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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
(JUNE, 1902.
According to all the genealogical inscriptions, the founder of the dynastic family was the Maharâja Gupta, who was succeeded by his son the Maharaja Ghatotkacha. The only positive indication of the date of the Maharaja Gupta is afforded by the Chinese pilgrim I-tsing, who travelled between A. D. 671 and 695, and died in A. D. 713. He states that, according to tradition, an ancient ruined establishment known as the China Temple had been built for the accommodation of Chinese pilgrims some five hundred years before the writer's time by Mahârâja Sri Gupta. This tradition would place the Mahârâja Gupta about A. D. 200, a date considerably too early. The true date of his accession cannot well be earlier than A. D. 270. We may assume A. D. 275. Gupta's Bon, Ghatotkacha, may be assigned conjecturally, in the absence of evidence, to A. D. 800.
Neither of these Maharajas assumed the higher titles denoting paramount rule, and, so far as is known, neither of them coined money or left any inscriptions. Both probably were the Râjas of
Bibâr south of the Ganges, with their capital at the ancient royal city of Pataliputra (Patna). They may have been in some degree subordinate to the Lichchhavis of Vaisali, on the northern side of the river.
Chandra Gupta I. came to the throne in G. E. 1, = A, D. 320, and established his power as a paramount sovereign by marrying the Lichchhavi princess Kumara Devt. His coins were struck in the joint names of himself, his queen, and the powerful Lichchhavi clan, and his dominions extended in the Gangetic valley as far as Prayaga (Allahabad).
Inasmuch as Samudra Gupta, son of Chandra Gupta I., was reigning previously to G. E. 13 = A. D. 332, the date of the death of the Ceylonese king Meghavarņa, who sent him an embassy, the reign of Chandra Gupta I., who ascended the throne in the year G. E. 1, must necessarily have been very short. The great Allahabad inscription, which records the deeds of Samudra Gupta, states that his conquests extended as far south as Palakka, the modern Palghatchery, in N. lat. 10° 45' 49, distant about thirteen hundred miles from PAt aliputra (Patna), then the capital of the empire, and
The name of this prince was undoubtedly simply Gupta, and not Sri Gupta, a Cunningham insisted (Coins Mod. I. p. 9). Upagupta, who, according to the AboksvadAng legend, was the father-confessor of Asoka, is desoribed as the son of Gupta the perfumer. Both these names are clear proof that the participle Gupta could stand as a
sing word; the word wpa is, of course, a mere particle, expressing the idea of lesser,
• For the dates of I-tsing's lite and death, see his 'Records of the Buddhist Religion,' ed. Takakusu, P. IIIvil. The tradition cited is from another work by the same author described by Beal in J. R. 4. 8. XIII., N. S., pp. 552-572.
Tho coins exhibit on the obverse the names and effigies of Chandra Gupta and his consort Kumira Déri, The-reverse has a goddess seated on a lion, and holding fillet and cornucopiæ, with the legend Lichchhavayal, or Lichchivayal, in the nominative plural. I interpret the legends as meaning that the coinage was issued by Chandra Gupta I. in the names of himself, of his wife, and of her family, tbe Lichobhavis. The inscriptions lay great stress on the queen's Lichobhavi ancestry.
The well-known Puranio passage which defines the extent of the Gupta Dominions is applicable to the reign of Chandra Gupta I. only. As given in the V&ya Purana (Hall's ed. of Wilson's Visuņu Purana, Vol. IV. p. 218) it runs :
अनुगंगांप्रयागं च साकेतं मगधास्तथा ।
पताञ्जनपदासर्वभोक्ष्यन्ते गुप्तवंशजाः।। of which the best translation seems to me to be: The [lingo) of the race of Gupta will posses Prayaga on the Granges, SAketam, and the Magadhas all these countries. Såketam, althongh not yet positively identified, was in Southern Oudh (J. R. 4, 8. for 1898, p. 522). Prayaga on the Ganges is Allahabad. The name Magadha in the plural (amending to 4TH ) means, I presume, Bihar both north and south of the Ganges. Similarly, the name Kalinga is used both in the singular and the plural. Compare Vanga and Upayanga Gupta and his son Chandra Gupta II. enlarged the boundaries of the empire so far that the Puranio definition or deagription became wholly inapplicable. This observation may help to indicate the date of the oomposition of the Vayu Parapa. Other texts, as usual, present variations of the passage quoted.
Tho coins of Chandra Gupta I. are described in my work entitled 'The Coinage of the Early or Imperial Gupta Dynasty of Northern India,' in J. R. A. 8. for Jan. 1889 (oited as "Coinago ''p. 63, and 'Observations,' p. 94. The spelling 'Lichchhivayal' is found on one of Mr. Rivett-Carnao's coins, and in the Bhitari pillar inscription of Skanda Gupta, as well as in the spurious Gayd grant purporting to belong to the same roigo, and in the laws of Manu. (Fleet, Gupta Inucriptions,' p. 16.)
