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556 POLITICAL HISTORY OF ANCIENT INDIA mentioned in records dating from A. D. 402 to 413. The campaign against the Sakas was eminently successful. The fall of the Saka Satrap is alluded to by Bāņa. The annexation of his territory is proved by coins.
Chief Cities of the Empire. The first important Gupta metropolis seems to have been at Pātaliputra—"the city named Pushpa” where Samudra Gupta is said to have "rested on his laurels” after one of his victorious cam
paigns, and from which a Gupta Minister for Peace and · War went to East Mālwa in the company of his sovereign.
From A.D. 402 Chandra Gupta seems to have had a residence in Mālwa, at first possibly at Vidiśā and later on, after his western conquests, at Ujjain. Certain chiefs of the Kanarese districts, who claimed descent from Chandra Gupta (Vikramāditya), referred to their great ancestor as Ujjayinî-puravar-ādliśvara, 'lord of Ujjain, the best of cities, as well as Pāțalipuravar-ādhisvara 'lord of Pātali (putra), the best of cities.' Sir R. G. Bhandarkar identifies Chandra Gupta II with the traditional Vikramāditya Sakāri, “the sun of valour, the destroyer of the Sakas," of Ujjain. The titles Śrî
1 Silver coins of the Garuda type bearing the legend Parama-Bhāgavata, probably struck in Surāshtra (Allan, p. xciv). Some of the coins bear the date 90 ( = A.D. 409, EHI, 4th ed., p. 345 ). It has been suggested recently that, like his father, Chandra Gupta, too, performed a horse sacrifice (IHQ, 1927, p. 725) and that a stone horse lying in a village named Nagawa near Benares, and bearing an inscription containing the letters Chamdragu, commemorates the event. But there is no clear reference to such a sacrifice in the inscriptions or coins hitherto published.
2 In literature Vikramāditya is represented as ruling at Pāšaliputra (Katha-sarit-sagara, VII, 4.3:-Vikramaditya ityāsidrājā Pataliputrake) as well as Ujjayini and other cities. Sāhasanka of Ujjain is said to have ordered the exclusive use of Sanskrit in his harem (Kavya Mimāmsā, 3rd. ed, p. 50). He thus reversed the policy of Adhyarāja (p. 197) or Sātavāhana of Kuntala. C.f. the verse in Sarasvati Kanthābharana IJ. 15.
Ke'bhunnādhyarājasya rājye prākrita- bhāshinah
kāle śri Sāhasānkasya ke na Samskritavādinah. Among the Kavya-kāras tested in Ujjain mention is made of a Chandra Gupta along with Kālidāsa, Amara, Bharavi and others (Kavya M. p 55).
