The Gupta Empire: Origins, Sources and the Rise of the Dynasty

India before the Guptas: The Political Background

Kushan Decline and a Divided North

The Guptas rose into a political vacuum. The Kushan Empire fragmented into semi-independent kingdoms in the third century CE, and the Sasanians, invading from the west, set up the Kushano-Sasanian kingdom in Bactria and Gandhara. The Kushans lost Bactria in the west, and only small "Little Kushan" rulers remained around Taxila and the Punjab, later probably as vassals of the Guptas. Taken together, these changes left northern India divided among many small kingdoms. In the south the Pallavas rose to power after the Satavahana dynasty.

By the fourth century larger states had begun to appear again, and many of them depended on samantas, men who maintained themselves through local resources, including control over land. Such men offered homage and military support to a ruler, and a powerful samanta could become a king, while a weak ruler could be reduced to subordination.

Material Advantages of the Ganga Heartland

The Guptas' base lay in eastern Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, a fertile region, and they could exploit the iron ores of central India and Bihar. These two advantages, fertile farmland and access to iron, helped the family to carve out an empire.

The region also held ancient political centres. Pataliputra stood at the confluence of the Ganga, the Gandak and the Son, which let it dominate the river trade of the Indo-Gangetic plain, and it had served as a capital of the Mauryas before the Guptas. The same plain held Prayaga, at the meeting of the Ganga and the Yamuna, and Vaishali, the home of the Licchavis whom the Guptas would marry into.

Origins of the Gupta Dynasty: Homeland, Caste and the First Kings

The Gupta Homeland Debate

The exact ancestral territory of the Guptas is uncertain. They came from somewhere in the Gangetic plain, and eastern Uttar Pradesh, Magadha in Bihar, and Bengal have each been proposed as their original homeland. The three theories rest on different pieces of evidence.

The eastern Uttar Pradesh theory points out that most coins of the early rulers and several important Gupta inscriptions have been found there, and that the Puranas seem to distinguish the Guptas from the Magadhas, who may be the Licchavis. Critics read the Puranic verses differently and note that inscriptions of the Mauryas and the Palas have also been found far from their known capitals, so a findspot alone proves little. The Magadha theory, which some extend to Varendra in north Bengal, rests on Pataliputra, the dynasty's reputed capital, although it is not certain that Pataliputra was the capital at all. It differs from the Bengal theory in resting on the capital rather than on a foreign traveller's account.

The Bengal theory depends on a single identification, the site described by the Chinese monk Yijing in connection with the temple of King Che-li-ki-to. Yijing places that site more than 40 yojanas east of Nalanda, which would put it in Bengal, but critics argue that this location comes from a faulty reading of the original text. Another reading identifies the site with the Deer Park at Sarnath, which would point back to eastern Uttar Pradesh. One further view holds that Prayaga may have been the original centre of Gupta power.

Caste and Varna of the Guptas: Vaishya, Brahmin or Unknown

The Gupta records never state the dynasty's varna. Because of that silence, scholars have argued from indirect clues; no view has won agreement, and each has an objection.

• Vaishya origin: Certain ancient texts prescribe the name Gupta for members of the Vaishya varna, which suggested to one scholar that the family was Vaishya. A further argument holds that Vaishyas, traditionally linked with trade, may have become rulers after resisting oppressive taxation by earlier rulers. Critics reply that the suffix Gupta appears in the names of several non-Vaishyas before and during the Gupta period, and that the dynasty's name may simply come from its first king.
• Brahmin origin: Another scholar argues for a Brahmin origin because the Guptas had matrimonial relations with Brahmins, but others reject that evidence as inconclusive.
• Clan clues: The Pune and Riddhapur records of the Gupta princess Prabhavatigupta give a gotra called Dharana, which some read as her father's clan. An alternative reading treats Dharana as the gotra of her mother Kuberanaga, so the clue does not settle the matter.

The Vaishya view is the one most often repeated, usually with this qualification, that the founder probably belonged to the Vaishya caste.

Sri Gupta: The Founder and the Che-li-ki-to Temple

The founder of the dynasty is the king Gupta, written Sri Gupta in many books. The word Sri is an honorific title, and Gupta, from the root gup, "to protect", was the actual name. He ruled most probably in the second half of the third century, although estimates of his reign range from about 240 to 280 CE at one end to about 295 to 300 CE at the other.

Nothing survives from his own hand. No inscription or coin of Gupta is known, although some seals and coins were wrongly attributed to him. His earliest description comes from the Allahabad pillar of his great-grandson Samudragupta, issued three generations later and repeated word for word in later Gupta records.

The only possible outside notice is from the Chinese monk Yijing, who travelled in India from 671 and returned to China in 695. Describing the route of an earlier traveller, Yijing mentions a king Che-li-ki-to who built a temple for Chinese pilgrims and endowed it with the revenue of 24 villages, and he says only the brick foundation survived in his own day. The numismatist John Allan read Che-li-ki-to as a Chinese rendering of Shri-Gupta. J. F. Fleet objected that Yijing placed the king about five hundred years earlier than his own time, which would be the second century, whereas Gupta ruled in the late third. This is why the identification is described as probable but not certain.

Ghatotkacha and the Maharaja Title

Ghatotkacha, the son of Gupta and the father of Chandragupta I, is also known only from the genealogy that his successors recorded. Like his father, he is not attested by his own inscriptions, and the gold coin and clay seal once credited to him are now assigned to a later Ghatotkachagupta of the fifth century. Estimates place his reign between about 280 and 320 CE.

The Allahabad pillar gives both Gupta and Ghatotkacha the title Maharaja, "great king", while Chandragupta I carries the higher title Maharajadhiraja, "king of great kings". Because later feudatory rulers used the title Maharaja, some scholars, including R. D. Banerji and K. P. Jayaswal, proposed that the two early Guptas were vassals of the Kushans. The proposal is weak for two reasons. Paramount rulers in both pre-Gupta and post-Gupta times, including the Vakatakas, also bore the title Maharaja, and the Kushan Empire had already declined before the Guptas rose.

What is certain is that Gupta and Ghatotkacha held lower rank and less power than Chandragupta I. It is also possible, though not proved, that Ghatotkacha arranged the Licchavi marriage of his son.

Chandragupta I: The First Gupta Emperor

Chandragupta I as the Real Founder of the Empire

Chandragupta I, who reigned from about 319 to about 335 CE, is the first Gupta ruler who can be called an emperor. He took the title Maharajadhiraja and issued gold coins, which suggests that he was the dynasty's first suzerain ruler. How he turned a small ancestral kingdom into an empire is not recorded. The most widely accepted explanation is his marriage to the Licchavi princess Kumaradevi.

The inscriptions and coins of the period reveal how titles changed with rank. Gupta rulers adopted the titles Maharajadhiraja, samrat and chakravartin, which expressed a claim to supreme authority and set them above earlier rulers who used simpler titles like rajan and Maharaja.

His reign dates are not fixed. Estimates run from 305 to 325 at one end to 319 to 353 at the other, and the most cited is 319 to 335 or 336. Most accounts place his accession around 319 to 320 CE, the usual starting point of the Gupta era.

The Licchavi Marriage and Kumaradevi

Chandragupta I married Kumaradevi, a princess of the Licchavi clan. The Licchavis were an ancient clan whose headquarters were at Vaishali in present-day Bihar in the time of the Buddha. They were organised as a gana-sangha, an aristocratic oligarchic republic, and led the larger Vajjika League until they were subjugated in the Magadha-Vajji war. The clan continued to live around Vaishali afterwards.

Which Licchavi kingdom Kumaradevi came from is not certain. A Licchavi dynasty also ruled Nepal in the first millennium CE, but that Nepalese state is unlikely to be the one, because the Allahabad pillar lists Nepal as a separate, subordinate kingdom of Samudragupta. R. C. Majumdar therefore assumed that the clan ruled at Vaishali in Chandragupta's time, the only other base of the Licchavis in the records.

What the marriage did for the Guptas is also debated. John Allan suggested that Chandragupta had defeated a Licchavi kingdom and that the marriage was part of a peace treaty. The objections are that Manu's law-book treats the Licchavis as unorthodox and impure (vratya), so they gave the Guptas little social prestige, and that the Guptas would hardly have put the name of a defeated people on their coins. The more likely reading is that the marriage extended Chandragupta's political power and dominions and so let him take the title Maharajadhiraja. It is also possible that two states formed a union under two sovereigns, Chandragupta and Kumaradevi, until their son Samudragupta became sole ruler.

The Gupta family clearly valued the connection. Except for Kumaradevi, the inscriptions never mention the paternal family of a Gupta queen, and Samudragupta is called Licchavi-dauhitra, the Licchavi daughter's son.

King-and-Queen Coins: Reading the Chandragupta and Kumaradevi Type

The Chandragupta and Kumaradevi gold coins are the principal physical record of the Licchavi alliance. The obverse shows portraits of Chandragupta and Kumaradevi with their names in the Gupta script. The reverse shows a goddess seated on a lion, with the legend Lichchhavayah, "of the Licchavis". The coins have turned up at Mathura, Ayodhya, Lucknow, Sitapur, Tanda, Ghazipur and Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, at Bayana in Rajasthan and at Hajipur in Bihar.

Three questions about these coins remain open.

• Issuer: Some scholars, including John Allan, think Samudragupta issued the coins in memory of his parents; others credit Chandragupta himself, and a third view gives them to the Licchavis.
• Goddess: A. S. Altekar took her to be Durga, a goddess often shown seated on a lion, while Allan took her to be Lakshmi, who is also shown on a lion in later art and texts. The current NCERT textbook names the goddess on the reverse as Lakshmi.
• Scene: The theory that the coin records the wedding, or that it shows Chandragupta leaving for war, has no firm support, and the coins probably present the couple simply as joint rulers.

This King-and-Queen type is grouped with the Ashvamedha type among Gupta issues that commemorate marriage alliances and the horse sacrifice.

Territory and Succession under Chandragupta I

The territory of Chandragupta I is not known. It must have been substantially larger than the lands of the earlier Guptas, since he bore the title Maharajadhiraja, but scholars infer its extent only indirectly, from the kings his son later conquered. Samudragupta defeated the kings of western Uttar Pradesh and of the forest region of central India, and the Allahabad pillar names Samatata in Bengal and Nepala as frontier kingdoms, so those areas are unlikely to have been part of his father's lands. Scholars therefore place the kingdom over Bihar and the middle Ganga plain, with its western edge probably not much beyond Prayaga, and disagree on whether it included Bengal.

The Puranas are often used to fill the gap. A Puranic passage is read as placing the Guptas over Anuganga (the middle Ganga basin), Prayaga, Saketa and Magadha, and some scholars take this to describe Chandragupta I. The use of the passage is disputed. Manuscripts and parallel passages differ in their reading, some do not use the word Gupta as a dynastic name, and critics argue that the passage may describe the founder or the later kings of the sixth century instead. What is generally accepted is that the early Gupta heartland lay in the middle Ganga plain around Prayaga and Magadha.

The Allahabad pillar and Samudragupta's Eran inscription both state that Chandragupta I chose his son Samudragupta as successor, which suggests that he handed over the throne in old age. Coins of a Gupta ruler named Kacha, who is called the "exterminator of all kings", have raised a doubt, since the coins resemble Samudragupta's and Kacha may have been another name for him or a rival claimant to the throne.

The Gupta Era: How Gupta Dates Are Counted

Gupta Era Start Date: 319 to 320 CE and the Founder Debate

The Gupta era is a calendar era used by the Guptas, their feudatories and their successors to date records in northern, western and parts of eastern India until the end of the dynasty in the sixth century. Its epoch falls in the early fourth century CE, and the usual statement is that it begins about 319 to 320 CE, with Chandragupta I's accession.

The date is not identical in every account. NCERT places the beginning of Gupta rule at about 320 CE, while other accounts, calculating from the inscriptions, give 318 to 319 or 319 to 320 CE. Most accounts use about 319 to 320 CE.

The era was long misunderstood. The eleventh-century writer Al-Biruni, who called the Guptas "wicked", dated the era to the year 241 of the Shaka era, which is 318 to 319 CE, but he said it marked the end of the Gupta dynasty, which led nineteenth-century scholars to doubt its origin. J. F. Fleet suggested that a Licchavi king named Jayadeva founded it.

Later discoveries showed that the Guptas themselves used it. The Mathura pillar inscription of Chandragupta II is dated in year 61 "following the era of the Guptas", the Junagadh inscription of Skandagupta uses the phrase Gupta-prakale, and a record of the Bengal ruler Shashanka is dated in year 300 of the Gupta era, which proves that the era began in the fourth century and not earlier. Who founded the era is still argued.

• Chandragupta I: The most prevalent view credits him, since he was the first Maharajadhiraja, and takes the epoch to mark his coronation.
• Samudragupta: D. C. Sircar and R. C. Majumdar argue that it marks the coronation of Samudragupta, citing two grants dated in years 5 and 9, although the genuineness of those records is disputed.
• Chandragupta II: S. R. Goyal suggests that Chandragupta II began the era but dated it to Samudragupta's accession.

Converting Gupta Era Years to the Common Era

Gupta inscriptions are valuable partly because they carry dates, and the arithmetic is simple. The early inscriptions follow the northern scheme, in which the year begins in Chaitra and the month begins on the full-moon day. A year in these records is generally the current year, and it converts to the Common Era by adding 320 or 321. If the year is an expired year, one adds 319 or 320 instead. Later records from the Maitraka territory of Vallabhi, which follow the southern and western scheme, begin the year in Kartika and put dates five months earlier. In western India, where the Maitrakas of Vallabhi used it, the same era is called the Vallabhi era.

Three examples show how the dates work in practice:

• Sanchi: The inscription of Chandragupta II's officer Amrakardava, dated year 93, belongs to 412 to 413 CE and is the last dated record of that king.
• Junagadh: The embankment of the Sudarshana lake burst in year 137 of the Gupta era, which is about 456 to 457 CE.
• Eran: The pillar inscription dated year 165 gives 484 to 485 CE.

Indian Eras Compared: Vikrama, Shaka, Gupta, Kalachuri and Kali

The Gupta era is one of several Indian reckonings, and Prelims has set it beside the Vikrama, Shaka and Kali eras.

Sources for Gupta History: An Overview

Types of Sources for Gupta History

The history of the Guptas is reconstructed from literature, coins and inscriptions, including prashastis, the poems composed in praise of kings. The quality of the evidence varies a great deal, and the early kings are known mainly through the records of their greater successors.

Reading a Prashasti as Evidence

A prashasti is a eulogy composed in praise of a king, often by a court poet. Historians try to draw factual information from such compositions, but those who composed and read them valued them as poetry rather than as accounts that were literally true. The Allahabad pillar prashasti, composed by Samudragupta's court poet Harisena, is the standard case. The Prayaga Prashasti says that the king's ambition was to unify the earth, that many defeated kings were reinstated and paid tribute, and that he supported art, learning and trade. A fair reading takes the names, places and genealogy seriously, checks them against coins and other inscriptions, and treats the flattering adjectives as rhetoric. Historians therefore weigh a prashasti by who composed it, for whom, and in what year.

Inscriptions of the Gupta Age

Allahabad Pillar: The Prayaga Prashasti

The Allahabad pillar is a single polished sandstone shaft about 35 feet (10.7 metres) high, now standing inside the Allahabad Fort at Prayagraj. It is an Ashokan pillar that carries three sets of inscriptions, from Ashoka, Samudragupta and the Mughal emperor Jahangir. The Samudragupta inscription, known as the Prayaga Prashasti, follows immediately below the edicts of Ashoka.

The Prayaga Prashasti is in Sanskrit, written in the Gupta script, and was composed by the poet and minister Harisena. It is a panegyric that lists the political and military achievements of the reign, including the expeditions to the south, and it is described as the most important historical document of the classical Gupta age. For the origins of the dynasty it matters most for its genealogy. It names Samudragupta as the son of the Maharajadhiraja Chandragupta and the Mahadevi Kumaradevi, the Licchavi daughter's son, the son's son of the Maharaja Ghatotkacha and the son of the son's son of the Maharaja Gupta. Almost everything known about the first three kings depends on that one passage.

The inscription also records that the father, looking at his son with affection and tears of joy, told him to protect the whole earth, the passage that supports the claim that Chandragupta I chose Samudragupta as his heir.

Eran, Mathura and Sanchi: Other Records of Samudragupta and Chandragupta II

The Eran stone inscription of Samudragupta is fragmentary. It states that his father chose him as successor because of his devotion, righteous conduct and valour, that he had brought the "whole tribe of kings" under his suzerainty, and that his enemies were terrified when they thought of him in their dreams. It names none of the defeated kings, presumably because its main purpose was to record the installation of a Vishnu image in a temple.

The Mathura pillar inscription of Chandragupta II is dated in year 61 "following the era of the Guptas", one of the records that show the era was named after the Guptas. The exact reading of the date is argued, so the inscription cannot be used by itself to fix the start of his reign. The Sanchi inscription of his officer Amrakardava, dated year 93 (412 to 413 CE), shows a Gupta officer making gifts to a Buddhist monastery.

Mehrauli Iron Pillar: The Inscription of King Chandra

The iron pillar in the Qutb complex at Mehrauli, Delhi, is 7.21 metres high, weighs more than six tonnes and carries an inscription of a king named Chandra. The inscription, in Sanskrit verse, is the oldest on the pillar. It is undated, and does not name the king's dynasty, so the identification of Chandra rests on the script and style, which point to the late fourth or early fifth century CE, on the description of the king as a devotee of Vishnu, and on names of places characteristic of the Gupta age. On that evidence the king is generally identified as Chandragupta II.

The record states that the pillar was set up as a Vishnu standard (dhvaja) on a hill called Vishnupada.

The pillar was probably not made for Delhi. It is thought to have been erected elsewhere, possibly outside the Udayagiri caves, and moved to Mehrauli in the eleventh century by Anangpal Tomar, while another view holds that it stood originally at Vidisha and was carried to Delhi by Iltutmish. The pillar is also a source for Gupta metallurgy. It was made by forge-welding pieces of wrought iron, and its resistance to rust comes from a protective layer of crystalline iron hydrogen phosphate forming on iron that is high in phosphorus.

Bhitari and Junagadh: Records of Skandagupta

The Bhitari pillar inscription of Skandagupta was found at Bhitari near Saidpur in Uttar Pradesh and belongs to his reign, which ran from about 455 to 467 CE. It is a record of 19 lines, which starts with the genealogy of the ancestors of Skandagupta, then presents Skandagupta himself and finally lists his achievements. Because it names the chief queens of Chandragupta I, Samudragupta and Chandragupta II, it is extremely important for the chronology of the Gupta rulers, and it also records the conflict between Skandagupta and the Pushyamitras and the Hunas.

The Junagadh rock inscription of Skandagupta is the record of the repair of the Sudarshana lake. The reservoir was first built under Chandragupta Maurya and improved by Ashoka, rebuilt by Rudradaman in about 150 CE, and its dam burst in year 137 of the Gupta era, about 456 to 457 CE. Skandagupta appointed Parnadatta as governor of the Saurashtra region, and Parnadatta's son Chakrapalita, the magistrate of Girinagara, repaired the dam. The same rock carries Rudradaman's record, which recalls the Mauryan origin of the lake, and a later Gupta record, so a single rock traces the lake across several reigns.

Land-Grant Charters and the Records of Prabhavatigupta

Records of grants of land form another group of inscriptions, and a few of them preserve a woman's voice. Prabhavatigupta, the daughter of Chandragupta II, married the Vakataka king Rudrasena II and, after his early death, ruled as regent for her young sons. Her Pune grant is dated to the thirteenth year of her own rule, in which she calls herself the mother of the Yuvaraja Divakarasena.

Her inscriptions give her Gupta genealogy and stress her natal connections. In her Danguna inscription she addresses the householders, the Brahmanas and others living in the village. Such a record, in which a woman disposes of land, is important for the study of society, because Sanskrit legal texts say that women were not supposed to have independent access to resources such as land.

Gupta Coins as a Source of History

Gold Dinaras: Types and Titles

The Guptas issued a large number of gold coins, called dinaras, a name that ultimately comes from the Roman denarius aureus. Gupta coinage of the fourth to sixth centuries followed the tradition of the Kushans, showing the king on the obverse and a deity on the reverse, with Indian deities and legends in Brahmi. Samudragupta's coins replaced the Kushan pointed hat and trident with a close-fitting cap and the Garuda standard.

Gupta coins are sources because they commemorate events and show how the kings wished to be seen. The King-and-Queen type of Chandragupta I and the Ashvamedha type, which marks the horse sacrifice, commemorate a marriage alliance and a ritual of imperial sovereignty. Others record artistic and personal accomplishments, such as the Lyrist, the Archer and the Lion-slayer types.

Samudragupta's types in particular show a king who wanted his subjects to know he was a hunter, a warrior and a musician. The Tiger-slayer type carries the legend meaning "having the prowess of a tiger", and the Lyrist type shows him playing the veena.

The gold content is evidence too. The gold coins of each Gupta ruler after Chandragupta II contain less gold and more alloy, a change linked to the falling inflow of gold as trade declined.

Silver Coins and the Western Conquests

Chandragupta II was the first Gupta king to issue silver coins. They were meant to replace the silver coinage of the Western Kshatrapas after he defeated them, and they were modelled on the Kshatrapa coins. The main change was to replace the Kshatrapa symbol, a three-arched hill, with the Gupta symbol, the mythical eagle Garuda. Thus the silver issues are a numismatic record of the conquest of western India.

Literary and Foreign Accounts

The Puranas and the Devi-Chandraguptam

The Puranas preserve the dynastic lists of the period, but their readings differ from manuscript to manuscript, so they are used with care for dates and boundaries. Sanskrit literature flourished in the Gupta age, with the works of Kalidasa and many major Puranas.

The play Devi-Chandraguptam, attributed to Vishakhadeva and generally identified with Vishakhadatta, survives only in quotations in later works and in a Persian story adapted from it. Its plot is that King Ramagupta, besieged, agrees to surrender his queen Dhruvadevi to a Shaka enemy, and his younger brother Chandragupta enters the enemy camp disguised as the queen and kills the enemy ruler. Whether the story is history is disputed, because the later sources that refer to the events may themselves rest on the play. The play is one literary source for the Ramagupta episode.

Faxian's Record of Buddhist Kingdoms

The Chinese monk Faxian travelled on foot to India to find Buddhist texts, and his journey and return took from 399 to 412 CE, with about ten years spent in India. He visited during the reign of Chandragupta II and spent around six years in the Gupta kingdom, from about 405 to 411 CE. He did not record the name of the reigning king. His account, the Foguoji or Record of the Buddhist Kingdoms, is an independent record of early Buddhism in India.

On society he describes a land whose people were numerous and happy, who had no need to register households, in which those who farmed royal land paid a portion of their grain, and in which the cities of the Ganga plains were rich. The heads of Vaishya families set up houses for charity and medicines, and the poor, orphans and the sick were cared for. The same account also describes the harsh treatment of the chandalas, who lived outside the city limits.

Faxian's evidence is valuable because he is an outsider, and limited for the same reason, since it is one writer's view, at one time, of a limited part of society. It is therefore weighed against other sources before conclusions are drawn.

Yijing, Xuanzang and Al-Biruni

Other foreign writers add to the picture, although they wrote later than the events. Yijing gives the only possible outside notice of the dynasty's founder, through the temple of Che-li-ki-to. The three Chinese monks come in a clear order: Faxian in the early fifth century, Xuanzang between 629 and 645, and Yijing from 671.

Xuanzang, naming the patrons of the Nalanda monastery, mentions a king Shakraditya, whom some scholars identify with Kumaragupta I, and after him a king Budhagupta, and the Nalanda mahavihara was possibly built in Kumaragupta's time. This is how a foreign traveller's list is used to support a Gupta genealogy.

Al-Biruni, writing in the eleventh century, gave an epoch for the Gupta era close to modern calculations but took it to mark the end of Gupta rule; later inscriptions showed that the Guptas themselves founded the era.

Gupta Origins and Sources: Key Facts

Early Gupta Kings, Titles, Dates and Records

The early Guptas come down to a small set of facts about kings, titles, dates and records.

• Dynasty and founder: The dynasty was founded by Gupta (Sri Gupta), and its first emperor was Chandragupta I.
• Titles: Gupta and Ghatotkacha were Maharaja; Chandragupta I was Maharajadhiraja.
• Marriage: Chandragupta I married the Licchavi princess Kumaradevi; the King-and-Queen coin carries the legend Lichchhavayah, and Samudragupta was Licchavi-dauhitra.
• Era: The Gupta era begins about 319 to 320 CE.
• Homeland: Eastern Uttar Pradesh, Magadha and Bengal are all argued; the origin is debated.
• Records: The Allahabad pillar (Samudragupta, Harisena), the Mehrauli iron pillar (King Chandra), the Bhitari pillar and Junagadh rock (Skandagupta).
• Foreign accounts: Faxian visited in the reign of Chandragupta II; Yijing's Che-li-ki-to may be the founder Gupta; Xuanzang names the Nalanda patrons.

Sources

• NCERT: Exploring Society, India and Beyond (Class VII), The Gupta Era, An Age of Tireless Creativity
• NCERT: Exploring Society, India and Beyond (Class VII), Empires and Kingdoms
• NCERT: Themes in Indian History Part I (Class XII), Kings, Farmers and Towns
• Reserve Bank of India Monetary Museum: Ancient Indian Coins
• National Museum (New Delhi): Coins gallery sheet
• Archaeological Survey of India: Qutb Minar and its Monuments
• Wikipedia: Gupta Empire
• Wikipedia: Gupta (king)
• Wikipedia: Ghatotkacha (king)
• Wikipedia: Chandragupta I
• Wikipedia: Licchavis of Vaishali
• Wikipedia: Gupta era
• Wikipedia: Allahabad pillar
• Wikipedia: Iron pillar of Delhi
• Wikipedia: Bhitari pillar inscription of Skandagupta
• Wikipedia: Skandagupta
• Wikipedia: Samudragupta
• Wikipedia: Chandragupta II
• Wikipedia: Eran
• Wikipedia: Prabhavatigupta
• Wikipedia: Devichandraguptam
• Wikipedia: Faxian
• Wikipedia: Yijing (monk)
• Wikipedia: Xuanzang
• Wikipedia: Kumaragupta I
• Wikipedia: Kushan Empire
• Wikipedia: Pataliputra
• Wikipedia: Vikram Samvat
• Wikipedia: Saka era
• Wikipedia: Kali Yuga
• Wikipedia: Kalachuri Era
• Wikipedia: Megasthenes
• Wikipedia: Sohgaura copper plate inscription
• Wikipedia: Lumbini pillar inscription
• Wikipedia: Coinage of India
• Wikipedia: Sudarshana Lake
• UPSC: Civil Services Examination question papers