# Samudragupta's Allahabad pillar
**समुद्रगुप्त का प्रयाग स्तंभ-लेख**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/allahabad-pillar/
- Chapter: [Gupta and the classical age](https://indianepics.online/chapter/classical.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 350 CE – 375 CE (± 15 years)
- Where: Allahabad Fort, Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh (25.431, 81.875)
- Tags: political, war, language

## Summary

Harishena's Sanskrit eulogy on an Ashokan pillar lists the kings Samudragupta uprooted, the southern kings he freed, and the tributaries beyond.

अशोक के स्तंभ पर हरिषेण की संस्कृत प्रशस्ति उन राजाओं की सूची देती है जिन्हें समुद्रगुप्त ने उखाड़ा, जिन दक्षिणी राजाओं को छोड़ा, और सीमांत करदाता।

## Account

The pillar already carried Ashoka's edicts when Harishena, Samudragupta's minister, had a long prashasti in Sanskrit verse and prose cut on it, probably in the third quarter of the fourth century. It is the nearest thing to a map the Guptas left: kings of Aryavarta violently uprooted; twelve kings of Dakshinapatha, from Kosala to Kanchi, captured and then released; forest chiefs made servants; and frontier kingdoms and republics, from Samatata and Kamarupa to the Malavas and Yaudheyas, paying tribute. Even the Kushan and Shaka rulers and the king of Simhala are said to have sent gifts.

It is a eulogy, so the rings of power it describes are claims, and the southern campaign left no other trace. The pillar's own history is layered: Jahangir added his genealogy in 1605, and whether it always stood at Prayaga or was brought from Kaushambi is debated.

## Sources

- Fleet, J. F., Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, vol. 3 (1888), no. 1 — https://archive.org/details/india.history.resource.498
- Thapar, R., Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300 (2002)

## Image

Ashoka Pillar, Allahabad, 1870. Thomas A. Rust, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AAshoka_Pillar%2C_Allahabad%2C_1870.jpg

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