Prabhāvatīguptā
A figure from the books
#Prabhavatigupta
Prabhāvatīguptā · c. 385 – c. 443 CE
In the books · 1 chapter
Who this is
Queenship — chief queen of the Vākāṭakas, then regent for her minor sons for some two decades, then a dowager whose name outweighed her son's on his own documents.
“The best-documented woman ruler of ancient India is documented because she did the documenting — royal charters issued in her own name and titles across four decades, against the single inscription that is all we have for any queen before her.”
The big idea, in the book's words:
“Power is what the paperwork says it is. Widowed young in a foreign dynasty, she governed in her sons' names but issued royal orders under her own — and in those orders she recited her father's ancestors, not her husband's, making every land-grant a quiet declaration of who she was.”
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