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The Indian Analyst
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North Indian Inscriptions |
POLITICAL HISTORY is expected to be conversant, they are all detailed in works of poetics. Suffice it to say, the term Kavirāja bears a specific signification, and it must be in this sense that Samudragupta has been called a Kavirāja. It is, however, a pity that no work or stray poems composed by the king are known at present. Perhaps as more anthologies come to light, some poems in the name of Samudra, Sāgara or Parākrama may be traced. Though we are not so fortunate just at present as to discover any poetic composition of Samudragupta, this much cannot be doubted that he wanted to live in the poetic atmosphere. It is now well-known that “like the distichs on many of the coins of the Mughal emperors, the legends on Gupta coins are metrical.”1 It is further well-known that these metrical legends on Gupta coins began with Samudragupta. When once he set this fashion going, it was natural for his successors to follow it. If he had not been passionately fond of poetry, the idea of inscribing distichs on his coins would never have occurred to him. Such a poet king must have been a patron of literature. Here also it is our misfortune that we do not know what different poets and litterateurs flourished in his reign and what kind of patronage he distributed amongst them. Into this firmament of utter darkness, however, a ray of light is introduced by Vāmana, the author of the Kāvyālaṁkāra-sūtra-vṛitti, who flourished in circa 800 A.D. He quotes the first half of stanza2 as an example of sābhiprāyatvam or ‘Significance’ and remarks that it contains a reference to the ministership of Subandhu. The couplet in question is as follows: .................Sō=yaṁ samprati Chandragupta-tanayaḥ Chandra-prakāśō3 yuvā "That same son of Chandragupta, young and shining like the moon, whose effort has luckily attained its object, has now become king and is patron of men of talents.â
Now, who could be this son of Chandragupta? Was he a son of Chandragupta I or of
Chandragupta II? Haraprasad Sastri, who first drew our attention to this couplet, Hoernle,
and K. B. Pathak have taken him to be Chandragupta II. But what the verse means is that
this son of Chandragupta is not only a king but also a support of the learned. The implication
is that the father of this young king was not ‘a support to the learned’, as otherwise he would
have extended his patronage to the literate. This implication can hold good only in the case
of Chandragupta I, who, while engaged upon founding an empire, could have no time for
patronising any votaries of the Muses and who, at any rate, is not known from any source to
have bestowed any such patronage. On the other hand, there is good reason to suppose that
Chandragupta II is the Vikramāditya of Hindu tradition, who is celebrated as a munificent
patron of arts and literature.4 It is thus very likely that the patron of Subandhu was a son
of Chandragupta I. He must have thus been Samudragupta. The attributed yuvā and kṛit-ārtha-śramaḥ also fit him excellently. For he succeeded Chandragupta I, when young, and had at
once to encounter hostilities that had sprung up in the wake of his accession to the throne.
All things considered, Samudragupta seems to be the king who was the patron of Subandhu,
as hinted in the couplet cited above. It is true that for Subandhu there is another reading, 1 Allan, Catalogue of the Coins of the Gupta Dynasty, Intro., p. cviii.
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