The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c29.186

c29.186

Yasodharman, the Central Indian Rāja, who has been mentioned as having taken an active part in the supposed confederacy formed to obtain deliverance from the tyranny of Mihiragula, is known from three inscriptions only, and is not mentioned by Hiuen Tsang, who wrongly gives the sole credit for the victory over the Huns to Bālāditya, king of Magadha.² Yasodharman erected two columns of victory inscribed with words commemorating the defeat of the foreign invaders. In these records he claims to have brought under his sway lands which even the Guptas and Huns could not subdue, and to have been master of Northern India from the Brahmaputra to the Western Ocean, and from the Himalaya to Mount Mahendra, which probably should be understood to mean the southernmost peak (Mahendragiri) of the Travancore Ghāts. But the indefinite, conventional expression of the boasts suggests that Yasodharman made the most of his achievements, and that his court poet was no stranger to Oriental hyperbole. Nothing whatever is known about either his ancestry, or his successors; his name stands alone and unrelated. His reign may have covered roughly the first half of the sixth century, but its precise duration is unknown; and his claim to fame rests solely upon his magniloquent inscriptions.¹