The Junagadh Rock Records the Upkeep of One Lake Under Chandragupta Maurya, Ashoka, Rudradaman and Skandagupta Across More Than 700 Years

On a granite boulder about a mile east of Junagadh in Gujarat, a Sanskrit inscription of twenty lines records the repair of a dam. The text is dated to the year 72 of an era that its editor, F. Kielhorn, took to be the Saka era, which gives 150 CE. The lake it names, the Sudarshana, is described as having been built under a governor of Chandragupta Maurya and fitted with channels for Ashoka by a Yavana named Tushaspha. The inscription of Rudradaman, the ruler who ordered the repair, sits on the same rock as Ashoka’s fourteen major rock edicts and a second long record, of the Gupta emperor Skandagupta, that mends the same dam again about three centuries later.

From Chandragupta’s reign in the late fourth century BCE to the last repair of 456 to 457 CE is more than seven centuries. Read together, the texts give names, dates, a flood, a cost and an engineer.

A boulder at the mouth of the Girnar gorge

Hultzsch, in his 1925 edition of Ashoka’s inscriptions, places the rock about a mile east of Junagadh, at the entrance to the gorge that leads toward Mount Girnar. Rudradaman’s text is on the western side near the top. Fleet, who edited the Gupta record in 1888, says Skandagupta’s is on the north-west face of the same boulder. Live History India puts Ashoka’s edicts in two columns on the north-east part.

Major James Tod saw the rock in December 1822, according to Hultzsch. Fleet says James Prinsep announced the discovery of the Skandagupta text in 1838. Rudradaman’s text was then edited again and again: by Prinsep, with revisions by H. H. Wilson, by Bhau Daji in 1862, by Eggeling in 1876, by Bhagvanlal Indraji and Buhler in 1878, by Buhler again in 1890, and by Kielhorn in volume 8 of Epigraphia Indica (1905 to 1906). Kielhorn called it “our earliest Sanskrit inscription of importance.”

The lake and its two governors

The Sanskrit text names the place as Girinagara, “the hill city”, which Kielhorn’s page on the proper names ties to the old Junagadh area, and the mountain as Urjayat, which is Girnar. Bhagvanlal Indraji identified one of the streams it names, the Suvarnasikata, with a small stream now called the Sonarekha.

Kielhorn’s translation gives the lake’s early history in two sentences. It was ordered to be made by the Vaisya, a member of the merchant class, Pushyagupta, whom the text calls the provincial governor of the Maurya king Chandragupta. It was later provided with conduits for Ashoka the Maurya by the Yavana king Tushaspha, “while governing.” Yavana, in the usual reading, means Greek. The text lists the lake’s fittings, among them conduits, drains and arrangements against foul matter.

The inscription is the source for these two men. It was cut more than four centuries after Chandragupta’s reign, and the longer account of what it does and does not prove for the Mauryan empire is in our piece on Chandragupta Maurya. Live History India, which gives his reign as 324 to 297 BCE, says the empire stretched west to Kathiawar and cites this inscription for his reservoir.

The storm of year 72

A storm is why the stone was cut. Kielhorn’s translation says the rain came down until the earth had been turned “into one ocean”, and that the floods of the Suvarnasikata, Palasini and other streams of Mount Urjayat swelled until the dam gave way. The breach, in the translation, was four hundred and twenty cubits long, as many broad and seventy-five deep, and the water poured out through it. The lake was left “almost like a sandy desert.”

The repair is described in some detail. The work was carried out by Suvisakha, whom the text names as the son of Kulaipa, a Pahlava, appointed to govern Anarta and Surashtra. Kielhorn’s translation calls him able, patient and upright. Rudradaman had the dam rebuilt “three times as strong in breadth and length”, and the translation says his counsellors opposed starting the work because the breach was so large.

Then the text makes its claim about payment. The work was done, it says, without oppressing the people of the towns and country with taxes, forced labour or “acts of affection,” and with a vast sum from the king’s own treasury. A footnote to the translation suggests the last phrase means contributions that were nominally voluntary but felt obligatory. Rudradaman is also credited with twice defeating Satakarni, lord of Dakshinapatha, and sparing him because of a family tie, and with rule over a list of lands that includes Surashtra, Maru and Kachchha.

Dating the repair

The text carries a date in the seventy-second year, in the month of Margasirsha, on the first day of the dark half. Kielhorn wrote that, with other scholars, he was convinced the era is the Saka, and taking the year as expired he put the day at either 18 October or, more probably, 16 November 150 CE. He added that the inscription was probably composed about 151 or 152 CE.

M. R. Majumdar’s Chronology of Gujarat, from the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, gives the same year, saying the embankment was reconstructed in Saka year 72, or 150 CE, under the Mahakshatrapa Rudradaman. A popular account on Live History India gives the date as about 130 CE. The 150 CE figure used here rests on Kielhorn’s reasoning and on Majumdar’s repeat of it.

Skandagupta’s record: the flood of year 136

Fleet’s edition of the Gupta inscription dates the flood to the year 136 of the Gupta era, which he converts to 455 to 456 CE. The embankment of the Sudarshana lake, in the valley below Girnar, burst at night after heavy rain, on the sixth day of the month Praushthapada. The text says Skandagupta had appointed Parnadatta to govern Surashtra, and that Parnadatta’s son Chakrapalita governed the city where the stone stands.

Chakrapalita closed the breach and rebuilt the embankment. Fleet’s commentary quotes the text as giving two months of work, finished in the month of Ashadha in the Gupta year 137, which is 456 to 457 CE. In year 138 the same man built a temple of Vishnu under the name Chakrabhrit on Mount Urjayat. Majumdar’s chronology repeats the sequence of 136, 137 and 138.

The opening verses praise Skandagupta for driving invaders back, whom Live History India says are believed to be the Hunas. For the dynasty itself, see the Gupta golden age reconsidered.

What Ashoka’s edicts say on the same rock

The same boulder carries Ashoka’s fourteen major rock edicts, which Live History India dates to 257 to 256 BCE. Edict II, which Live History India says is also at Girnar, concerns the sort of work the lake belongs to. In S. Dhammika’s translation on Livius, Ashoka says: “Along roads I have had wells dug and trees planted for the benefit of humans and animals.” Hultzsch records damage to the Girnar edicts: workmen of a merchant who was building a causeway from Junagadh to the hill blasted parts of edicts V and XIII with gunpowder. Our piece on Ashoka covers the emperor and the edicts themselves.

Other water works from Gujarat are covered in our pieces on the Harappan reservoirs at Dholavira and the stepwell at Patan.

What the text leaves open

Several points stay unsettled. The Mauryan origin of the lake, and the status of Tushaspha as governor or king, come in these sources from Rudradaman’s own text, which is later than the events. The era of year 72 is Kielhorn’s reading, and the day of the month depends on how the year is counted. The Rudradaman inscription is damaged: Kielhorn’s edition describes lines 1 to 16 as broken in parts, with roughly one seventh of the whole missing, while lines 17 to 20 are intact.

The sources opened for this piece do not say where the dam stood or whether anything of it survives on the ground. The text itself places the lake at Girinagara and Urjayat, and Chakrapalita’s temple of Chakrabhrit, built in the Gupta year 138, stood on Urjayat above the town.