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570 POLITICAL HISTORY OF ANCIENT INDIA
grandfather and penetrate into the tiger-infested forest territory beyond the Nerbudda. Expansion towards the south is also indicated by a find of 1,395 coins in the Satara District. But the imperial troops must have met with disaster. The fallen fortunes of the Gupta family were restored by prince Skanda Gupta who may have been appointed his father's warden in the Ghāzipur region, the Atavi or Forest Country of ancient times.2
The only queen of Kumara I named in the genealogical portion of extant inscriptions is Anantadevi. He had at least two sons, viz., Puru Gupta, son of Anantadevi, and Skanda Gupta the name of whose mother is, in the opinion of some scholars, not given in the inscriptions. Sewell, however, suggests that it was Devaki. This is. not an unlikely assumption as otherwise the comparison of the widowed Gupta empress with Krishna's mother in verse 6 of the Bhitari Pillar Inscription will be less explicable. Hiuen Tsang calls Buddha Gupta (Fo-to-kio-to) or Budha Gupta, a son (or descendent?) of Sakraditya.5 The only predecessor of Budha Gupta who had a synonymous title was Kumara Gupta I who is called Mahendraditya on coins. Mahendra is the same as Śakra.
1 Allan, p. cxxx. Cf. also the Kadamba inscription referring to social. relations between the Kadambas of the fifth century and the Guptas.
2 Cf. the Bhitari Inscription.
3 Historical Inscriptions of Southern India, p. 349.
4 The name Fo-to-kio-to has been restored as Buddha Gupta. But we have no independent evidence regarding the existence of a king named Buddha Gupta about this period. The synchronism of his successor's successor Baladitya with Mihirakula indicates that the king meant was Budha Gupta, cf. also Ind. Ant., 1886, 251 n.
5 That Sakraditya was a reality is proved by a Nālandā seal (H. Sastri, MASI, No. 66, p.38). To him is ascribed an establishment at Nalanda, the far-famed place, which grew into a great university in the seventh century A. D. The pilgrim was not indulging in mere fancy as suggested by a recent writer in a treatise on Nālandā.
