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LAST DAYS OF THE GUPTAS"
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Mādhava Gupta were appointed to wait upon the princes Rājya-vardhana and Harsha of Thānēsar. From the Aphsad inscription of Adityasena we learn that the fame of the father of Mādhava Gupta, the associate of Harsha, marked with honour of victory in war over Susthitavarman, doubtless a king of Kámarūpa, was constantly sung on the banks of the river Lohitya or Brahmaputra. This indicates that even in or about A.D. 600 (the time of Prabhākara-vardhana) the sway of kings bearing the name Gupta extended from "Mālava” to the Brahmaputra.
In the sixth century Gupta suzerainty was no doubt successively challenged by the Huns and their conquerors belonging to the Mandasor and Maukhari families. In
Hiuen Tsang the Chinese pilgrim, (4) Pūrva Mālava (round Bhilsa), (5) District round Prayāga, Kaušām bi and Fatehpur in U. P. (Smith, EHI, 4th ed., p. 350n.; IHQ. 1931, 150f. ; cf. JRAS, 1903. 561). (6) part of eastern Rājputāna, (7) Cis-Sutlej districts of the Pañjāb together with some Himālayan territory. The later Guptas probably held (4) and (5) and, at times, Magadha as well. The Bhāgvata Purāna (xii, 1.36) whose date is not probably far removed from that of the later Guptas, associates Mālava with Arbuda (Abu) and distinguishes it from Avanti. The rulers of Mālava and Avanti are also distinguished from each other by Rājasekhara in his Viddhaśāla bhañjikā, Act IV (p. 121 of Jivānanda Vidyāsāgara's edition). Early in the seventh century the Guptas seem to have lost Eastern Mālwa to the Katchchuris. In the Vadner plates issued from Vidiśā (Besnagar) in or about A. D. 608, a Katachchuri king, Samkaragana receives epithets that are palpably borrowed from the Allahabad Prasasti of Samudra Gupta. The overthrow of the Katachchuris was effected by the early Chalukyas of Badami and South Gujarat. Fleet points out (CII, 14) that three of the epithets of Samudra Gupta are 'applied to the Chalukya chieftain Vijayarāja in the Kaira grant of the year 394 (IA, VII, 248.) Adityasena of the later Gupta family, who ruled in the second half of the seventh century A. D., seems to be referred to in Nepalese inscriptions as 'King of Magadha.' Magadha, now replaced Eastern Mālwa as the chief centre of Gupta power.
1 Cf. Hoernle in JRAS, 1903, 561.
2 An allusion to the later Guptas seems to occur in the Kādambari, Verse 10, of Bāņa which says that the lotus feet of Kubera, the poet's great-grandfather, were worshipped by many a Gupta :
Babhūva Vātsyāyana vamśa sambhavo dvijo jagadgitaguno' granih satām aneka Guptārchita pada pankajah Kubera nāmāmsa iva Svayambhuvah.
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