The Age of the Imperial Guptas c4.132

c4.132

Most of the historical information about Skandagupta and the Hūṇa wars is to be derived from his Bhitari pillar inscription. Bhitari is the name of a village about five miles to the north-east of Saiyadpur, a village and the headquarters of a *tahsil* in the Ghazipur district. A red sand stone pillar stands outside the village and bears on it a long inscription in 19 lines for the most part in a very good state of preservation. It is from this inscription that we learn that Skandagupta spent a whole night on the bare ground during the Hūṇa wars in his father's life time in his attempts to restore the fallen fortunes of his family. “By whom, when he prepared himself to restore the fallen fortunes of *(his)* family, a *(whole)* night was spent on a couch that was the bare earth; and then having conquered the Pushyamitras, who had developed great power and wealth, he placed *(his)* left foot on a foot-stool which was the king *(of that tribe himself)*.”¹ Some doubts have been expressed about the reading of the name Puṣyamitra and it has been suggested that this should be read as *Ayudhya-mitrāṃś=ca* but a close examination of the original shows that the suggested reading is impossible on account of the impossibility of the second syllable being *yu*.