India has been home to many great men, academics, generals, artists and most of all kings and emperors. Indian rulers have included the likes of Chandragupta, Ashoka, Akbar and Shah-jahan. One man, one emperor, one leader we nearly have forgotten is the Napoleon and Alexander of India, the man who ruled all of India and then lands beyond it, who thrusted the Indian sub-continent into its Golden Age. Samudragupta is the emperor whose influence crossed the mighty Himalayas and was only limited by the eternal and endless oceans.
Samudragupta ruled an empire that stretched across the Northern half of India, an empire slightly larger than the one Akbar inherited; but one that would not stretch beyond the borders of the empire Jahangir ruled and still, Samudragupta’s rule extended far beyond that of any other monarch in the history of India. He was master of all of South Asia and of regions beyond it.
When the Gupta Emperor began his campaign of the Deccan, he knew administering a vast empire would present problems; problems that had dissolved the Mauryan Empire just after the death of Ashoka, so Samudragupta adopted the policy of Dharma-Vijay (Spiritual Victory). Every king the Gupta army defeated was re-instated, but as vassals of the Gupta Emperor. Samudragupta had defeated seventeen kings and not wanting to wage war when loss was an utter surety, the other kingdoms and tribes simply bent to his will.
None wanted to stand against the singular super-power that was the Gupta Empire, the Hun and Kushan empires and the Indo-Greco republics bowed to the might of the emperor in Pataliputra. Kings from Thailand, Malaysia and Sri Lanka vied for his favour. The will of the Gupta Emperor was law both within and without his borders, he was the Hegemon of South-Asia and Asia-Minor.
Merely being an immensely powerful general however does not make a man comparable to Alexander and Napoleon, it makes him a marauder-and no more, it was his administration, that truly makes Samudragupta one of the greatest monarchs who ever ruled. Ushered into a golden age, India prospered. A great patron of the arts, his court saw the likes of Varahamihira and Aryabhatta and numerous poets and musicians. Samudragupta himself was a master of the Veena. A follower of Bhraminical-Hinduism, he did much to promote it all the while being tolerant towards other religion of his day.
The reason I call him the greatest is that he did something no other ruler ever did in the history of India, he performed the Ashwamedhayajna, the mythical ritual the successful completion of which represented unquestionable power. It was after this that he held the title ‘Chakravarti Samrat’, a title held only by him and Ashoka. Samrat is equivalent of emperor but the term Chakravarti refers to him whose wheel does not stop. Ashoka was called so because he kept the wheel of Dharma (the dharma-charka) going, alluding to his Buddhist theology and rule inspired from it. In the case of Samudragupta however, it refers to his supreme might, how the wheels of his chariots were unstoppable, for his dominion stretched as far as land did; only to stop at the oceans themselves, and it was this fact because of which he took the title Samudragupta, his real name seems to have been lost to time (though a few say it might have been Kacha, others say it was the name of one of his rivals during the war of succession), but he has not. He lives on under a different name however underestimated and undervalued.
The position that Samudragupta occupies presents to us a beautiful lesson, it tells us that no matter how great we maybe, we will be overshadowed by others, our name will be forgotten; we will be forgotten. That oblivion is inevitable, but still we must strive towards greatness, to leave our temporary mark in whatever way we can.
