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Vikram has long been considered a national hero, a beau ideal of a prince. He is remembered as a ruler who pushed out foreign invaders. But his fame rests on the literary and cultural brilliance of his court, where he collected some of the most famous writers, artists, and musicians—the ‘nine gems’ of his court as they are called. Most of the stories deal with his desire to do good to his people, and to sacrifice himself or his personal interest at the slightest provocation in order to benefit someone else. He is famous for his generosity, service for others, courage, and lack of conceit. Essentially he has been popular because he was considered a good man and a patron of the arts. The fact that he was a successful soldier or a conqueror hardly comes out in the stories. That emphasis on the goodness and self-sacrificing nature of the man is characteristic of the Indian mind and of Indian ideals. Vikramaditya’s name, like that of Caesar, became a kind of symbol and title, and numerous subsequent rulers added it to their names. This has added to the Confusion, as there are many Vikramadityas mentioned in history. But who was this Vikram? And when did he exist? Historically speaking everything is vague. There is no trace of any such ruler round about 57 B.C. when the Vikram Samvat era should begin. There was, however, a Vikramaditya in North India in the fourth century A.C., and he fought against Hun invaders and pushed them out. It is he who is supposed to have kept the ‘nine gems’ in his court and around whom all these stories gather. The problem then is this: How is this Vikramaditya who existed in the fourth century A.C. to be connected with an era which begins in 57 B.C. ? The probable explanation appears to be that an era dating from 57 B.C. existed in the Malava State in Central India  and, long after Vikram, the is era and calendar were connected with him and renamed after him. But all this is vague and uncertain.

What has been most surprising is the way in which quite intelligent Indians have played about with history in order somehow to connect the traditional hero, Vikram, with the beginning of the era 2,000 years ago. It has also been interesting to find how emphasis is laid on his fight against the foreigner and his desire to establish the unity of India under one national state. Vikram’s realm was, in fact, confined to North and Central India.
It is not Indians only who are affected by nationalist urges and supposed national interest in the writing or consideration of history. Every nation and people seem to be affected by this desire to gild and better the past and distort it to their advantage. The histories of India that most of us have had to read, chiefly written by Englishmen, are usually long apologies for and panegyrics of British rule, and a barely veiled contemptuous account of what happened here in the millenniums preceding it. Indeed, real history for them begins with the advent of the Englishman into India; all that went before is in some mystic kind of way a preparation for this divine consummation.

Excerpted from pages 102-103 of ‘Jawaharlal Nehru The Discovery of India ’ by Jawaharlal Nehru