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THE MAGADHAS
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the Vākātaka king of the Deccan, by the marriage of the Emperor's daughter Prabhāvati with King Rudrasena II, son of Prthivisena I. The original capital of Magadha under Candragupta II was Pātaliputra, but after his western conquests, Ujjain was made a second capital. Smith says: 'Ajodhyā enjoyed a more favourable situation and appears to have been at times the headquarters of the government of both Samudragupta and his son, the latter of whom probably had a mint for copper coins there. There is reason to believe that during the fifth century Ajodhyā rather than Pāțaliputra, was the premier city of the Gupta empire.'1
Detailed information regarding the administrative history of the Magadhan empire under Candragupta II is not available, but the narrative of Fā-Hien and the inscriptions that have hitherto been discovered throw much light on the character of his administration, and on the social and religious condition of India at the time.
The Rājā was the head of the State. He was apparently nominated by his predecessor, both primogeniture and capacity being taken into consideration. A body of high ministers whose office was very often hereditary used to assist him. There was no distinction between civil and military officials.
After Candragupta II, the Gupta power in Magadha was temporarily eclipsed by the Pusyamitras.2 Then followed the Hūna invasion, in which the Emperor Skandagupta, according to Dr. Ray Chaudhuri,s was presumably victorious, and, according to Smith, was unable to continue the successful resistance which he had offered in the earlier days of his rule, and was forced at last to succumb to the repeated attacks of the foreigners.
But the Magadhan empire did not wholly perish on the death of Skandagupta. It was ruled by Puragupta, Narasimhagupta, Kumāragupta II, and Buddhagupta.
Then the imperial line passed on to a dynasty of eleven Gupta princes known as the 'later Gupta monarchs of Magadha'. The Damodarpur plates, Sarnath inscriptions, the Erāņ epigraph of Buddhagupta, and the Betul plates of the Parivrājaka Mahārāja Samkṣobha, dated in the year 518 A.D., testify to the fact that the Gupta empire continued to exert sovereign rights in the latter half of the fifth as well as the sixth and seventh centuries A.D.
In the first half of the seventh century, Harșa, the great Kanouj monarch, overshadowed the Gupta power, which was revived by Adityasena, who assumed the titles of Paramabhattakāra
1 Smith, Early History of India, 4th Ed., p. 310. 2 Ray Chaudhuri, Political History of Ancient India, 4th Ed., p. 478. 3 Ibid., p. 488.
4 Early History of India, 4th Ed., p. 328.
