A History of Fine Art in India and Ceylon, from the Earliest Times to the Present Day c12.s1.64

c12.s1.64

The old Asokan practice of erecting isolated monumental columns, usually monolithic, was revived in Gupta times. Samudragupta, perhaps the most brilliant of an able dynasty, does not seem to have erected pillars of his own, and was content to record the history of his reign on a pillar of Asoka, now at Allahabad (Prayāga), which, apparently, has been removed from Kausāmbī. The Delhi Iron Pillar of about A. D. 415 has been already noticed (*ante*, p. 172). The earliest extant stone pillar of Gupta age is that erected at Bhitarī in the Ghāzīpur District, U. P., by Skandagupta about A. D. 456 to commemorate his wars with the Huns and Pushyamitras. The next, set up at Kahāon in the Gorakhpur District, U. P., in A. D. 460–1, early in the reign of the same king, by a private member of the Jain community, is adorned with the images of five Jain saints, one in a niche at the base, and four on the summit. The statues, as usual with the Jains, are conventional and of little artistic interest.