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The Gupta empire and the Vakatakas

The Guptas and after · Part 1 / 4 · Fact-checked on 9 November 2026 · how we check

Written with AI from the sources listed at the bottom of this page, then fact-checked by a separate AI.

The sources for the Guptas; Sri Gupta, Chandragupta I and the Gupta era; Samudragupta and the Allahabad prashasti; Chandragupta II, the Western Kshatrapas and the Vakataka marriage; Fa-Hien's account; Kumaragupta I, Skandagupta and the Hunas; the decline of the empire; the Vakatakas of the Deccan and Ajanta.

By the third century CE the two great powers of the previous age had faded: the Kushanas had lost their hold on the north and the Satavahana kingdom had broken up in the Deccan. Out of the many small states that followed, a family based in the middle Ganga valley, around Magadha and Prayag, built the largest kingdom north India had seen since the Mauryas. These were the Guptas, who ruled from the early fourth century to the middle of the sixth. This part follows the political story: the sources, the founders, the campaigns of Samudragupta and Chandragupta II, the later rulers and the fall of the empire, and the Vakatakas of the Deccan, the Guptas' closest allies.

Historians piece the Guptas together from inscriptions, coins and a handful of texts. The most valuable inscription is the prashasti (eulogy inscription) of Samudragupta, a praise poem written by his court poet and officer Harishena and engraved on an Ashokan pillar that now stands inside the Allahabad fort, so one shaft of stone carries messages from rulers about six centuries apart. Other records include the Mehrauli iron pillar near Delhi, which honours a king called Chandra, Skandagupta's inscriptions on the Bhitari pillar and the Junagadh rock, and short records at Eran and Udayagiri in Madhya Pradesh. Gold coins, the king lists of the Puranas, the travel account of the Chinese monk Fa-Hien and fragments of a play, the Devichandraguptam, fill in the rest.

The early history of the family is thin. The first two names, Sri Gupta and his son Ghatotkacha, carry only the modest title maharaja, which suggests local chiefs rather than great kings. The change came with Chandragupta I, the first of the line to call himself maharajadhiraja, king of great kings. He married Kumaradevi, a princess of the Lichchhavis, an old and respected clan, and a series of gold coins shows the king and queen together, with the clan's name on the other side. Their son Samudragupta proudly described himself as the daughter's son of the Lichchhavis. A new count of years, the Gupta era, begins in 319–320 CE and is usually taken to mark Chandragupta I's accession. It should not be confused with the Vikrama era (57 BCE) or the Shaka era (78 CE).

Samudragupta, who ruled from about 335 to 375 CE, is known mainly through Harishena's prashasti, which sorts the rulers he dealt with into groups and records a different treatment for each. Kings of Aryavarta, the Ganga-Yamuna country, were violently uprooted and their lands added to the empire. Twelve kings of Dakshinapatha, the south, among them Vishnugopa of Kanchi, were captured and then set free and given back their thrones once they accepted his superiority. The chiefs of the forest tracts were made his servants. Frontier kingdoms such as Samatata, Kamarupa and Nepal, and republics such as the Malavas and Yaudheyas, paid tribute, obeyed his orders and came to his court to bow. Distant powers, including the Kushana ruler styled Daivaputra-Shahi-Shahanushahi, the Shakas and the king of Simhala (Sri Lanka), are said to have sent gifts and sought his favour. In short: direct rule near home, and tribute from lands too far to govern from Magadha.

The prashasti also presents Samudragupta as a man of culture, a poet and musician who earned the title kaviraja, king of poets. His coins support this picture in their own way. One type shows him seated and playing the veena. Another shows a horse standing before a sacrificial post, with a legend announcing that he had performed the ashvamedha (horse sacrifice), the Vedic horse sacrifice through which a king declared that no rival could stand against him. A tiger-slayer type shows him as a hunter. A Chinese source records that Meghavarna, king of Sri Lanka, sent envoys asking permission to build a monastery at Bodh Gaya for pilgrims from the island, and Samudragupta agreed. In the early twentieth century the historian V. A. Smith called him the Indian Napoleon because of his many campaigns.

Samudragupta's successor in the records is Chandragupta II, who ruled from about 380 to 415 CE and took the title Vikramaditya. The play Devichandraguptam tells of an elder brother, Ramagupta, who agreed to surrender his queen to a Shaka king and was then pushed aside by the bolder Chandragupta; copper coins bearing Ramagupta's name from the Vidisha region suggest that such a king did exist. Chandragupta II's greatest success was the conquest of the Western Kshatrapas, the Shaka rulers of Gujarat, Saurashtra and western Malwa, whose line ended with Rudrasimha III. The victory gave the empire the ports of the western coast and their sea trade, and for the newly won lands he issued silver coins modelled on the Kshatrapa ones. Inscriptions of his officers in the Udayagiri caves near Vidisha belong to his campaign in Malwa, and the Mehrauli iron pillar inscription of a king named Chandra is usually linked to him.

Chandragupta II also used marriage as an instrument of policy. He married Kuberanaga, a princess of the Naga family that was powerful in central India, and gave their daughter Prabhavatigupta in marriage to Rudrasena II, the Vakataka king of the Deccan. When Rudrasena died young, Prabhavatigupta governed the Vakataka kingdom for many years as regent for her minor sons, and her copper plate grants name her father's family with evident pride. A friendly Vakataka state on the southern flank was valuable while Chandragupta II fought the Shakas of the west, because it covered the routes between the Deccan and Gujarat and spared him a second front. For these years historians often describe the Vakataka kingdom as almost a Gupta protectorate.

The Chinese Buddhist monk Fa-Hien (Faxian) travelled through India in the early fifth century, during the reign of Chandragupta II, to find and copy texts on monastic discipline that were missing in China. He spent years studying at Pataliputra and went home by sea from Tamralipti in Bengal by way of Sri Lanka. His account of the Madhyadesha, the middle Ganga country, describes thriving towns and says that people could move about freely without registering their households. Most crimes, he reports, were punished with fines, and a hand was cut off only for repeated rebellion. The chandalas lived outside the towns and struck a piece of wood on entering so that others could keep away from them. At Pataliputra, wealthy families ran charitable houses and a free hospital for the poor and the sick. Yet this careful observer never names the king, because his interest lay in religion rather than in politics.

Kumaragupta I (about 415–455 CE) held the empire together through a long and largely peaceful reign and he too performed the horse sacrifice. The pilgrim Hiuen Tsang, writing two centuries later, credits a king called Shakraditya with founding the monastery at Nalanda, and Shakraditya is usually identified with Kumaragupta I. Near the end of his reign a people called the Pushyamitras threatened the empire, and the crown prince Skandagupta restored its fortunes. As king (about 455–467 CE), Skandagupta drove back the Hunas, nomads from Central Asia, a success recorded on his Bhitari pillar. His Junagadh inscription adds that his governor of Saurashtra, Parnadatta, and Parnadatta's son Chakrapalita rebuilt the embankment of the Sudarshana lake after it burst. That one rock at Junagadh therefore holds records of Ashoka, Rudradaman and Skandagupta.

After Skandagupta the empire weakened step by step. Later kings such as Budhagupta still ruled a wide area, but the Hunas returned in the late fifth century under Toramana, whose inscription on a great stone boar at Eran shows his hold on Malwa, and then under his son Mihirakula. Yashodharman, a ruler of Mandasor in Malwa, boasts in his pillar inscriptions that Mihirakula paid him homage, and Hiuen Tsang credits the Gupta king Narasimhagupta Baladitya with another victory over him. The Hunas were checked, but the wars drained the treasury, the western provinces slipped away, and later gold coins contain far less gold than the early ones. At the same time governors and feudatories who had been given land and titles turned into kings in their own right, among them the Maitrakas of Valabhi and the Maukharis of Kannauj. By the middle of the sixth century the imperial Guptas had shrunk to a small local dynasty.

South of the Narmada, the Vakatakas ruled much of the Deccan from the third century to the late fifth. Their founder was Vindhyashakti, a Brahmana. His son Pravarasena I performed many Vedic sacrifices, among them four horse sacrifices, and he is the only Vakataka ruler given the title samrat, emperor. After him the family split into a main branch ruling Vidarbha, with centres such as Nandivardhana near Nagpur, and a western branch based at Vatsagulma (Washim). In the main line, after Prabhavatigupta's regency, Pravarasena II composed the Setubandha, a long poem in Maharashtri Prakrit about Rama's bridge to Lanka, and founded a new capital called Pravarapura. In the Vatsagulma line, Harishena in the late fifth century was the last powerful king. An inscription of his minister Varahadeva in Ajanta cave 16 records the gift of that cave, and most of the later caves and paintings at Ajanta were made in his reign, which is why Ajanta is linked to the Vakatakas rather than to the Guptas.

Taken together, the political story shows how the Guptas built their power and how they lost it. Chandragupta I's marriage and new era gave the family status; Samudragupta's mix of annexation near home and tribute further away gave it reach; Chandragupta II's western conquest and the Vakataka alliance gave it the coasts and a quiet southern border. The empire was never run as tightly as the Mauryan one, and much of it was held through subordinate kings, which is why the Huna wars and the ambitions of feudatories broke it apart so quickly. Each phase has a key record: Harishena's prashasti for Samudragupta, Udayagiri and Mehrauli for Chandragupta II, Bhitari and Junagadh for Skandagupta, and the Eran boar for the Huna Toramana. Part 2 turns from kings to the government, society and culture of the Gupta age.

Exam traps

• The Allahabad prashasti of Samudragupta was composed by Harishena and engraved on an Ashokan pillar; it is not a pillar Samudragupta set up himself.
• Chandragupta I, not Samudragupta, was the first Gupta maharajadhiraja and married the Lichchhavi princess Kumaradevi; the Gupta era begins in 319–320 CE, not 78 CE (Shaka) or 57 BCE (Vikrama).
• The twelve kings of Dakshinapatha were captured and released, not annexed; it was the kings of Aryavarta whose lands were taken over.
• The Western Kshatrapas (last ruler Rudrasimha III) were ended by Chandragupta II, not by Samudragupta; the conquest is why Gupta silver coins appear in the west.
• Fa-Hien came during the reign of Chandragupta II and never names the king; Hiuen Tsang came two centuries later, under Harsha.
• Skandagupta repelled the Hunas (Bhitari pillar); Toramana's record is the Eran boar inscription; Mihirakula was defeated by Yashodharman of Mandasor and, according to Hiuen Tsang, Narasimhagupta Baladitya.
• The Junagadh rock carries Ashoka's edicts, Rudradaman's record of about 150 CE and Skandagupta's record of the lake repair by Parnadatta and Chakrapalita.
• Two different Harishenas: the Gupta court poet who wrote the Allahabad prashasti, and the Vakataka king whose minister Varahadeva dedicated Ajanta cave 16; the Setubandha is by the Vakataka Pravarasena II.

Recap

• Guptas: middle Ganga valley, early fourth to mid-sixth century CE; largest north Indian kingdom since the Mauryas.
• Sources: Allahabad prashasti (Harishena, on an Ashokan pillar), Mehrauli iron pillar, Bhitari, Junagadh, Eran, Udayagiri; gold coins; Puranas; Fa-Hien; Devichandraguptam.
• Sri Gupta and Ghatotkacha (maharaja); Chandragupta I (maharajadhiraja, Kumaradevi, king-queen coins); Gupta era 319–320 CE.
• Samudragupta (about 335–375): Aryavarta uprooted, twelve Dakshinapatha kings released, forest chiefs servants, frontier states tribute, distant rulers homage; veena and ashvamedha coins; kaviraja; Meghavarna's Bodh Gaya monastery.
• Chandragupta II Vikramaditya (about 380–415): Ramagupta story, end of the Western Kshatrapas, silver coins, Udayagiri, Mehrauli pillar; Prabhavatigupta married to the Vakataka Rudrasena II.
• Fa-Hien: Vinaya texts, Pataliputra, fines as punishment, chandalas outside towns, free hospital, king not named.
• Kumaragupta I (Nalanda, ashvamedha, Pushyamitras); Skandagupta (Hunas, Bhitari, Sudarshana lake repair by Parnadatta and Chakrapalita).
• Decline: Toramana (Eran boar) and Mihirakula; Yashodharman and Narasimhagupta Baladitya; feudatories (Maitrakas, Maukharis), debased coins.
• Vakatakas: Vindhyashakti; Pravarasena I (four ashvamedhas, samrat); Pravarasena II (Setubandha); Harishena and Ajanta cave 16 (Varahadeva).

Practice questions

Sources

• Centre for Cultural Resources and Training (Ministry of Culture): material on ancient Indian history, the Gupta empire and the Vakatakas — https://ccrtindia.gov.in
• Archaeological Survey of India: site notes on the Allahabad pillar, the Mehrauli iron pillar, Udayagiri (Vidisha), Eran, Bhitari, Junagadh (Girnar) and Ajanta; texts of the Gupta inscriptions (Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, vol. III) — https://asi.nic.in