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Dr. Charlotte Krause: Her Life & Literature
have been a Jaina king and identical with Acārya Harigupta, still he could not be the object of Siddhasena's eulogy, because
(a) as has already been pointed out, Siddhasena, obviously addresses himself to a Hindu king, and
(b) in view of the religious zeal and sincerity of conviction and feeling which hide themselves behind Siddhasena's satire and in view of the learned monk's station in life, the integrity of his person and purpose, as well as his responsible and representative position in the philosophical and religious literature of his time, he cannot be presumed to have exaggerated or distorted facts so grossly as to invent those unique deeds ascribed to his patron and thus to have falsified history to an extent unallowed even to a secular eulogist. Taking therefore Siddhasena's description as genuine Vṛttetivṛtta, his Dvātrimśikā cannot possibly be addressed to some obscure Harigupta of the time of the decline and fall of the Gupta Empire.
Therefore the appellation 'Hari' must be understood as a mere synonym for 'Indra', used in the conventional sense147.
Thus, the choice narrows itself down to the two greatest and most renowned of the Gupta rulers Samudragupta and Candragupta II. Both great conquerors and ingenious rulers, who, after victorious campaigns, reigned over a vast and prosperous empire for long periods of glorious peace, both eulogized for personal valour, both patrons of poetry and learning, both munificent and of generally acknowledged broad-mindedness and tolerance148, and both adorned with the title of 'Vikramaditya'. So far as Samudragupta is concerned, this latter fact (though, of course, the epithets 'Parākrama' and 'Vyāghraparakrama',149 ‘Parākramānka'150 and 'Vikramānka' were known before as applied to him) was ingeniously inferred by V. A. Smith long ago, but has actually been established only recently by the discovery of a coin of this ruler at Bamṇālā in Indore State bearing this very legend 152. It is obvious that this discovery will necessitate a re-examination of the literary references to
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