Gupta Empire: Rulers, Administration and PYQs

The Gupta Empire ruled northern India from about 320 CE to 550 CE and is the single most heavily examined dynasty of ancient India after the Mauryas. Examiners like it because it gives them dated inscriptions, named court poets, distinctive coin types and firsts in astronomy and temple architecture. This note walks through the dynasty ruler by ruler, then fixes the administration, economy and culture that papers keep returning to.

Rise of the Guptas

The founder of the family was Sri Gupta, followed by Ghatotkacha. Both used only the modest title Maharaja, which suggests they were feudatories rather than independent kings. The real founder of Gupta power was Chandragupta I, who ruled from about 319 CE and was the first of the line to take the imperial title Maharajadhiraja. He married the Lichchhavi princess Kumaradevi, an alliance so important that his coins show the couple on one side and the legend Lichchhavayah on the other. The Gupta era, counted from 319 to 320 CE, begins with his reign and is used to date later inscriptions.

Samudragupta and the Prayag Prashasti

Samudragupta, who ruled from about 335 CE, is known almost entirely from one document: the Allahabad Pillar Inscription, also called the Prayag Prashasti. It was composed in Sanskrit by his court poet Harishena and engraved on a pillar that already carried the edicts of Ashoka. The inscription divides his campaigns neatly. Nine kings of Aryavarta in the north were uprooted and their kingdoms annexed. Twelve kings of Dakshinapatha in the south were defeated, captured and then restored to their thrones, a policy known as dharma-vijaya. Forest kingdoms were reduced to servitude and frontier states paid tribute. He revived the Ashvamedha sacrifice, and his coins carry types called Ashvamedha, Archer, Battle-axe, Tiger-slayer and Lyrist. The lyrist type, showing the king seated playing a veena, together with the title Kaviraja, is the source of the exam favourite that Samudragupta was a musician and a poet. The historian V. A. Smith called him the Indian Napoleon.

Chandragupta II Vikramaditya

Chandragupta II, who ruled from about 375 CE, completed what his father began. He destroyed the Shaka Kshatrapas of Gujarat and Malwa, took the title Shakari, and won for the empire an outlet to the western sea ports. He married his daughter Prabhavatigupta to the Vakataka king Rudrasena II, which gave the Guptas indirect control of the Deccan. The Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Fa-Hien travelled in India during his reign and left an account of a peaceful, prosperous country in which Chandalas lived outside the towns and charitable hospitals worked at Pataliputra. The iron pillar now at Mehrauli in Delhi carries an inscription of a King Chandra usually identified with him, and its rust-free iron is a standard question on Gupta metallurgy. Later tradition credits his court with nine gems, the Navaratna, including Kalidasa.

Later rulers and the Hunas

Administration

Gupta government was less centralised than Mauryan government. The empire was divided into provinces called bhuktis under governors called uparikas, and bhuktis into districts called vishayas under vishayapatis. City administration is known from the Damodarpur copper plates, which name a district board of the nagara-shreshthi or chief banker, the sarthavaha or caravan leader, the prathama-kulika or chief artisan and the prathama-kayastha or chief scribe. Villages were run by the gramika with the help of village elders. Land grants free of tax, called agrahara grants, were made to Brahmanas and later to officers, and this practice is the main evidence used to argue that Indian feudalism began in this period.

Coins, culture and decline

The Guptas issued more gold coins than any other ancient Indian dynasty. Their gold coins were called dinaras and their silver coins rupakas, the silver series being started by Chandragupta II on the model of the Shaka coins he had replaced. In literature the age produced Kalidasa, Vishakhadatta, Shudraka and Amarasimha, and the Puranas reached their present shape. Aryabhata completed the Aryabhatiya in 499 CE, stated that the earth rotates on its own axis and explained eclipses as shadows rather than as the work of Rahu. Varahamihira wrote the Brihat Samhita and the Panchasiddhantika. In architecture the earliest free standing stone temples in the Nagara style appear, among them the Dashavatara temple at Deogarh, the brick temple at Bhitargaon and temple number 17 at Sanchi, while the finest Ajanta paintings belong to this age under Vakataka patronage. The empire weakened after Skandagupta under repeated Huna pressure from Toramana and Mihirakula, the loss of Roman trade, the rise of feudatories such as the Maukharis and the Later Guptas, and had faded by about 550 CE.