The rock
On the road from Junagadh to Girnar hill stands a large granite boulder carrying three sets of inscriptions from three different empires. The oldest is a version of Ashoka's fourteen rock edicts. Below it is a long Sanskrit inscription of the Western Satrap ruler Rudradaman, and on another face the inscription of the Gupta governor Chakrapalita. Rudradaman's and Chakrapalita's inscriptions both concern the same reservoir, the Sudarshana lake, and together they give a history of a public work over some seven centuries.
The Mauryan reservoir
According to Rudradaman's inscription, the lake was made by Pushyagupta, a provincial governor of Chandragupta Maurya, by damming streams flowing from the hills, and furnished with conduits under Ashoka by the Yavana king Tushaspha, his governor. The name Tushaspha is Iranian, and the title Yavana suggests a man from the north-west. The inscription is the only evidence for these two officials and an important witness to Mauryan provincial administration.
Rudradaman's repair
Rudradaman, one of the Kardamaka line of Western Satraps who ruled western India from Ujjain, records that in the year 72 of the Shaka era, around 150 CE, a great storm caused the rivers to flood and the dam to burst, leaving a breach hundreds of cubits long. His minister Suvishakha, a Pahlava, rebuilt it three times stronger. The inscription stresses that the work was done from the royal treasury, without forced labour or extra taxes on the people, and without the gifts that subjects were usually made to give.
The inscription is also famous for its language. It is written in elaborate Sanskrit prose in the style of court poetry, and it is the earliest long inscription in Sanskrit, at a time when royal inscriptions were usually in Prakrit. It praises Rudradaman's skill in grammar, music and logic, and records his victories, including over the Satavahanas. Historians see it as a landmark in the rise of Sanskrit as the language of political power.
The Gupta repair
In 455–56, during the reign of the Gupta emperor Skandagupta, heavy rains burst the dam again. Chakrapalita, son of the provincial governor Parnadatta, rebuilt it in 456–57 and built a temple of Vishnu on the bank the following year, as his Sanskrit verse inscription records. After that the lake disappears from the record; its site is generally placed in the valley below Girnar, though its exact location has been debated.
Further reading
- Thapar, Romila. Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300. Penguin, 2002
- Singh, Upinder. A History of Ancient and Early Medieval India. Pearson, 2008
- Pollock, Sheldon. The Language of the Gods in the World of Men. University of California Press, 2006
See also
- Maurya Empire — The Maurya Empire was the first state to rule most of the Indian subcontinent, founded by Candragupta around 322 BCE and best known under his grandson Aśoka, whose inscribed edicts are the earliest decipherable writing in India.
- Western Satraps — The Western Satraps, or Kṣatrapas, were a series of Indo-Scythian (Śaka) ruling houses that governed parts of Gujarat, Malwa, and the northwestern Deccan from the late first century CE to the early fifth century CE.
- Gupta Empire — The Gupta Empire was a dynasty that ruled much of northern and central India from the early fourth to the mid-sixth century CE, remembered for centralized administration, Sanskrit court literature, and advances in mathematics and astronomy.
- Ashokan edicts — The Ashokan edicts are inscriptions on rocks and pillars across the subcontinent issued by the Mauryan emperor Ashoka in the third century BCE, the earliest deciphered Indian writing and the earliest direct testimony of an Indian ruler.
This entry was last revised on 12 November 2026.