The Gupta Empire

From a modest principality Chandragupta I (c. 320 CE) raised a kingdom, took the title Maharajadhiraja and began the Gupta era. His son Samudragupta (c. 335–375) was the Napoleon-profile conqueror of the age: Harisena's Allahabad Pillar Inscription (prashasti) records his campaigns — uprooting kings of the north, exacting tribute from the southern kingdoms, receiving embassies from Ceylon — achieved, uniquely, without annexation in the Deccan owing to his dharmavijaya policy of conquest-and-release.

Chandragupta II Vikramaditya (c. 375–415) destroyed the Western Kshatrapa Shakas, bringing Gujarat's ports under the empire, married into the Vakataka house and held court at Ujjain. It was in his reign that the Chinese pilgrim Fa-Hien (c. 399–414) travelled India and left a picture of peace, mild administration and flourishing Buddhism.

The Gupta age is classical not for empire alone but for achievement. Aryabhata calculated the value of pi, argued that the earth rotates on its axis, and explained eclipses mathematically; the decimal place-value system, with the concept of zero, matured in this intellectual milieu and was later carried to the world by the Arabs. Kalidasa wrote the Abhijnana-Shakuntalam, Meghaduta and Raghuvamsha; Vishakhadatta wrote Mudrarakshasa; the Puranas received their final form.

In art, the Ajanta murals filled cave walls with the Jataka tales; the Sarnath Buddha type, with its transparent drapery and inward gaze, became an ideal for all Asia; and the iron pillar at Mehrauli — cast around 400 CE and still rust-free — testifies to metallurgy centuries ahead of its time. Temple architecture evolved from the flat-roofed shrine at Sanchi to the shikhara-towered Deogarh temple.

Gupta government was lighter and more decentralised than Mauryan: provinces under royal princes, districts under vishayapatis, and flourishing village administration. But the practice of making land grants with administrative and fiscal rights to priests and officers — the seeds of what R.S. Sharma called Indian feudalism — began to hollow out the centre, and long-distance trade, the empire's gold source, declined with Rome.

The crisis came from the north-west. Skandagupta (c. 455–467) hurled back the first attack of the Hunas (Hephthalites), but the effort bankrupted the treasury — his coins grow visibly poorer. After his death the Hunas returned under Toramana and Mihirakula, and by 550 the empire had dissolved into its feudatories.