, Eran and Sondhni, in the Indian heartland of Madhya Pradesh. Eran is commonly held to be a key site for the study of Gupta art and architecture and holds several important inscriptions from the beginning to the end of the Gupta period, including one issued by Samudragupta. Sondhni is marked by two inscribed columns of Yaśodharman, a former Gupta subordinate who challenged the imperial rulers using metaphors borrowed from Samudragupta’s Allahabad Pillar Inscription.
Examining these two sites in dialogue presents an opportunity to identify a shared cultural realm in which local polities participated and developed ‘Gupta’ political metaphors. 15 This study normalises a Gupta-centred imperial history and, in doing so, participates in a wider departure from dynastic history by emphasising the ways in which localised polities and rulers negotiated the political idioms of their day, challenged them, and created spaces for innovation. 16 By situating the ‘Gupta paradigm’ in the spatial and material contexts of Eran and Sondhni, we show how practices of sovereignty in the fourth and sixth centuries gave rise to two distinct political landscapes.
The Layered History of the Gupta Site at Eran
The monumental site at Eran in present-day Madhya Pradesh features in numerous studies of early Indian history, archaeology, and art history as a paradigmatic example of the ‘classical Gupta Age’. Yet a closer look troubles these Gupta associations, since the connection between the iconic monuments and inscriptions and the rulers of the Gupta dynasty is tenuous; for example, the so-called Eran Stone Pillar Inscription of Budhagupta, is not really Budhagupta’s inscription. It is dated to the time of his reign, but it records the work of a local ruler. Nor does the famous theriomorphic image of the Varāha, dated in the first year of the Hūṇa ruler Toramāṇa, bear a Gupta inscription. To the contrary, the inscription signals the end of Gupta rule. The agents responsible for the setting up of both the inscribed column and the Varāha image were the two brothers Mātṛviṣṇu and Dhanyaviṣṇu, members of a local lineage group called the Viṣṇus. Who were these two brothers and what was the position of the Viṣṇu family within the Gupta polity?
What Came Before: Constructing a Tīrtha at a Battleground
Revisiting the epigraphic and material sources from Eran shows that the Viṣṇu brothers were not investing in an unknown locale. Their contributions, while highly visible interventions, participate in a longer history of political investments at Eran. The column and the Varāha are enduring memorials at a site with a long, albeit now fragmentary, history as a place for political memorial-making. The earliest inscription at Eran dates to the time of Śrīdharavarman (early fourth century) 17 and was engraved on a column found in the fields a short distance from the Viṣṇus’ memorial site. In addition to Śrīdharavarman’s inscription, the object also displays the later, posthumous inscription of Goparāja (Gupta Year 191 = 510–511 CE), which is the first epigraphic record of the performance of sati/suttee (see below) (Figures 3 and 4). While fragmentary, Śrīdharavarman’s record initiates the practice of memorial-making at Eran and does so using phrases that Samudragupta and the Viṣṇu brothers subsequently adopted to describe the place and their engagement with it.
The inscription, dated in the 27th regnal year of the Mahākṣatrapa Śrīdharvarman, records two events. First, the construction of a ford (tīrtha) 18 by [Nārā]yaṇasvāmin at the river 19 in the town (adhiṣṭhāna) of Erikaṇa, in the territorial division of Bāhirikā, in the district (āhāra) of Nagendra, ‘for the well-being of the adhiṣṭhāna headed by the cows and Brāhmaṇas, (and) for the increase [of the religious merit of his mother and father]’. 20 This tīrtha would presumably have been a flight of steps (or ghat) along the Bīnā River that encircled the village (Figure 5). Second, the inscription tells us that a pillar (yaṣṭi) was erected by Satyanāga, the general (senāpati) and officer (ārakṣika) of the king, ‘for the removal of calamities, for the attainment of prosperity, and for the happiness and well-being of all creatures’. 21 The inscription ends with a benediction: ‘While (our) king is ruling over the wide earth … may (this) yaṣṭi, (raised) by the Nāgas themselves, remaining unimpaired, proclaim by its form the duty of the warlike people…, for this is the (meeting) place of (all) people—friends as well as foes—in (a spirit of) service and reverence!’ 22 This inscription establishes Eran as a locale for political memorial-making, particularly those commemorating a battle or a military victory. Several sculptures on the pillar ‘showing a horseman holding the reigns of his horse in the left hand and a sword or javelin in the right,’ 23 along with concluding benediction, suggest that these monuments were established after a battle.
Territorial Investments: A Temple of Samudragupta
The next inscription from Eran records a donation by Samudragupta, one of the very few records that commemorates such an act by a member of the imperial family. 24 Inscribed on a rectangular slab of red sandstone, it was found by Cunningham at a short distance to the west of the ruins of the Viṣṇus’ memorial site (and is now held in the Indian Museum in Kolkata). It refers to the place as ‘Airikiṇa [Eran], a town in his [i.e., Samudragupta’s] territory’. The text is incomplete–a large section of the left half has been cut away–but the surviving portion is significant for the history of the Guptas and of Eran in particular (Figures 6 and 7). 25 These lines, composed in the Vasantatilakā meter, include a praśasti of Samudragupta. Although certainly not modest—the poet praises the power and martial prowess of the king at length—the tone is not transcendent, but grounded. The language of ‘groundedness’ is introduced in Verse 5 in which the Goddess of Wealth (Śrī) or, in an alternative interpretation, Samudragupta’s bride Dattadevī, settles down in his house as a faithful wife who bestows good fortune and wealth upon his family. 26 The fragmentary Verse 7 informs us that he ‘established’ something—the word is missing, possible candidates that have been considered are a pillar or a temple—‘in the place of Airikiṇa, a town in his own dominion, for augmenting his glory’ (svabhoganagarairikiṇapradeśe… [saṃ]sthāpitas svayaśasaḥ paribṛṅhanārttham). The fragmentary nature of the inscription has led to many hypotheses about what it was that he established in Eran. Perhaps a temple or some other kind of monument. 27 If we assume that the epigraphic findspot coincides with the site of Samudragupta’s memorial, it would have been located at the same place where Dhanyaviṣṇu and Mātṛviṣṇu established their monuments about a century later.
While the claims to universal sovereignty put forth on the Allahabad Pillar Inscription of Samudragupta have become synonymous with the Gupta polity and ideologies of kingship, 28 this focus on a particular register of epigraphic production has obscured the importance of other inscriptions in which a more personal and localised construction of sovereignty is expressed. In Samudragupta’s Eran inscription, we are presented with a vision of political power that is emplaced, and one that refers specifically to the ruler’s donative act. Rather than an abstract region conquered and its people subjugated, what the poet expresses with the phrase (svabhoganagarairikiṇapradeśe) is an identity or affinity with a place, a connection that is strengthened by the fact that this is the only known inscription that explicitly locates the activities of the king in a specific locale. The idea of bhoga could indicate that Samudragupta enjoyed the revenues of Eran as it fell within his sphere of control, yet the use of the reflexive in the context of describing a donative act suggests a personal or perhaps a familial connection that surpasses a notionally administrative or economic affiliation. 29 And this personal connection is expressed, significantly, with a phrase that echoes Śrīdharavarman’s earlier inscription, if we accept Mirashi’s reconstruction sva[bhogādhiṣṭḥānairikiṇe] in Line 7 of Śrīdharavarman’s inscription. 30 Samudragupta’s inscription concludes with a statement from the ruler, presented as direct discourse (nṛpatir āha ‘the king says’). 31 What Samudragupta ‘says’ is now lost, but the evocation of direct discourse serves again to localise the power of the polity in a manner comparatively absent in the Allahabad inscription. 32
A recently identified Gupta period fragment from Eran may yield some new clues about the nature of the monument established by Samudragupta (Figure 8). It is presently kept in a shrine dedicated to Lakṣmī-Nārāyaṇa in the village. 33 Unfortunately only a handful of syllables survive and only one expression can be made out for certain, but it is one that is rather suggestive: pratisaṃskārārtthaṃ ‘for the sake of repair’. This fragment is paleographically very similar to Samudragupta’s inscription, and we hypothesise that the records are contemporaneous. 34 The wording of the inscription suggests strongly the existence of a religious structure, since the term pratisaṃskāra is commonly used in inscriptions to refer to donations that are meant for the repair of temples or monastic residences that are broken or damaged in the course of time. This interpretation is supported further by one more syllable that can be read in the next line, namely the syllable -rtthaṃ, indicating another compound ending in ‘for the sake of…’ This second compound may have included a reference to the performance of bali, caru, and sattra, which is frequently encountered in early inscriptions in combination with provisions provided for repairs of a temple. 35 On the basis of both inscriptions, we can surmise that Eran had fallen under the control of the Guptas by the time of Samudragupta and that there was a religious monument, either founded or supported by him, that included a land donation for its maintenance. Keeping this scenario in mind, we can now return to the inscriptions of Mātṛviṣṇu and Dhanyaviṣṇu.
Mātṛviṣṇu and Dhanyaviṣṇu: A Tale of Two Brothers
The inscribed monuments commissioned by the brothers Mātṛviṣṇu and Dhanyaviṣṇu continue a long tradition of political commemoration at Eran, yet while participating in this larger historical pattern, the built interventions of the Viṣṇu family initiate the development of Eran as a designed landscape, that is, a site in which the intentional placement of monuments and the display of inscriptions materialised particular social aspirations and religious affiliations. Two inscribed monuments—a Garuḍa-topped column and a colossal boar (Figure 9)—function as the anchors of the larger architectural assemblage. The position of the objects facing each other at less than 30 m apart creates a strong visual connection between them. This connection is reinforced by the text of the inscriptions, which employ clear parallels in structure and syntax to show that the inscribed boar was made to accompany an earlier inscribed Garuḍa column. Together they formed a pair. These paired texts provide a unique opportunity to study epigraphic intertextuality in material context. The format of the Eran column inscription and the Eran boar inscription can be summarised as follows:
Invocation of Viṣṇu (verse); record of the date and the contemporary ruler (verse); genealogy of the two brothers (prose); record of the installation of the object and its responsible agent (prose); and prayer for the well-being of all beings (prose).
The following section provides a comparative analysis of both inscriptions, drawing attention to the parallel phrases and expressions used in both inscriptions, as well as some of the important differences. This detailed discussion allows us to trace the evolution of an innovative memorial site.
Invocation of Viṣṇu
Both inscriptions commence with a jayati invocation of Viṣṇu in a verse composed in Āryā metre. In the column inscription, Viṣṇu is invoked as ‘the four-armed Lord, whose bed is on the massive waters of the four oceans, the single cause of the preservation, creation, and destruction of the world, whose standard bears the Garuḍa’. 36 The last epithet (garuḍadhvaja) clearly alludes to the form of the column itself, which is marked by two addorsed Garuḍa figures, facing east and west, respectively. In a comparable manner, the boar inscription invokes Viṣṇu as ‘the God, who causes the mountains to tremble by the blows of his hard snout as he lifts up the Earth in the form of the Boar, the [supportive] pillar of the great house that is the triple world’. 37 Here, Viṣṇu is invoked in the form of the Boar (Varāhamūrti), which again identifies the very monument that bears the inscription. But the use of the word stambha in the final compound also hints at the earlier column that was erected at the site. 38 In addition, it materialises the central theological message: Viṣṇu is an unwavering support for his devotees.
Record of the Date and the Contemporary Ruler
The column inscription continues after the opening invocation, with two verses in Āryā metre recording the date of the setting up of the column. The date is given as the (Gupta) year 165, when Budhagupta was lord of the earth (bhūpati), on the 12th day of the bright half of the month of Āṣāḍha, on a Thursday. Following this, the year is once more given in numerical symbols. The next verse mentions that at the time, an otherwise unknown king (mahārāja) called Suraśmicandra was ruling the land between the Kalindī and the Narmadā rivers. This refers to the more specific territory in which the town of Eran itself was located. The boar inscription, by contrast, in a verse written in Anuṣṭubh, is dated in the first year of the mahārājādhirāja Toramāṇa, indicating a sea change in power relations. 39 The following verse returns to the Āryā metre of the opening verse and specifies the day as the 10th day of the month of Phālguna. Also included in this verse is the expression ‘thus, according to the regnal year, month, and day, on this aforementioned date, on the aforementioned [date] which is furnished with its own characteristics’. The expression itself is a versified rendering of the start of the prose passage in the column inscription, a clear case of intertextuality between the two inscriptions. 40
Genealogy of the Two Brothers
The following section introduces the lineage of the Viṣṇus. Since both inscriptions concern two brothers, their pedigree is the same. Indeed, the wording of the genealogy is identical in both inscriptions, except that in accordance with the syntactical structure, the words prapautra (great-grandson), pautra (grandson), putra (son), and their accompanying qualifications are given in the instrumental and the genitive, respectively. The two brothers’ pedigree is traced back three generations and presents a remarkable transformation in the social identity of the family from ritual specialists to rulers. First, the great-grandfather Indraviṣṇu is introduced as a Brahminical sage (viprarṣi), attentive to his own duties (svakarmābhirata), a performer of sacrifices (kratuyājin), who had mastered Vedic recitation (adhītasvādhyāya), and was a bull among the Maitrāyaṇīyas (maitrāyaṇīyavṛṣabha). In other words, Indraviṣṇu was a learned and highly accomplished Brahmanical priest affiliated with the Maitrāyaṇīya school of the Yajurveda. His son, Varuṇaviṣṇu, the two brothers’ grandfather, is said to have taken after his father (piturguṇānukārin). The latter’s son, Hariviṣṇu, the two brothers’ father, likewise followed the model of his father (pitaramanujāta), but he is further described as one who was ‘the cause of the growth of his line’ (svavaṃśavṛddhihetu), possibly hinting at his new political aspirations, 41 or the expansion of the line through the two brothers. It is conceivable that the great-grandfather was the recipient of a land grant around Samudragupta’s time, which could account for the flourishing of a family of Brahminical landowners who became local rulers. 42
Next follows the description of Mātṛviṣṇu, the eldest of the two brothers. With Mātṛviṣṇu, the transformation of the family of Viṣṇus (Indraviṣṇu > Varuṇaviṣṇu > Hariviṣṇu > Mātṛviṣṇu) is complete. Mātṛviṣṇu is introduced as a ‘great king’ (mahārāja), who was ‘as it were chosen at a svayaṃvara by the Royal Goddess of Fortune through the will of the Creator’ (vidhātur icchayā svayaṃvarayeva rājalakṣmyādhigata). This poetic description expresses a major transformation in occupation and self-identification—from a family of Vedic ritual specialists to a local ruler aspiring to the highest ideals of Gupta period kingship. Moreover, the fact that it is Rājalakṣmī herself who is said to have chosen him indicates that Mātṛviṣṇu had not inherited this position by birth right. 43 The three epithets that follow each express a royal ideology using the standard idioms of the ‘Gupta Period’: ‘his fame spread to the borders of the four oceans’ (catuḥsamudraparyyantaprathitayaśas), ‘his honour and wealth were inexhaustible’ (akṣīṇamānadhana) and he was ‘victorious in battles against many enemies’ (anekaśattrusamarajiṣṇu).
Record of the Installation of the Object and Its Responsible Agent
It is in the part that records the ritual act, its agent, and its purpose that we encounter the most notable and intriguing differences in expression. The column is presented as the work of Mātṛviṣṇu in cooperation with his younger brother Dhanyaviṣṇu, who is said to be ‘obedient to him’ (tadanuvidhāyin) and ‘accepted with favour by him’ (tatprasādaparigṛhīta). The language clearly indicates that Mātṛviṣṇu is the one in charge and that his younger brother accepted this hierarchical relationship. The column itself, referred to as the ‘banner column’ (dhvajastambha) of Janārdana, is dedicated to the merit of their mother and father (mātṛpittroḥ puṇyāpyānārtham). By the time of the installation of the Varāha image, however, Mātṛviṣṇu had died—in the words of the inscription, he had ‘gone to heaven’ (svargata). In this case, Dhanyaviṣṇu is responsible for the pious act, but he shares the merit with his late brother, Mātṛviṣṇu (tenaiva sahāvibhaktapuṇyakriyeṇa). As with the column, the Varāha is dedicated to the brothers’ parents. There is a cross mark in the inscription after the words ‘accepted with favour by him’ (tatprasādaparigṛhīteṇa). Could this indicate that the expression was copied from the column inscription but then elided (on second thought) in view of Mātṛviṣṇu’s premature death? 44
The column was a popular medium for political and religious pronouncement in the Gupta period, 45 but the installation of the Varāha image introduces a stunning new iconic form. 46 The innovative nature of the monument is also expressed in the epigraphic description. The Varāha image is referred to as the ‘stone temple of the blessed Nārāyaṇa in the form of a boar, he who is devoted to the world’ (eṣa bhagavato varāhamūrtter jagatparāyanasya nārāyaṇasya śilāprāsādaḥ). The parallel with the language and idiom of the column inscription is unmistakable (eṣa bhagavataḥ puṇyajanārddanasya janārdanasya dhvajastambho). However, the reference to the Varāha image as a ‘stone temple’ (śilāprāsādaḥ) is remarkable. Placed prominently (in a specially prepared area) on the chest of the boar, the inscription is an integral part of the icon (Figure 10). It tells us that ‘this’ (eṣa), in other words, the Varāha image itself, namely the boar’s body, made up of all the sages and gods, is the ‘temple’ (prāsāda) of Nārāyaṇa. It is the material receptacle for divine presence. The image stands on an open platform and no traces of an enclosing structural temple survive at the site; the Varāha would probably have stood on an open, square pavilion (maṇḍapa), just like the slightly earlier theriomorphic boar at the Vākāṭaka memorial site at Rāmagiri (Ramtek). 47 The unique use of the term prāsāda to refer to the image itself, rather than a structural temple, as the ‘abode’ of the God is matched by the innovativeness of the icon itself. 48 The Eran Varāha is the first known example of the theriomorphic boar depicted with all the divine principles on its body. In the words of Becker, 49 it is an ‘iconographic invention’ and a ‘watershed image’ that became the most popular form for representing Varāha in his theriomorphic manifestation for centuries to come.
Much valuable work has already been written on the Eran Varāha and we do not venture a reappraisal here. That said, there is one more enigmatic feature of the sculpture that may be understood through reference to the inscription, namely the stump-like object on the back of the boar. 50 Recalling that the deity is invoked in the opening verse as ‘the pillar of the great house that is the triple world’, this object could represent the top of the pillar. The three worlds that make up the universe would then be represented by the nāgas at the base of the image (the netherworld), Varāha itself with the Earth on its tusk in the middle (the earthly realm), and the top of the pillar with four seated figures facing the four directions (heaven). 51 The column and the Varāha thus present us not only with a case of intertextuality but also of intervisuality at the same site. These are two objects in direct dialogue with each other.
Finally, the boar inscription adds one more piece of information that is lacking in the column inscription in this part of the inscription, namely that it was commissioned ‘here, in Arikiṇa, in his own territory’ (svaviṣaye ’sminn airikiṇe). This, a clear claim to Dhanyaviṣṇu’s local power following the demise of his brother, recalls the earlier words of inscription of Samudragupta: ‘in the place of Airikiṇa, a town in his own dominion’ (svabhoganagarairikiṇapradeśe), which itself again echoes the expression sva[bhogādhiṣṭḥānairikiṇe] used in the inscription of Śrīdharavarman.
Prayer for the Well-being of All Beings
The final parallel is contained in the final line, which is common to both inscriptions: ‘Let it be well for all subjects, beginning with cows and brahmins!’ (svasty astu gobrāhmaṇapurogābhyaḥ sarvvaprajābhya iti). While the expression of welfare for cows and brahmins is not unique to these examples, the particular formulation gobrāhmaṇapuroga in these two inscriptions from Eran echoes that of the earlier inscription of Śrīdharavarman (gobrāhmaṇapurogasya cādhi[ṣṭhānasya svastyarthaṃ]) and is not found anywhere else to the best of our knowledge, 52 showing that intertextuality not only exists between the column and the Varāha but also with this earlier inscription from Eran.
The column compelled participation from a wider audience, as is evinced by the many epigraphs that adorn the object. These smaller inscriptions have not been studied or put into context until recently. 53 The Eran column is liberally adorned with so-called shell inscriptions, 54 as well as several other small inscriptions (Figures 11 and 12). These are all found on the lower square part of the column and on all four sides. Richard Salomon calls the one along the right edge of the south side ‘perhaps the most beautiful of all the shell inscriptions’. 55 Attention to these records may help us to better understand how people engaged and interacted with the column and the site. The graffiti report the names of several individuals, including ‘Sāmanta-Doṣa’, ‘Sāmanta-Raṇeśvara’, and ‘Jagacchaśāṅka’. None of these individuals are known from the history books, but their titles suggest that they were members of a local ruling class who added their names as testimony of their visit, thus participating in the practices of memory-making at the site. The title ‘Sāmanta-Doṣa’ in particular is intriguing. The title ‘Sāmanta’ designates an affiliate or subordinate of a more powerful lord, but the ‘Doṣa’ suffix in names is uncommon since it bears a negative connotation (i.e., a ‘fault’) in Sanskrit. A lineage of ministers with names ending in ‘Doṣa’ feature prominently in the fifth- and sixth-century inscriptions of the Aulikaras from Mandasor and Sondhni, the subject of the second part of this article. 56
Conclusion: A Memorial Site
The many memorial stones and monuments erected at Eran are a clear indication of its importance as a battleground. 57 Most well-known is the posthumous inscription of Goparāja that was added to the earlier pillar of Śrīdharavarman. Dated in the reign of Bhānugupta (Gupta Year 191), it tells us that Goparāja accompanied the Gupta king in a major battle (yuddhaṃ sumahat), died, and went to heaven. His devoted wife accompanied him onto the funeral pyre (anugatāgnirāśim). 58 It seems plausible that Eran acquired the characteristics of a memorial site, a place in which significant relationships and events were commemorated over time, precisely because it served as a natural battleground through the centuries (the road from Vidisha to Ujjain ran through Eran, which was thus the gateway to Malwa)—a region Hans Bakker has poignantly called a ‘theatre of broken dreams’. 59 Seen in this way, the contributions of the Gupta and associated rulers to the memorial site at Eran are far more participatory than they are innovative. Samudragupta engages with the earlier memorial inscription of Śrīdharavarman in making his own personal investment. The Viṣṇu brothers and Goparāja continue these practices that, while clearly engaging with the established idioms, also develop their own distinct modes of memorial practice. 60
To conclude, it is worth reflecting on the differences between Eran and the contemporaneous site of Udayagiri, about 90 km southwest. Art historians have drawn parallels between the artistic representations of the Narasiṃha and Varāha at Udayagiri, but the differences between the two sites are in fact just as noteworthy. While Udayagiri has a plural religious identity, with cave temples dedicated to Vaiṣṇava as well as Śaiva deities, and a Jain cave complex at its edge, Eran’s monumental site remained largely Vaiṣṇava through the medieval period. 61 An explanation for this phenomenon may well be found in the memorial character of the site. The complex at Eran was developed by the Viṣṇu family, building upon the earlier foundations of Samudragupta, and its early, distinctly sectarian identity was reinforced by later interventions that developed further a Vaiṣṇava affiliation. 62 This univocal identity stands in contrast to the nearby caves at Udayagiri, which accommodated different ritual specialists, devotees, and members of the elite who shared spaces for worship.
The Aulikara Political Landscape
In 1885, J. F. Fleet reported remains of two monumental columns bearing ‘identical inscriptions’ lying scattered in pieces and half buried in the fields around Sondhni, a small hamlet 4 km southeast of Mandasor in Madhya Pradesh (Figure 13). 63 Known in ancient times as Daśapura, Mandasor was the capital of a ruling family called the Aulikaras in the sixth century. The Aulikara clan(s) first came to power as allies of the Imperial Guptas but asserted their independence in the early sixth century under a ruler named Prakāśadharman, a stance further augmented by his successor Yaśodharman. 64 Yaśodharman may have vanished into obscurity were it not for the pair of massive stone columns erected in his honour and artfully engraved with eulogies that memorialise his defeat of the Hūṇa ruler Mihirakula around 532 CE-–the same Mihirakula whose father Toramāṇa, of the Eran boar inscription, had defeated the Guptas and their local allies, the Viṣṇus, just a few decades before. 65 In addition to their function as monuments to Yaśodharman’s greatness, the columns, and the site in which they are located, served the further aim of articulating a state-sponsored religion oriented around Śiva, the ruler’s chosen deity and tutelary deity of the Aulikara polity.
The inscriptions from Daśapura are important historical records and have been addressed in a number of important studies of premodern Indian history and polity. 66 Despite this attention, some important questions about the Sondhni columns and the site in which they were erected remain. What purposes did the inscribed monuments serve within the larger political landscape of Daśapura and the surrounding area? What other structures (i.e., temples or memorials) were located there and how did they function as an architectural assemblage? And, finally, why are there two seemingly identical columns bearing the same inscription at the same site. What is the function of the pair? Attention to these questions will allow us to better understand how text and object were designed to actualise the power relationships, religious affiliations, and social aspirations of their creators.
Yaśodharman and the Aulikaras
Early historiography has tended to cast Aulikara Yaśodharman as a pivotal figure in the post-Gupta political world, to the exclusion of the broader political networks in which he was enmeshed and which presumably supported his rise to power. 67 As discussed below, Yaśodharman’s inscriptions may suggest a universal sovereign, but these self-aggrandising or hyperbolic claims are better interpreted as rhetorical flourishes of the praśasti genre, rather than indications of a historical reality. Neither Yaśodharman nor his Aulikara predecessors ruled alone. They were aided by a lineage of prominent merchants, who called themselves ‘Naigamas’ (merchants; people from the nigama or market town). The Naigamas occupied a hereditary position as ministers to the Aulikara rulers in Daśapura and exerted some political power in the Chittorgarh-Nagari area as well. 68 An alliance with a newly independent and successful group of political elites like the Aulikaras would certainly have elevated the social status of the Naigama family. The Aulikaras, too, would have benefitted from their ties to this prominent local merchant group, who may have helped them to control the surplus from trade and commerce in the area. Together the Aulikaras and the Naigamas formed a corporate political entity that established control over a region strategically located at the heart of the North Indian economic and political landscape. Attention to the Aulikara–Naigama alliance is also helpful in understanding the practices of pious giving recorded in the early Aulikara inscriptions, in which the Naigamas emerge as important donors. 69
With the theme of idiom and innovation in mind, the present discussion revisits the Aulikara sources, particularly those of Yaśodharman from Sondhni. The sixth-century date of the inscriptions and the material evidence place them on the edges of the temporal boundaries of the ‘Gupta Period’ as it is typically defined. 70 Yet Yaśodharman’s court poets, artists, and sculptors were actively engaged in and responding to modes of cultural production popularised by their predecessors. These patterns are most clearly evident in the column inscriptions of Yaśodharman. Eschewing the boundaries and convention of his predecessors, these monuments and the inscriptions that adorn them present a declaration of independence, but independence did not mean isolation. As the following pages will show, the literary metaphors employed in the Sanskrit texts of the inscriptions, the political uses of monumental forms, such as the column, as well as the political ideology expressed, borrow from quintessential Gupta monuments and sites, most notably Allahabad and Eran. These idioms are put to use in the promotion of Śaivism as the new state religion, a supplanting of the established Vaiṣṇava-inflected political self-styling through innovative iconographic forms and theological claims.
Śaivism as a Civic Religion
The religious landscape of the greater Daśapura area in the early fifth–sixth century was extremely diverse: inscriptions commemorated temples to Sūrya, Viṣṇu, donations to Buddhist monastic communities, and shrines to the bellicose mother goddesses. 71 We can, however, see Śaivism gaining prominence among the rulers and elites of the sixth century. Invocations of Śiva and Śaiva theology become part of a political idiom employed in Aulikara inscriptions in which devotion to Śiva was integrated within discourses of power and political hierarchy. Moreover, asserting a religious preference and affiliation with an elective cult, in this case Śaivism, served as a language to commemorate relationships between political actors who did not share kinship or caste bonds.
This use of Śiva religion as a practice through which to enact political relationships and alliances is established in the early Aulikara inscriptions from Daśapura. To commemorate his victory over the Hūṇas, Prakāśadharman’s Rīsthal inscription (515 CE) 72 records the offering of certain commodities and spoils of war taken from Toramāṇa as ritual gifts. 73 Although this inscription is one designed to commemorate a military victory through the dedication of a temple to Śiva, the opening benediction requests the blessings of the ‘peaceable right half of Pinākin’ (pinākinaś śāntividheyam arddhaṃ vāmetaraṃ). 74 The verses that follow provide an extensive Aulikara lineage and praise Prakāśadharman’s pious acts following his great victory. Some of these donations included temples. Verse 20 mentions a temple (sadman) constructed in honour of Śiva, initiated by Prakāśadharman. 75 In Verse 22, a temple of Śiva is mentioned again; here, it is called the Prakāśeśvara temple (prakāśeśvarasadman) which stands in Daśapura as a ‘mark of Bhārata’ (lakṣma bhāratavarṣasya). 76 Although the connection between the shrine introduced in Verse 20 and that of Verse 22 is not entirely explicit, they probably refer to one and the same monument. 77 Verse 21 marking the date also marks the beginning of a new section of the inscription in which certain donative acts promised or intended by Prakāśadharman, are actually carried out by his Naigama minister, Bhagavaddoṣa. These donative details are significant because they evince the levels of social participation that accompanied the building of a temple or religious monument and highlight the multivalent character of the monument itself. Bagavaddoṣa’s construction of the liṅga shrine in the name of the king was an act of memorialisation that linked the minister, his overlord, and the deity in a highly visible and tangible way. Further, the references to building projects in these and subsequent verses specify that they were undertaken in the city of Daśapura itself. 78
From Peaceful Pinākin to Raging Bull
Approximately 20 years after Prakāśadharman’s victory, Yaśodharman’s inscriptions record another victory against the Huṇas: his success is against Mihirakula, the son of Toramāṇa. 79 The relationship between this Aulikara sovereign and his predecessor is unclear since he makes no mention of Prakāśadharman or his earlier victory. In its articulation of a Śaiva ideology, the nine-verse inscription also departs from the idiom of the earlier Rīsthal inscription. The benedictory verse refers to Śiva as the trident bearer (śūlapāṇi) and invokes the power of the deity’s banner (ketu) which bears the image of the bull (Figure 14). Described as wild and destructive, the image of the bull provides a fitting opening for an inscription dedicated to praising military, might, and victory. The change in Śaiva idiom from irenic to bellicose is also expressed through a theological innovation: an early reference to the wild bull as Śiva’s vehicle. 80 The description of the bull running amok and terrorising the Daityas recalls a foundational myth of Śiva’s vehicle given in the Skandapurāṇa, in which a similarly uncontrollable animal is finally subdued by all the gods who take up residence in various parts of his body and the pacified animal is adopted by the Lord as his mount. 81
The opening verse featuring the extensive or lofty (drāghiṣṭhaḥ) bull banner seems to refer explicitly to the column itself which, as we suggest below, would have been topped with an image of the bull. Thus, the monument serves as an instantiation of that powerful dhvaja of Śiva that is capable of destroying one’s enemies according to the benediction. The parallel between this verse and the opening of the Eran column inscription is striking (see above). Like the Eran inscription, the Sondhni verse styles the column as a dhvaja or ketu. Yet the intended purpose of these monuments varied greatly. Framed fully in the ideology of an emplaced and domesticated sovereignty, Viṣṇu’s dhvaja was intended to honour the Viṣṇu brothers’ parents and augment their merit. Yaśodharman, on the other hand, commemorates an act of aggression with an enemy-crushing ketu that strikes fear in the hearts of enemies. In much the same way as the Gupta rulers sought to homologise themselves to Viṣṇu, and particularly the saviour avatāras like Varāha and Narasiṃha, Yaśodharman also employed religious rhetoric in expressing his political identity, but rather than the god of the Guptas, he venerated Śiva. Considering the conflicts that linked these ruling families and defined the region’s political geography, we should read Yaśodharman’s monuments at Sondhni in light of the Vaiṣṇava memorial landscape of Eran, a monumental dialogue among contemporaries and competitors.
This language of military prowess and conquest aligns well with the Allahabad Pillar Inscription and it is in dialogue with this record that the majority of the parallels emerge. Like the Gupta inscription, Yaśodharman’s record is, in essence, a eulogy to universal sovereignty that follows the model of a digvijaya. As such, it does not include any explicit reference to a donative act, nor does it refer to the larger landscape within which it is situated. Noting this shared geopolitical vision, there are some differences. While the Allahabad inscription includes a substantial genealogy enumerating the many laudable rulers in the lineage, Yaśodharman mentions no one from his family nor does he even mention his lineage title, Aulikara. Since the Rīsthal inscription and the Naigama inscription issued only decades before refer to a line of Aulikara rulers, 82 Yaśodharman’s omission could be read as a deliberate act of disregard. Presented in intentional isolation, he emerges as a singular and universal sovereign.
Epigraphic Intertextuality: from Banner to Arm
The Aulikara monumental landscape at Sondhni was designed to elevate the ruler Yaśodharman to the status of transcendent sovereign while also promoting a state-sponsored Śiva religion. In expressing this aim, the column inscriptions from Sondhni engage in a kind of call-and-response with the Allahabad Pillar Inscription by adopting several of the earlier inscription’s metaphors and themes and then expanding upon them in a display of political one-upmanship.
In the inscription from the Gupta column at Allahabad, the poet describes the object as a monumental piling up of the fame (yaśas) of Samudragupta. This image of a heaping mass of glory extending higher and higher into the air conjures a vertical ascent that lends a striking bi-directionality to the lines recording the ruler’s conquest of the four corners of the earth. Power extends both horizontally, across the plane of the earth, and vertically, up to the abode of the gods. 83 The glorious accretion of fame suggests the monumental height of the column itself. Adding to that image, the poet likens the monument to the arm of the Earth, the ruler’s divine consort, raised up to bear eternal witness to his greatness. Finally, we are introduced to an aquatic metaphor: the king’s glory is liquefied and, like the divine waters of the sacred Gaṅgā river, purifies the earth with its radiance.
This column has been raised, a [lofty] arm of the Earth, as if communicating that the fame of the king of kings, the glorious Samudragupta which has pervaded the entire surface of the earth—its expansion occasioned by his victory over all the earth—has [now] obtained a playful and pleasant course for traveling from here to the abode of the Lord of the gods (Indra). 84
Whose fame, which has been raised up in heaps higher and higher in many ways by his manifesting charity, physical strength, composure, and eloquence, purifies the three worlds, just like the bright Gaṅgā water which is quickly released after being confined in the caves within the matted hair of Paśupati. 85
It appears that Yaśodharman’s court poet, Vāsula (the same poet who notably composed the earlier inscription of his predecessor Prakāśadharman ), 86 was aware of the Gupta exemplar at Allahabad. In the Sondhni inscription, the column is again evoked as an arm of the earth that was brought to be erected in that place (stambhaḥ […] ucchritiṃ nāyito ’tra), recalling the words ayam ucchritaḥ stambhaḥ of the Allahabad Pillar Inscription (see above). In the Allahabad inscription, the Earth raises up her arm in witness to the pervasive fame of Samudragupta. This gesture communicates that, having already suffused the horizontal plane of the earth, the Gupta king’s fame had reached heaven along an easy course. Yaśodharman’s Earth, however, is far less placid. The column is likened to her arm thrown up out of passion (rāgād utkṣipta uccairbhuja iva). Here the Earth does not simply point the way for his fame; enflamed with passion, she takes a pen in hand to inscribe the virtues of Yaśodharman on the face of the moon (utkarṣaṃ guṇāṇāṃ likhitum iva yaśodharmaṇaś candrabimbe).
This participation in Gupta poetic idioms does not imply that Yaśodharman was attempting to establish a positive line of affiliation or succession with the earlier rulers. Like the rebellious and raging bull his inscription invokes, Yaśodharman shows no deference to those who aspired to the title of ruler in the past. He disparages them sarcastically as mere interlopers upon whom the title of ‘ruler’ shone as much as would a flower offering bestowed on a dust pile (rājasv anyeṣu pāṃsuṣv iva kusumabalir nābabhāse prayuktaḥ). By contrast, in the same verse, Yaśodharman likens himself to four archetypical rulers: Manu, Bharata, Alarka, and Māndhātṛ. 87 The cruel and unworthy kings he criticises have been taken as a reference to the Huṇas, whom Yaśodharman explicitly claims to have defeated. The pregnant silence regarding the forefathers of his own lineage could also indicate his desire to establish himself as independent from them. Verse 4 describes Yaśodharman as operating with contempt or disrespect for the boundaries of his own house (svagṛhaparisarāvajñayā). This claim could indicate a dissatisfaction with the more limited territorial scope of his predecessors or, even more forcefully, a rejection of the lineage house in its entirety.
Neither are the Guptas spared from Yaśodharman’s poetic posturing. Although acknowledging the Gupta ‘lords’ (nātha) had surpassed even the Hūṇas in claiming territory, Yaśodharman exceeds them both and, in his digvijaya, claims to have conquered the entire subcontinent. Whereas the Allahabad inscription made a similar claim supported by specific georeferences and the enumeration of conquered dynasties, Yaśodharman mentions only the topographic features that designate the east/west expanse of his territory. 88
Site Syntax
The inscriptions that adorn the columns at Sondhni mark a radical declaration of independence, a surpassing of the venerable old dynasty of the Guptas, the Hūṇa invaders, and even the rulers of Yaśodharman’s own lineage (svagṛha). This king’s efforts to transcend the boundaries (parisara) placed upon him by his family can be read in the monumental landscape of Sondhni itself. The distinctiveness of Sondhni as a place of religious activity is evident by its siting in the physical terrain. The Aulikara capital, the city of Daśapura, was strategically located along the ancient highway that connected the political centre to other major economic and political centres in the region, such as Ujjain (149 km to the southeast) and Chittorgarh (115 km to the north). Prakāśadharman’s donative inscription refers explicitly to the fact that his Śiva temple and the other shrines he commissioned were situated in the city of Daśapura, which was celebrated as a cosmopolitan urban centre in literary and epigraphic sources. 89 Yaśodharman’s columns, by contrast, were erected at a considerable distance from the centre—4 miles south of the old fortified settlement and located on the north side of the Shivna River. Since it was located at a distance from the settlement, Sondhni was also removed from the ritual and cult centre of the polity, the Paśupatināth temple positioned on the southern bank of the Shivna River. The fifth- to sixth-century remains at Paśupatināth include an 8-faced (recarved) liṅga still under active worship. 90 Paśupatināth’s riverside location is fitting for a sacred centre in South Asia since it conforms to what we would expect for a tīrtha. The same term for an auspicious pilgrimage place is used in the earliest inscription from Eran. The Allahabad column was erected at a sanctified space near the confluence of the Ganges and Yamuna rivers. Sondhni’s columns, by contrast, stand in a flat, undifferentiated landscape without any natural features to distract the viewer from the towering 40-foot-high monuments. Considering the strategic placement of the monuments, we suggest that Sondhni reflects an effort to design a new type of monumental landscape— a space in which the imbrication of religious and political ideology found unique expression.
Over the past decades, the area where the columns were first reported has been subject to a number of interventions by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). One of the columns has been (re)erected and the second fragmentary piece has been set up beside it with the crowing elements displayed in front of the two columns. Other loose sculptures and carved architectural fragments have been preserved in on-site storage as well as in the National Museum in New Delhi, the Bhopal State Archaeological Museum, and the local museum in Daśapura. These elements suggest that there would have been a temple at the Sondhni site, although structural remains have not survived nor is a temple mentioned in the inscription. A partial reconstruction is possible, however, using the earliest reports and photos made by C. E. Luard, which provide a larger material context for the columns and the inscriptions. 91 Luard surveyed and photographed the area immediately surrounding the two columns in 1908. Drawing upon local memory of the place, he identified the remains of two pillars, which may have supported a doorframe, and two massive dvārapālas (whose jaṭā, third eye, and accompanying triśūlapuruṣas clearly evince a Śaiva affiliation). Most significant, however, was Luard’s discovery of the foundation of a brick structure to the west of the columns, built upon a terraced mound approximately one-and-a-half meters above the surrounding land. This terraced mound is still clearly visible at the contemporary ASI protected site where a small staircase conveys the visitor down the small hill to the re-erected columns. According to Luard’s report, the mound was formed from a brick foundation of what was likely a larger brick structure. The remains of that structure were already lost at the time of his visit. Within the remains of the brick foundation, a massive sahasra liṅga—a phallic emblem of Śiva covered with innumerable smaller liṅgas—was found (Figure 15). This liṅga is still visible on top of the mound at the base of a pipal tree. 92 If we assume that the liṅga is contemporaneous with the rest of the sixth-century remains of the site, it would be the earliest known example of this iconographic form. 93
Integrating these various archival sources permits, for the first time, a vision of the site as a whole. Considered in light of other remarkable material remains and architectural fragments found scattered around the fields, the temple at Sondhni would have been dedicated to Śiva and the sahasraliṅga mentioned above may well have been the cult icon under worship. 94 The columns, then, would have been oriented in direct line with a temple housing a unique new type of liṅga. The crowning elements of both of Yaśodharman’s columns are now missing, but it is plausible in view of the reference to Śiva’s bull banner in the opening verse of the inscription that each would have been topped with the image of the bull. 95 The martial tone of the inscriptions combined with the intimidating monuments materialised the association between the innovative Śaiva monument and Yaśodharman’s political ascendancy.
Daśapura’s Defining Doubles
The most unique feature of Sondhni is yet to be addressed; namely, why are there two seemingly identical columns with the same inscription at the same site. While multiple epigraphs inscribed on individual monuments are well attested, the repetition of the same epigraphic text on a pair of pillars at the same site has only one comparable case: the Gupta period temple at Bilsaḍ (Aliganj District UP). The Bilsad temple to Skanda was framed by two free-standing columns engraved with identical dedicatory inscriptions. 96 As at the site of Bilsad, the Sondhni columns were designed to frame the temple and the larger sanctified space with a political message that created an intervisibility between political and religious ideologies. Hence, while the remains of Sondhni display clear signs of innovation, the design of the landscape also suggests that the sponsors and artisans were influenced by comparable sites in the region.
While the spatial articulation of the site is now clear, questions remain about the significance of the two columns. What did the artisans and architects intend to communicate with this doubling? A number of interpretations are possible. The framing columns could express a desire for visual symmetry and balance within the site. We could also interpret the doubling as a materialisation of the inscription’s poetic metaphor, that is, that the columns were the two arms of the Earth raised up in testament to Yaśodharman’s greatness. To the structural and symbolic functions of this pair of columns, we may add a third layer of significance. Given that the Aulikara epigraphic corpus attests to the strong alliance between the Aulikara ruling house and the Naigama merchant ministers, and their history of collaborative donative acts, these twin monuments could stand in commemoration of this political partnership. The decision to erect the columns in front of a temple to Śiva provides a way of framing the relationship between these two groups through the expression of a shared religious affiliation.
The presence of a Naigama’s hand in the development of the Sondhni site is not evident from the primary display inscriptions on the columns which, as mentioned above, refer only to Yaśodharman’s activities. There is, however, another inscription to consider, a small label inscription engraved on the abacus of one of the columns (Figure 16). It has been read hitherto as sadharmmaḥ nirddoṣaḥ. 97 The second word, nirddoṣaḥ, is striking because it is also the name given to the Naigama minister who would have served the Aulikara court at the time of Yaśodharman. 98 This Nirdoṣa, had a name with the signature -doṣa suffix shared by many in the Naigama lineage. Taking Nirdoṣa as a proper name, we can then propose the reading ‘Nirdoṣa is possessed of dharma’. Alternatively, reading a positive play on the name with a suffix that means ‘fault’, ‘He, possessed of dharma, is faultless’.
These interpretations depend on the reading of the first character as sa. Upon further consideration, however, and by comparing the character of the label inscription with the Sondhni column inscriptions, we conclude that the sa reading is unlikely. Indeed, the character would be an unconventionally formed sa. Much more likely is the reading of this character as bhā: bhādharmmaḥ nirddoṣaḥ. This new reading works from a clear affinity between the debated character and bha/bhā as recorded in the column inscription and by comparison with examples from the Indoskript database. 99 Having amended the reading of the first character, the translation also needs to be revised. One option is to read them both as proper names, ‘Bhādharma and Nirdoṣa’ or to take nirdoṣa as a description of the person named Bhādharma: ‘Bhādharma is faultless’. Given the identity between the nirddoṣaḥ of the inscription and the name of the Naigama minister, we propose to read both words as proper names. The question then remains, who was Bhādharma?
Material and epigraphic evidence clearly shows that Daśapura and its environs constituted a major centre of Śaiva activity. Given that Daśapura was such a diverse and dynamic place, we might infer that networks of Pāśupata specialists were also part of the scene, although the columns’ inscriptions do not mention communities of ascetics or lineages of preceptors. 100 However, if we take Bhādharma as a name indicating religious affiliation, the enigmatic label inscription would include the name of a Pāśupata specialist since names beginning in bhā or bhāva are very common among Pāśupatas. 101 As recorded in the Abhinavabhāratī
… yathā pāśupatānāṃ bhāpūṣan bhāsarvajña ityādi saṃbhāṣaṇam; …
‘the form of address for Pāśupatas, for instance, [might be] “Bhā-pūṣan”, “Bhā-sarvajña” or the like’. 102
Reading the small label inscription as recording two names, that of the Naigama minister Nirdoṣa and a Śaiva religious specialist called Bhādharma, contributes a new perspective on the monuments at Sondhni. This was a site of religious innovation that materialised a politically inflected Śiva religion through the use of the monumental dhvajas to frame the sahasraliṅga temple. The design of the site further mobilises Śaiva religion in the service of a political agenda by memorialising the alliance between the Aulikara rulers, their merchant ministers, the Naigamas, and Pāśupata religious specialists whose influence supported the Śaiva innovations that defined the Sondhni site.
Conclusions and Further Questions
This comparative study of Eran and Sondhni was occasioned by the observation of certain similarities in the syntax of these two Gupta period sites in North India, particularly in the use and symbolism of monumental columns styled as dhvajas and engraved with elaborate Sanskrit inscriptions commemorating the deeds of their founders. The imagery and phrasing employed in Yaśodharman’s two monumental columns at Sondhni evoked that of the Eran column of the time of Budhagupta and prompted the hypothesis that the poet of the former was aware of the latter. A subsequent site visit and closer investigation of the Eran column confirmed this initial hypothesis and provided further impetus to ‘read Yaśodharman’s monuments at Sondhni in the light of the Vaiṣṇava memorial landscape of Eran, a monumental dialogue amongst contemporaries and competitors’. 103 In addition to the resonance between the ‘official’ inscriptions engraved on the monument, we read the small graffito recording the name of Sāmanta-Doṣa on the Eran column as indicative of a broader social network in which these monuments were incorporated. More specifically, that a member of the Naigama family, whose history is thoroughly entwined with that of the Aulikaras of Yaśodharman, may have actually visited the site of Eran and left his signature on the column.
A consideration of the political uses of the monumental columns in these two locales prompted a comparison of other remarkable features of Eran and Sondhni. Perhaps the most important of these concerns the iconographic innovations that anchor both sites: the theriomorphic boar with all divine principles depicted on its body in Eran and the massive sahasraliṅga with numerous small liṅgas clustered around the central liṅga at Sondhni. The visual resonance between these iconographic forms is unmistakable. Since previous studies have tended to view these images and sites in isolation this striking parallel in form has not been noticed. While they represent distinct theological visions within the developing Vaiṣṇava and Śaiva traditions, these expressions of plurality inherent in a single divine form mark artistic revolutions of the Gupta period that would become idiomatic in subsequent centuries.
The project of comparison is not solely to draw attention to similarities. A focused study of these sites has also brought to light some significant differences in the ways in which landscapes are shaped and monuments deployed to serve political agendas. Eran is a place with a long local and regional history, both before and after the Gupta period. We have argued that Samudragupta and the two Viṣṇu brothers participated in an ongoing process of investment in the locality through claiming personal ties with the place. In contrast with the emplaced, domesticated articulation of sovereignty at Eran, Yaśodharman’s paired columns express an aggressive and totalising vision of power. Inspiration for this totalising vision came from the famous praśasti of Samudragupta at Allahabad. Yaśodharman’s hyperbolic claim to have conquered lands that eluded even the Guptas demonstrates the power of the Gupta idiom even as it works to surpass them. Comparison of both sites has also brought to the fore the unique position of Sondhni within the Aulikara political landscape. Rather than augment the tīrtha and thriving capital of Daśapura nearby—an engagement that would parallel the development of the tīrtha at Eran—Yaśodharman’s monuments were displayed in a flat open space independent of family and tradition.
In his ‘Theses on Comparison’, Bruce Lincoln has advocated ‘comparison of weaker and more modest sorts that (a) focus on a relatively small number of comparanda that the researcher can study closely; (b) are equally attentive to relations of similarity and those of difference; (c) grant equal dignity and intelligence to all parties considered; and (d) are attentive to the social, historical, and political contexts of religious and literary texts’. 104 Our comparative study began with two sites. This initially modest and circumscribed project was expanded gradually in response to the historiographical construction and idealisation of the ‘Gupta Period’, through which these two landscapes have traditionally been approached. In doing so, this study has accomplished two things. It enhances our understanding of two significant places in North India in terms of their regional embeddedness and their place within a transregional political discourse. Moreover, this work of contextualisation, so integral to the comparative method, contributes to a rethinking of a pivotal period of Indian history through close analysis of the regional landscapes and localised polities that defined it.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
Earlier versions of this article were presented at the 228th meeting of the American Oriental Society (Pittsburgh 2018), the World Sanskrit Conference (Vancouver 2018), and the workshop ‘Early Historical Thought in Eurasian Perspective’ hosted by the University of Chicago Center in New Delhi (2019). We would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers of this journal for their careful reading and valuable comments. Elizabeth Cecil would also like to thank the organisers of the workshop ‘Reading Gupta Epigraphy’ held at the University of Toronto (Mississauga 2019) for the opportunity to discuss the epigraphical sources presented in this study. The authors’ joint research was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) project 609823 and the Dutch Research Council (NWO) project 360-63-110.