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166
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
(Jox, 1918
or
gupta I. It would follow therefore that the reign of Kumaragupta II was olosed before A.D. 477, at least in the Sárnáth regions, and this inference is in full agreement with the Sârnâth Inscription (No. 1) which gives us the date A.D. 473-4 for Kumaragupta II.
As a result of the foregoing discussions the following reconstruction of the chronology of the last Gupta emperors may be offered with confidence on the basis of the newly discovered inscriptions mentioned aboveKings. Known dates.
Probable period 1. Skandagupta or Puragupta, A.D. 456-7-467-8
A.D. 456-468 Skandagupta and Puragupta 2. Narasimhagupta Nil.
A.D. 468-472 3. Kumâragupta II. A.D. 473-4
A.D. 472-477 4. Budhagupta A.D. 477-8-494-5
AD. 478-500 The relation of Budhagupta to his predecessor cannot be easily determined. It is. natural to look upon him as the immediate successor, if not the son, of Kumâragupta II, but it is not impossible that he was à successful rebel in the west who had gradually forced his way to the imperial throne. The fact that no gold coins of Budhagupta have been discovered as yet, is certainly difficult to explain. It may be supposed that the coins bearing simply the 'Aditya legends' like Prakasaditya and Dvadasaditya really belonged to him, though at present there is no evidence to show that they were so. On the other hand, it may very well be that he did not survive his usurpation of the imperial throne for a sufficiently long time to institute the gold coinage.
The reconstructed Gupta chronology olears up our knowledge about the history of the period in some respects. To take only one instanoe, the history of the so-called later Guptas becomes more definite and more consistent. The begining of this dynasty cannot be placed later than the commencement of the sixth century A.D., because the fourth king of this dynasty, Kumâragupta, who also belonged to the fourth generation of kings, was a contemporary of Isânavarmman and therefore lived in the middle of the 6th century A.D. According to the hitherto accepted chronology of the last Gupta emperors, the first half of the 6th century is covered by the two reigns of Narasimhhagupta and Kumaragupta II. the former of whom died in about A.D. 530. We have thus to suppose that whe first four kings of the later Gupta dynasty were contemporaries of these Gupta imperors, although the available evidence shows that all of them ruled over Magadha. The scheme of Gupta chronology reconstructed above gives a very natural explanation of the origin of the later Guptas. The last lineal descendant of the mighty Gupta emperors died some time after A.D. 473-4. The throne was then occupied by Budhagupta whose latest known date is A.D. 494-5. We have no definite information of any other Gupta king occupying the imperial throne of Magadha and this is quite consistent with the supposition that a new dynasty of local kings, probably scions of the Gupta Emperors, was established at Magadha at the beginning of the 6th century A.D.
In conclusion, I may refer to an article on the “Gupta Era and Mihirakula "contributed by Mr. K. B. Pathak to the Bhandarkar Commemoration Volume, recently published by the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute. He has read the 5th word in the Sarnath
