text: The inscription is undated, and contains a eulogy of a king named Candra, whose dynasty it does not mention. The identity of this king, and thus the date of the pillar, has been the subject of much debate. The various viewpoints about the identity of the issuer were assembled and analyzed in a volume edited by M. C. Joshi and published in 1989.
  The king is now generally identified with the Gupta King Chandragupta II. This identification is based on several points:
  * The script and the poetic style of the inscription, which point to a date in the late fourth or early fifth century CE: the Gupta period.
  * The inscription describes the king as a devotee of the God Vishnu, and records the erection of a dhvaja ("standard", or pillar) of Vishnu, on a hill called Viṣṇupada ("hill of the footprint of Viṣṇu"). Other Gupta inscriptions also describe Chandragupta II as a Bhagavata (devotee of Vishnu). The names of the places mentioned in the inscription are also characteristic of the Gupta Era. For example,  (the Indian Ocean) and  (the Bengal region).
  * The short name Candra is inscribed on the archer-type gold coins of Chandragupta II, while his full name and titles appear in a separate, circular legend on the coin.
  * A royal seal of Chandragupta's wife Dhruvadevi contains the phrase  ("Nārāyaṇa, the lord of the illustrious Viṣṇupada").
  As the inscription is a eulogy and states that the king has abandoned the earth, there has been some discussion as to whether it is posthumous, i.e. whether King Chandra was dead when the record was created. Dasharatha Sharma (1938) argued that it was non-posthumous. According to B. Chhabra and G. S. Gai, the inscription states that the king's mind is "fixed upon Vishnu with devotion", and therefore, indicates that the king was alive at the time. They theorize that it may have been recorded when Chandragupta II abdicated his throne, and settled down as a vanaprastha (retiree) in Viṣṇupada.