________________
SECTION III. SAMUDRA GUPTA PARĀKRAMĀNKA.1
The exact date when Chandra Gupta I was succeeded by his son, Samudra Gupta, is not known. If the evidence of the spurious Nālandā plate (issued from Nripura) has any value the event may have happened before the year 5 of the Gupta Era, i.e., A.D. 325. But this is doubtful. It is clear not only from the Allahabad Prasasti but from the epithet "tatpadaparig?rihīta," applied to Samudra Gupta in the Riddhapur inscription, that the prince was selected from among his sons by Chandra Gupta I as best fitted to succeed him. The new monarch may have been known also as Kācha.?
It was the aim of Samudra Gupta to bring about the political unification of India (dharani-bandha) and make
1 The titles Parākrama, Vyāghraparakrama, and Parākramānka are found on coins (Allan, Catalogue, pp, cxi, 1f) and in the Allahabad Prasasti (CII, p. 6). Recently a coin has been found with the legend Sri Vikramah on the reverse (Bamnālā hoard, Nimar district, J. Num. Soc. Ind. Vol. V. pt. 2, p. 140. Dec. 1943).
2 The epithet Sarva-rājo-chchhettă found on Kācha's coins shows that he was in all probability identical with Samudra Gupta. Cf. Smith, Catalogue, 96 ; IA, 1902, 259 f. For another view see Smith, JRAS, 1897, 19; Rapson, JRAS, 1893, 81 ; Heras, Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Vol. IX, p 83f. To us it is unthinkable that the style "uprooter of all kings" could have been assumed by a Gupta monarch other than the one who is actually credited with that achievement by a contemporary inscription, before the events presupposed by the expression had actually happened. In the Poona plates we find the epithet applied to Chandra Gupta II, son of Samudra Gupta, along with many other designations of the latter. But it should be remembered that the plates in question are not official records of the Guptas themselves. In no official epigraph of the Imperial Guptas ts the style "Sarva-rājo-chchhetta applied to any other king except Samudra Gupta. The application of the term to Chandra Gupta II in the Poona Plates is due to the same carelessness which led the writer to describe Chandra Gupta I as a mere Māhāraja (and not Mahārājadhiraja). A comparison of the Amgāchhi record with the Bāņagad Inscription shows that writers of Prasastis not unoften carelessly applied to a later king eulogies really pertaining to a preceding ruler,
