Gupta Empire

“ After their claims were recognized they probably ruled from Ujjeni, which Ptolemy describes as the capital of Tiastenos or Chashtana, the Kshatrapa ruler of his time. It re- mained, apparently, in Saka hands until about the 5th century A. D., when it reverted to Brahman power under the Gupta Empire; this expulsion of the “misbelieving foreigners” giving rise to the tradition of Vikramaditya of Ujjain, the King Arthur of India, at whose court the “nine gems,” the brightest geniuses of India, were supposed to have flourished. ”

“ This fact constitutes a supreme instance of the way in which the mightiest political forces in history are brought into being by those who stand outside politics. The great Chandra Gupta, founding an Empire 300 B.C., could not make a nationality in India. He could only establish that political unity and centralisation in whose soil an Indian nationality might grow and come to recognise itself. ”

“ Vincent Smith refers "to the cumulative proof that the remarkable intellectual and artistic output of the Gupta period was produced in large measure by reason of the contact between the civilization of India and that of the Roman Empire;" and research is almost daily adding to such proof. ”

“ From this same pillar we learn that his empire included all India as far south as Malabar, as far north as Assam and Nepaul. It was thus larger than any since the days of Asôka, though the southward sweep of Samûdra-gupta's victorious armies cannot, in the nature of things, have been much more than a raid. A campaign, involving fully 3,000 miles of marching, which cannot have occupied less than three years, and the furthest limit of which lands one more than 1,200 miles from one's base, must be a mere march to victory and a retreat with spoils. ”

“ Behind all the exuberance of prosperity and happiness, moreover, in this poem, stands the life of reverence and earnest aspiration ; the ideals of faith, purity, and courage, which pervade all classes of the people alike, and are the same to-day as they were under the empire of Pataliputra. As regards his ideal of learning, a young Bengali scholar of to-day belongs still to the culture of the Gupta period. A knowledge of Sanskrit from the ancient Vedic to fje fashionable literary language of the day ”

“ Much of Sivaism has probably the same origin. Another native empire, known as Gupta, rose on the ruins of the Kushan kingdom, and embraced nearly the whole peninsula, but it broke up in the 5th century, partly owing to the attacks of new northern invaders, the Huns. The Malava dynasty maintained Hindu civilization in the 6th century, and from 606 to 646 Harsha established a brief but brilliant empire in the north with its capital at Kanauj. ”

“ Further in the inscriptions the lineage appears as Guptavaṃśa that is the lineage of the Guptas never Śríguptavaṃśa3; and whenever dates in the era of this dynasty are given they are conjoined with the name Gupta never with Śrígupta.4 It may therefore be taken that Gupta not Śrígupta is the correct form of the founder’s name.5
Ghaṭotkacha, a.d. 322–349 (?) .Gupta the founder seems never to have risen to be more than a petty chief. No known inscription gives him the title Mahárájádhirája Supreme Ruler of Great Kings, which all Gupta rulers after the founder’s grandson Chandragupta assume. ”

“ The vitality and individuality of Indian civilization were already fully developed during the spacious times of Gupta imperialism, which about the end of the 7th century even transplanted itself to the farther East, aiding in the civilization of Java, Cambodia, Siam, China, and even Japan. ”

“ But indomitably powerful as a social amalgam, Hinduism failed to generate any politically constructive force that could endure much beyond the lifetime of some exceptionally gifted conqueror. The Mauryan and the Gupta dynasties succumbed as irretrievably to the centrifugal forces of petty states and clans perpetually striving for mastery as the more ephemeral kingdoms of Kanishka and Harsha. ”

“ CHAPTER VII. THE GUPTAS (G. 90–149; a.d. 410–470.)
Chapter VII.
The Guptas, a.d. 410–470. After the Kshatrapas (a.d. 120–410) the powerful dynasty of the Guptas established themselves in Gujarát. So far as the dynasty is connected with Gujarát the Gupta tree is:
According to the Puráṇas1 the original seat of the Guptas was between the Ganges and the Jamna. ”

“ The letters upon the triumphal pillar are called “the typical cuts inflicted on his enemies by his sword, writing his immortal fame.” “It is a pity that posterity can know nothing more of this mighty Rajah Dhava than what is recorded in the meager inscription upon this wonderful relic of antiquity. The characters of the inscription are thought to be the same as those of the Gupta inscriptions, and the success alluded to therein is supposed to have been the assistance which that Rajah had rendered in the downfall of the powerful sovereigns of the Gupta dynasty. ”

“ Who held Suráshṭra and Gujarát during the period of Gupta decline until the arrival and settlement of Bhaṭkárka in a.d. 514 (Gupta 195) is not determined. Still there is reason to believe that during or shortly after the time of Budhagupta some other race or dynasty overthrew the Gupta Viceroy of these provinces and took them from the Guptas. These powerful conquerors seem to be the tribe of Maitrakas mentioned in Valabhi copperplates as people who had settled in Káthiáváḍa and established a maṇḍala or kingdom. ”

“ For their period, and in fact for the whole time to the rise of the Guptas in A.D. 320 we have as yet but scanty help from the inscriptions in respect of the political history of Northern India: we are mostly dependent on the coins, which tend to indicate that that part of India was then broken up into a number of small sovereignties and tribal governments. An inscription, however, from Panjtar in the Yūsufzai territory mentions, without giving his name, a Kushan king whose dominion included that territory in A.D. 66. ”

“ The Hindu reaction against Buddhism became apparent under the Gupta dynasty but Mahayanism in its use of Sanskrit and its worship of Bodhisattvas shows the beginnings of the same movement. The danger for Buddhism was not persecution but tolerance and obliteration of differences. The Guptas were not bigots. It was probably in their time that the oldest Puranas, the laws of Manu and the Mahabharata received their final form. These are on the whole text-books of Smârta Hinduism and two Gupta monarchs celebrated the horse sacrifice. ”

“ Never was there a father who more deeply gave his confidence to his children. Yet without the work done by Chandra Gupta the grandfather and completed by Asoka himself in his earlier years, in the long-repented conquest of Kalinga, or Orissa, this blossoming time of true nationality, when all races and classes of Indian folk were drawn together by one loving and beloved sovereign, would not have been possible. ”

“ Those who know about India will have no doubt as to the consequences. And what if India—irritated, mortified and humiliated—should become an unwilling and refractory partner in the great Imperial concern? Surely it would be the beginning of the end of the Empire.
These, briefly, are the reasons why this question of "the British indians in the Transvaal" is a great Imperial question and not one of mere internal administration of a self-governing Colony in which the Mother Country has neither right nor reason to interfere. ”

“ Gupta king, 74.
Kumárapála: local chief, 172 and note 1.
Kumárapála: Chaulukya king (1143–1174) , 156, 170, 176; his ancestry 179, 181; his death planned by Siddharája; goes into exile; his wanderings; coins issued in his name by Pratápasimha; is chosen king, 182–183; rewards his friends in exile; his wars with the kings of Sámbhar, Málwa, the Konkan, and Suráshṭra, 184–187; traditions regarding his Sesodia Ráni, 188; extent of his kingdom; construction of the temple of Somanátha; his vow to keep apart from women and eschew flesh and wine, 189; his Jain benefactions ”

“ Ins. Ind. III. 134) . The earliest historical member of the Nepál family is Jayadeva I. whose date is supposed to be about a.d. 330 to 355. Mr. Fleet (Ditto, 135) suggests that Jayadeva’s reign began earlier and may be the epoch from which the Gupta era of a.d. 318–319 is taken. He holds (Ditto, 136) that in all probability the so-called Gupta era is a Lichchhavi era. ↑
7 The figure of the Ganges standing on an alligator with a stalked lotus in her left hand on the reverse of the gold coins of Samudragupta the fourth king of the dynasty may be taken to be the Śri or Luck of the Guptas. ”

“ They do not represent popular religion nor the religion of India as a whole. But in the Gupta period Hinduism began to do this. It is not a system like Islam or even Buddhism but a parliament of religions, of which every Indian creed can become a member on condition of observing some simple rules of the house, such as respect for Brahmans and theoretical acceptance of the Veda. Nothing is abolished: the ancient rites and texts preserve their mysterious power and kings perform the horse-sacrifice. ”

“ On the succeeding dynasty see the article Gupta; and refer again to the article Fa-Hien for the Chinese account of the rule of the second Gupta king, Chandragupta,—on whom in legend see Vikramaditya. On the White Huns and their invasion consult the articles Ephthalites and Huns. On the only other great king of this period, who was paramount monarch of northern India in the first half of the 7th century and whose administration was described by Hsüan-Tsang, see Harsha. On the principal Deccan dynasties of the Hindu period, see Chalukya and Rashtrakuta, and the article Deccan. ”

“ It is in these circumstances, in the absence of any indigenous historical writings of a plain, straightforward, and authentic nature, that the inscriptions of India are of such great value. They are supplemented—and to an important extent for at any rate the period from the end of Aśōka’s reign in 227 B.C. to the commencement of the reign of Kaṅishka in 58 B.C., and again from about a century later to the rise of the Gupta dynasty in A.D. 320—by the numismatic remains. But the coins of India present no dates until nearly the end of the 2nd century A.D. ”

“ White Huns, a.d. 450–520.Among the northerners who with or shortly after the Pushyamitras shared in the overthrow of Gupta power two names, a father and a son, Toramáṇa and Mihirakula are prominent. It is not certain that these kings were Húṇas by race. Their tribe were almost certainly his rivals’ allies whom Skandagupta’s Bhitari and Junágaḍh inscriptions style the one Húṇas the other Mlechchhas.66 On one of Toramáṇa’s coins Mr. Fleet reads67 the date 52 which he interprets as a regnal date. ”

“ Let British supremacy in India cease when it will, the suppression of Thuggee will ever remain a glorious monument to the zeal, energy, and judgment of the civil and military servants of the East India Company. It is easy to direct epigram and innuendo against the idea of a body of merchants ruling a vast empire with enlightened and disinterested beneficence. ”

“ Go you must," she continued in a firm tone. "There is no one except you who knows his ways and can see to his comfort. Now get ready quickly."
"Oh, Ma-ji," he sobbed like a child, "I obey, but my heart is heavy."
Mr. Gupta had to travel through the night. After an early dinner he started, attended by many palki-bearers and the old servant. The moon rose bright and glorious and bathed the picturesque country in soft radiance. The silence of the forest was broken only by the rhythmic cries of the bearers and the pat-pat of their feet. ”

“ He made no attempt to retain all this territory but his effective authority was exercised in a wide district extending from the Hugli to the rivers Jumna and Chambal in the west and from the Himalayas to the Narbudda. His son Candragupta II or Vikramâditya added to these possessions Malwa, Gujarat and Kathiawar and for more than half a century the Guptas ruled undisturbed over nearly all northern India except Rajputana and Sind. Their capital was at first Pataliputra, but afterwards Kausambi and Ayodhya became royal residences. ”

“ And very few are the Bengali minds that have yet reached a point in the assimilation and expression of a new form of thought and knowledge, which would make it possible to say that they are of another age than that of Vikramaditya. Of that new age Science is to be the pivot and centre, and there can be no doubt that the era of Science, with its collateral development of geography and history, will directly succeed that of the Guptas, with its Sanskrit Literature and logic in Bengal. ”

“ From Ujjain by way of Bágh and Tánda in the province of Ráth he seems to have entered South Gujarát and to have passed from the Broach coast to Káthiáváḍa. He seems to have wrested Káthiáváḍa from its Kshatrapa rulers as he is the first Gupta who struck silver coins and as his silver coins are of the then current Kshatrapa type. On the obverse is the royal bust with features copied from the Kshatrapa face and on the reverse is the figure of a peacock, probably chosen as the bearer of Kártikasvámi the god of war. Round the peacock is a Sanskrit legend. ”

“ If this should be allowed to continue, there would be no discrimination between right and wrongdoing, no justice, and without justice human beings cannot have happiness and peace. If there were no peace or happiness for human beings, the Dukpa Hierarchy would have failed in its errand upon this earth, and it would be useless for it to exist longer. Therefore, bearing the interest of the Hierarchy at heart, every one is exhorted to leave all partiality aside and to act up to a true sense of justice, emulating the great Saint-King Srongtsan Gompo of Tibet. ”