samudragupta issued ashwamedha coins after performing ashvamedha sacrifice.
samudragupta issued ashwamedha coins after performing ashvamedha sacrifice.
who issued ashwamedha coins after performing ashvamedha sacrifice?
samudragupta
the mathura stone inscription of chandragupta ii describes samudragupta as "the restorer of the ashvamedha sacrifice that had been long in abeyance" (smith's translation). this claim also appears in the inscriptions of the subsequent gupta kings, as well as the spurious gaya and nalanda inscriptions attributed to samudragupta. however, several kings including those from bharashiva, vakataka, shalankayana, and pallava dynasties had had performed ashvamedha in the preceding years. different scholars have attempted to explain this anamoly in different ways: h. c. raychaudhuri suggests that the gupta court poet did not know about these kings. according to r. c. majumdar, samudragupta was the first king several centuries to perform the sacrifice in the magadha region. majumdar also theorizes that the ashvamedha ceremony performed by bharashiva, vakataka, and other near-contemporary kings was "more of a religious nature", while samudragupta's ceremony actually involved proving his imperial sovereignty. similarly, scholars such as s. k. aiyangar and d. r. bhandarkar, theorize that unlike the other kings, samudragupta performed a "full-fledged" ashvamedha ceremony. others, such as v. s. pathak and jagannath agrawal, interpret the verse to mean that samudragupta performed the horse-sacrifice that lasted for a long-time.
samudragupta
the ashvamedha ritual - in which a horse is sacrificed - is mentioned in the vedic texts such as the "yajurveda". in the epic "ramayana", rama performed the ashvamedha sacrifice for becoming the chakravartin emperor. in the epic "mahabharata", yudhishtra performs the ashwamedha after winning the kurukshetra war to become the chakravartin emperor. the mahabharata also contains a description of an ashvamedha performed by the chedi king uparichara vasu, however, no animals were sacrificed in this story.however, sacrifices were common in this ritual. the rulers of the gupta dynasty, the chalukya dynasty, and the chola dynasty all performed the ashvamedha.
animal sacrifice in hinduism