Csaba Dezső

The Meaning of the Word ārya in Two

Gupta-Period Inscriptions
1 Sanskrit Eulogistic Poetry
The composition of good poetry – as Bhāmaha, the oldest authority on classical
Indian poetics, observed – brings about both pleasure (prīti) and fame (kīrti).1
The latter benefit includes not just the poet’s fame, but also that of his patron.
Kings, in particular, relied on poets to immortalize their glorious deeds and to
transmit their fame to future generations. As Rudraṭa, a Kashmirian author on
poetics, pointed out, once the temples and other foundations they have built
are destroyed by time, not even the kings’ names would remain if there were no
good poets to preserve them.2
Praśasti, Sanskrit eulogistic poetry, has as one of its principal goals the perpet-
uation of the memory of its patrons. It does not simply recount the battles fought
and the foundations made by the king, but through praising his meritorious and
valorous deeds it affirms his unique suitability for his position. As Sheldon Pollock
has observed, “Fame may be the product of concrete practices, but it is not some-
thing that exists concretely, like a temple or a victory pillar. It remains amorphous
until embodied in some language; it remains unintelligible unless that language
can speak in the figures of speech that explain to us the otherwise inexplicable;
and it remains transient if that language itself is transient.”3 Cosmopolitan
Sanskrit, the language of the gods, was uniquely fit for preserving and transmitting
fame in the form of inscriptions throughout South and Southeast Asia. These in-
scriptions publicly proclaim the truth of the acts they relate as well as the truth of
the qualifications of the kings they praise.
To illustrate the potency of poetic speech, this paper presents two uniquely
important inscribed Sanskrit praise poems, praśastis, from Gupta India: the
Allahabad pillar inscription, composed by Hariṣeṇa and celebrating the deeds
of the Gupta king Samudragupta (r. ca. 335–376 CE), and the Bhitari inscription,

1 Batuk Nath Śarmā and Baladeva Upādhyāya, Kāvyālaṅkāra of Bhāmaha, Kashi Sanskrit
Series (Benares: Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series Office, 1928), 1, verse 2cd: prītiṃ karoti kīrtiṃ ca
sādhukāvyanibandhanam, “the composition of good poetry creates pleasure and fame.”
2 Śrī-Rudraṭācāryaviracitaḥ Kāvyālaṅkāraḥ, Śrī-Namisādhupraṇītayā saṃskṛtaṭīkayā samupetaḥ
(Delhi: Motīlāl Banārsīdās, 1983), 3, verse 5.
3 Sheldon Pollock, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men. Sanskrit, Culture, and Power
in Premodern India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 146.

Open Access. © 2021 Csaba Dezső, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under a
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270 Csaba Dezső

praising the achievements of Skandagupta (r. ca. 455–467 CE). We shall also
touch upon the Junagadh inscription of the latter king. The Gupta empire held
sway over much of the northern part of the subcontinent in the fourth and fifth
centuries CE. The Gupta period saw the production of long and elaborate
Sanskrit praśastis inscribed on stone for the first time after the pioneering in-
scription of the Śaka ruler Rudradāman in the second century CE. As we shall
see, in both the Allahabad and the Bhitari inscriptions, the poet used the multi-
valent word ārya in a meaning that gives a special position to the king in the
royal family.

2 The Bhitari and Junagadh Inscriptions

of Skandagupta
Skandagupta, the son of Kumāragupta, is perhaps best known for his success-
ful battles against the Huns. When we read his inscriptions, we may get the im-
pression of a “self-made” king: there are many allusions to the victories he
achieved by his own efforts and to the strength of his arms, by which he de-
feated his enemies and conquered the earth.4 The Bhitari pillar inscription
presents a genealogy of the Gupta kings and praises Skandagupta’s achieve-
ments in saving the tottering sovereignty of the dynasty. While the poet of the
inscription refers to Skandagupta’s predecessors with the conventional expres-
sions tatparigṛhīta, “accepted by him (i.e. his father),” and tatpādānudhyāta,
“approved by (his) respectable (father),”5 indicating succession on the basis of
the father’s favor, Skandagupta is said to be pitṛparigatapādapadmavartī,6
“staying at his father’s lotus-feet, which have gone everywhere.” This might in-
dicate that although he may have been close to his father, he was not the one
whom he favored as heir to the throne.

4 Bhitari inscription, line 7: bhujabalāḍhyo guptavaṃśaikavīraḥ; line 13: bhujabalavijitāriḥ,

line 14: bāhubhyām avaniṃ vijitya; line 15: dorbhyāṃ dharā kampitā, in John Faithfull Fleet,
Inscriptions of the Early Gupta Kings and Their Successors, Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum 3
(Calcutta: Superintendent of Government Printing, 1888), 53–54. Junagadh inscription, line 2:
svabhujajanitavīryo, line 4: avanim . . . cakāra ātmasaṃsthāṃ . . . ātmaśaktyā, in Fleet,
Inscriptions of the Early Gupta Kings, 59.
5 On these expressions, see Cédric Ferrier and Judit Törzsök, “Meditating on the King’s Feet?
Some Remarks on the Expression pādānudhyāta,” Indo-Iranian Journal 51 (2008): 93–113.
6 Line 7 of the Bhitari inscription, Fleet, Inscriptions of the Early Gupta Kings, 53.
 The Meaning of the Word ārya in Two Gupta-Period Inscriptions 271

The Junagadh inscription is on a famous rock at Girnar, in Gujarat, that

also contains inscriptions of the Maurya king Aśoka (third century BCE) and the
epigraph of the Śaka king Rudradāman (second century CE). The Gupta inscrip-
tion was engraved by a local governor who restored the reservoir when its dam
had broken. The poet of the Junagadh inscription claims that Skandagupta was
chosen by the goddess of royal fortune, Rājyalakṣmī, herself:

krameṇa buddhyā nipuṇaṃ pradhārya

dhyātvā ca kṛtsnān guṇa-doṣa-hetūn |
vyapetya sarvān manujendra-putrāṃl
lakṣmīḥ svayaṃ yaṃ varayāṃ cakāra || 7

Whom Lakṣmī herself chose after considering with her intellect in due order and carefully
all the causes of virtues and faults, and after discarding all (other) sons of kings.

While in the genealogies of earlier Gupta kings not just their fathers but also
their mothers are named, Skandagupta’s mother remains anonymous in the
sixth verse of the Bhitari inscription, in which he is said to hurry to his mother
after restoring the ruined fortunes of the dynasty, just as Kṛṣṇa hurried to
Devakī after killing Kaṃsa.8 The anonymity of the mother might indicate, as
Hans Bakker has observed, that Skandagupta was “a boy from the harem.”9
The last pāda of the seventh verse of the Bhitari inscription has been read
differently by various scholars. Fleet reads and translates it as follows: “gītaiś
ca stutibhiś ca vandakaja(?)no(?) yaṃ prā(?)payaty āryyatām,”10 “whom the
bards raise to distinction with (their) songs and praises.”11 Sircar adopts the
same reading.12 Basham interprets the word āryatā in the context of the varṇa
system, and suggests that Skandagupta was the “son of a humble śūdra concu-
bine.”13 Bhandarkar reads vṛttakathanaṃ in place of vandakajano and trans-
lates the line as follows: “whom the narration of (his) mode of life, whether

7 Junagadh inscription, line 5, in Fleet, Inscriptions of the Early Gupta Kings, 59.
8 For a fuller discussion of this verse, see Hans T. Bakker, The Vākāṭakas. An Essay in Hindu
Iconology (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1997), 26–27.
9 Hans T. Bakker, “A Theatre of Broken Dreams: Vidiśā in the Days of Gupta Hegemony,” in
Interrogating History: Essays for Hermann Kulke, eds. Martin Brandtner and Shishir Kumar
Panda (New Delhi: Manohar, 2006), 178.
10 Fleet, Inscriptions of the Early Gupta Kings, 54.
11 Fleet, Inscriptions of the Early Gupta Kings, 56.
12 Dines Chandra Sircar, Select Inscriptions Bearing on Indian History and Civilization, vol. 1, From
the Sixth Century B. C. to the Sixth Century A. D. (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1965), 323.
13 Arthur Llewellyn Basham, “The Date of the End of the Reign of Kumāra Gupta I and the
Succession after His Death,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 17 (1957): 369.
272 Csaba Dezső

with songs or with panegyrics, is raising to the dignity of an Ārya.”14 Agrawala,

following Jagannath, reads the line differently still: “gītaiś ca stutibhiś ca
[vṛttakathanaiḥ] yaṃ hrepayaty āryyatā,”15 “whom (his) nobility causes to blush
by reason of the narrations of his exploits through songs and eulogies.”16
Gupta, however, having examined the various copies of the inscription,
concludes that “the reading of the line by Fleet stands where it was.”17 But did
the poet of the inscription really imply that Skandagupta was raised from the
status of a śūdra? There is perhaps yet another interpretation, but first let us
have a look at a comparable Gupta-period inscription in which the word ārya
occurs.

3 The Allahabad Pillar Inscription

of Samudragupta
The Allahabad pillar today stands in the city fort, but it may originally have been
erected at ancient Kauśāmbī on the bank of the Yamunā. This pillar too contains
inscriptions of Aśoka. The author of the Gupta inscription (fourth century CE)
was Hariṣeṇa, the king’s minister of alliance and war (sāndhivigrahika). The text
describes Samudragupta’s conquests in ornate poetic language. The fourth verse
of the inscription, in which Candragupta transfers sovereignty to his son,
Samudragupta, reads as follows in Fleet’s edition:

[ā]ryyo hīty upaguhya bhāvapiśunair utkarṇṇitai romabhiḥ

sabhyeṣūcchvasiteṣu tulyakulajamlānānanodvīkṣi[ta]ḥ |
sn[e]havyālulitena bāṣpaguruṇā tattvekṣiṇā cakṣuṣā
yaḥ pitrābhihito ni[r]īkṣ[y]a nikhi[lāṃ pāhy eva]m [u]rv[v]īm iti ||18

14 Bhandarkar’s translation, in John Faithfull Fleet and Devadatta Ramakrishna Bhandarkar,

Inscriptions of the Early Gupta Kings, rev. ed., Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum 3, eds. Bahadur
Chand Chhabra and Govind Swamirao Gai (New Delhi: Archaeological Survey of India, 1981), 317.
15 Prithvi Kumar Agrawala, ed., Imperial Gupta Epigraphs. Guptādhirājalekhamaṇḍala (Varanasi:
Books Asia, 1983), 72.
16 Jagannath’s translation, quoted in Bahadur Chand Chhabra, “Beauties of the Bhitari
Inscription of Skandagupta,” in Felicitation Volume. A Collection of Forty-Two Indological
Essays, Presented to Mahamahopadhyaya Dr. V. V. Mirashi, eds. G. T. Deshpande, Ajay Mitra
Shastri, and V. W. Karambelkar (Nagpur: Vidarbha Samshodhan Mandal, 1965), 363.
17 Parameshwari Lal Gupta, The Imperial Guptas, vol. 1, Sources, Historiography & Political
History (Varanasi: Vishwavidyalaya Prakashan, 1974), 339.
18 Fleet, Inscriptions of the Early Gupta Kings, 6.
 The Meaning of the Word ārya in Two Gupta-Period Inscriptions 273

“For he is an ārya” – [with these words his father] embraced him with gooseflesh that
betrayed his feelings, and when the people in the assembly breathed a sigh of relief,
being watched by the sad faces of others who had been born in the same family, he was
addressed by his father, looking at him with an eye that was tremulous with affection,
heavy with tears, and observant of the truth: “Protect thus the entire earth.”

The revised edition of the third volume of the Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum
reads [ā]ryy[ai]hīty, “ārya, come,” as the beginning of the verse.19 Chhabra sug-
gests a different reading of the first words – ehy ehīty, “come, come”20– which has
been adopted by Sircar21 and Agrawala.22 This reading is certainly attractive, and
Chhabra cites several parallels from Sanskrit literature, though he does not refer to
what is probably the closest parallel, from the Harṣacarita (seventh century CE), in
which the dying king, Prabhākaravardhana, beckons his son, Harṣa, with the
same words:23

avanipatis tu dūrād eva dṛṣṭvātidayitaṃ tanayaṃ tadavastho ’pi nirbharasnehāvarjitaḥ

pradhāvamāno manasā prasārya bhujau “ehy ehi” ity āhvayañ śarīrārdhena śayanād udagāt.

As soon as the king perceived his darling son while still at some distance, swayed even in
that extremity by overpowering affection, he ran forward in spirit to meet him, and putting
out his arms, half rose from the couch, calling to him “Come to me, come to me.”24

And just as Candragupta transfers the protection of the earth to Samudragupta,

Prabhākaravardhana addresses Harṣa in a similar way, e.g. kṣitir iyaṃ tava, “this
earth is yours”; gṛhyatāṃ śrīḥ, “accept royal majesty”; prajāḥ parirakṣyantām,
“may the people be protected.”25
Instead of āryyo, Goyal suggests the reading arhyo, “worthy,”26 while
Thieme conjectures varyyo, “eligible, excellent.”27 Both of these readings would
imply that Samudragupta was eligible to the throne because of his outstanding
qualities, some of which were probably mentioned in the preceding, fragmentary

19 Fleet and Bhandarkar, Inscriptions of the Early Gupta Kings, 212.

20 Bahadur Chand Chhabra, “Chandragupta’s Abdication,” Indian Culture 14, no. 4 (1948): 143.
21 Dines Chandra Sircar, Select Inscriptions, 263.
22 Agrawala, Imperial Gupta Epigraphs, 4.
23 Pandurang Vaman Kane, ed., The Harshacarita of Bāṇabhaṭṭa, Text of Uchchhvāsas I–VIII
(Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, [1918] 1997), 79.
24 Translation by Cowell and Thomas, in Edward Byles Cowell and Frederick William
Thomas, trans., The Harṣa-Carita of Bāṇa (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1897), 141.
25 Kane, The Harshacarita of Bāṇabhaṭṭa, 86–87.
26 S. R. Goyal, A History of the Imperial Guptas (Allahabad: Central Book Depot, 1967), 193,
note 5.
27 Paul Thieme, “ārya,” Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung 79, nos. 3–4 (1965): 284.
274 Csaba Dezső

verses; thus his learning seems to be the focus of such expressions as

śāstratattvārthabhartuḥ, “who was the supporter of the real truth of the scrip-
tures,” and sphuṭabahukavitākīrtirājyaṃ bhunakti, “who enjoys . . . the sovereignty
of fame (produced) by much poetry.”28 The “worthiness” of the heir is also empha-
sized in the Arthaśāstra, when it teaches that “a son who possesses the exemplary
qualities of the self he should appoint as Chief of the Armed Forces or as the
Crown Prince.”29
Nevertheless, if we follow Fleet’s (āryyo hīty) or Bhandarkar’s (āryyaihīty)
reading, we may pose the question of what exactly the word ārya refers to. The
word ārya or āryaputra, as Thieme and Scharfe have pointed out, can mean “elder
or eldest son or brother.”30 We know from several inscriptions that Samudragupta
was Licchavi-dauhitra, that is, the son of the daughter of the Licchavi king.31
According to the Manusmṛti, “the daughter’s son (dauhitra) shall take the entire
property of a man without son”32 (9:131, dauhitra eva ca hared aputrasyākhilaṃ
dhanam);33 therefore, Samudragupta was entitled to succeed his sonless maternal
grandfather on the Licchavi throne. But the Manusmṛti also teaches that “the
daughter’s son shall indeed take the entire estate of the father who is without a
son”34 (9:132, dauhitro hy akhilaṃ riktham aputrasya pitur haret).35 Now in the
case of Samudragupta, there may have been other contenders to the Gupta
throne, as the expression tulyakulaja, “those born in the same family,” indi-
cates: these might have included his brothers. But Manu also says that the eldest
son alone may take the whole paternal estate (9:105, jyeṣṭha eva tu gṛhṇīyāt
pitryaṃ dhanam aśeṣataḥ), and this might have been the case for Samudragupta:
when Candragupta referred to him as ārya, he might have meant “eldest brother

28 Fleet’s translations, in Fleet, Inscriptions of the Early Gupta Kings, 11.

29 R. P. Kangle, The Kauṭilīya Arthaśāstra. Part I. A Critical Edition with a Glossary (Delhi:
Motilal Banarsidass, 1988), 24 (1.17.43): ātmasampannaṃ saināpatye yauvarājye vā sthāpayet.
Translation by Olivelle, in Patrick Olivelle, King, Governance, and Law in Ancient India.
Kauṭilya’s Arthaśāstra. A New Annotated Translation (New York: Oxford University Press,
2013), 90. The exemplary qualities of the self are listed in Arthaśāstra 6.1.6.
30 Paul Thieme, “ārya,” 284; Hartmut Scharfe, The State in Indian Tradition (Leiden: Brill,
1989), 27, note 10.
31 For more details on the question of dauhitra, see Hartmut Scharfe, “Griech. θυγατριδοῦς,
Sanskrit dauhitra ‘[Erb]tochtersohn,’” Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung 79, nos. 3/4
(1965): 265–284; Thomas R. Trautmann, “Licchavi-Dauhitra,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic
Society 1 (1972): 2–15.
32 Translation by Olivelle, in Patrick Olivelle, Manu’s Code of Law. A Critical Edition and
Translation of the Mānava-Dharmaśāstra (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 196–197.
33 Olivelle, Manu’s Code of Law, 770.
34 Translation by Olivelle, in Olivelle, Manu’s Code of Law, 197.
35 Olivelle, Manu’s Code of Law, 770.
 The Meaning of the Word ārya in Two Gupta-Period Inscriptions 275

among my sons,” and thus, as Thieme has already pointed out,36 he confirmed
with a legal argument Samudragupta’s right to the Gupta throne. The words of
the king in the inscription, nikhilāṃ pāhy evam urvīm, “protect thus the entire
earth,” seem to echo the pitryaṃ dhanam aśeṣataḥ, “the entire paternal estate,”
of the Manusmṛti.

4 Conclusions
Returning to the problematic last pāda of the seventh verse of the Bhitari in-
scription, there, too, ārya might have the same meaning. Skandagupta was
probably not the eldest son by a chief queen, and thus he was not the strongest
candidate to the throne. Nevertheless, he fought for the throne and secured it
for himself by the power of his arms. When the panegyrists sing the praises of
his glorious victories, they elevate him to the status of an ārya, that is, “eldest
son,” a rightful heir to the throne.
In the fourth verse of the Allahabad pillar inscription, Candragupta embra-
ces his son Samudragupta and chooses him to be the protector of the earth,
while those born in the same family (tulyakulaja) watch the scene with dejected
faces. Here the selection is clearly made by the father, the reference to whose
“eyes that observe the truth” (tattvekṣiṇā cakṣuṣā) indicates that he has decided
after due deliberation. He addresses his son with the word ārya, which here
probably means “eldest son,” and affirms Samudragupta’s right to the throne.
Skandagupta, on the other hand, was chosen not by his father, but by the god-
dess of royal majesty herself, also after careful consideration. Skandagupta,
who was probably not the eldest son of Kumāragupta, won the throne with his
strong arms, and he was elevated to the status of an ārya, “eldest son” and
heir, by his deeds and by the poets who sang the praises of his deeds.
These two verses of the Allahabad and the Bhitari inscriptions express the
power of poetry from which kings can benefit. As Daṇḍin would write a couple
of centuries later (Kāvyādarśa 1:5):

ādirājayaśobimbam ādarśaṃ prāpya vāṅmayam |

teṣām asaṃnidhāne ’pi na svayaṃ paśya naśyati ||37

Look! The image of the fame of ancient kings, reflected in the mirror of literature, itself
does not disappear, even though they are not present.

36 Thieme, “ārya,” 284.

37 Shripad Krishna Belvalkar, Kāvyādarśa of Daṇḍin. Sanskrit Text and English Translation
(Poona: The Oriental Book Supplying Agency, 1924), 1.
276 Csaba Dezső

In Samudragupta’s case, the praśasti publicly declares and affirms his right to
the Gupta throne. In the case of Skandagupta, the unique power of the panegy-
rists goes beyond the assertion of the truth of facts: it creates facts when it in-
vests the king with a status he did not actually have.

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