Goparaja fell in a great battle fought beside Bhanugupta, and his wife followed him into the fire; the inscription does not say who won.
01Goparaja’s pillar
The stone stands among the ruins of Eran, where the Bina makes a loop and the Guptas had raised Vishnu temples and a great Varaha. Its eight lines, dated in Gupta year 191, praise Bhanugupta as the bravest man on earth, a king equal to Arjuna, and say that Goparaja went with him and fought a very famous battle, and went to heaven. His devoted, loving and beautiful wife clung to him and entered the mass of fire. A carved panel above shows a man and a woman. The enemy is never named.
02The Hunas at the door
Most historians read the battle against the Huna advance, because the same site holds the proof of what came next. On the chest of the great Varaha at Eran is an inscription of the first regnal year of the Huna king Toramana, recording a temple built by a local lord who had earlier served the Guptas. Within a few years of Goparaja’s death, then, Eran was under Huna rule. Eran had already given the Guptas a Vishnu temple and a Garuda pillar; it now marks the edge of their retreat. The Hunas were checked a generation later by Yashodharman of Mandasor.
The Eran pillar is the last firm notice of Gupta arms in central India and a key dated record for the Huna wars.