Yasodharman of Dasapura

King of Mandasor · mid-6th century CE · victor over Mihirakula

Yasodharman of Dasapura — modern Mandasor, Madhya Pradesh — is the king celebrated on the Mandasor pillar inscription as the conqueror of Mihirakula. The pillar’s Sanskrit inscription, in elegant verse, claims a sphere of authority “from the Brahmaputra in the east to the western ocean” and singles out Mihirakula as the king “who bowed his head” to Yasodharman.

Reading the inscription against the grain

The Mandasor pillar is a panegyric, and its territorial claims are visibly inflated. What the inscription does establish is that, by the late 530s CE, an Aulikara dynasty in Malwa had broken the back of Alkhan power in central India. Yasodharman’s victory and Baladitya’s defeat of Mihirakula in Bihar together end the period of Alkhan paramountcy south of the Hindu Kush — though the Hunnic dynasties of Kashmir and Punjab continue for another 150 years. See the era pillar page.

Sources

• Mandasor pillar inscription of Yasodharman
• Bakker (2020), The Alkhan
• Thakur & Sircar, The Hunas in India (1967)
• Thapar, The Penguin History of Early India (2003)