The Age of the Imperial Guptas c4.140

c4.140

In India, we do not know what preparations were made by the emperor Kumāragupta I and Skandagupta to meet this outburst of barbarians through the Northern passes. The Hūṇa kings Toramāṇa and Mihirakula are accredited with the destruction of the ancient Buddhist temples and establishments of the North Western Frontier Province, the ancient Gandhāra, Udyāna and Uraśa. Pāṭaliputra was still the capital of India and Magadha still the leader of the nations of Northern India. Did the Magadhans realise the importance of the sacred trust placed in their charge by the people of Northern India? The verdict of history is against them. For the last time in the history of Magadha the people of that province failed in their duty. The Western gate of India was neglected in the time of Kumāragupta I and swarm after swarm of barbarians poured through it. Chinese historians have recorded the destruction of the cities of Bactria and Afghanistan. Did Kumāragupta I make any attempt to succour the minor Kuṣāṇa chiefs of these two countries? Our records are silent on this point and we have to admit that at the supreme moment the people of Magadha belied their trust. The horrors of a barbarian invasion and a long war in a country far away from the fertile plains of the Indus and the Ganges, full of bleak and arid mountains, for the most part of the year covered with eternal snow, did not appeal to the sons of Magadha in the fifth century A.D. The influx of Roman gold and the soft life of a century of peace and prosperity had enervated the people of Magadha. Consequently the great passes of the North West were not defended and the fertile valleys of Kapiśā, Nagarahāra and Gandhāra were wiped out, as it were, from the map of India of the 5th century A.D. After the lapse of fifteen centuries we can only imagine the plight of the helpless population at the mercy of the merciless uncouth unwashen barbarians. City after city went up in flames, the male population lay massacred on their doorsteps and the women and children dragged away into slavery. Thus perished the last vestiges of the great civilisation of the Asiatic Greeks in India, which had absorbed the Śaka, the Kuṣāṇa and other barbarian invaders of the country. With it perished the noblest monuments of the great Kuṣāṇa emperors, their temples and monasteries and rich endowments. At the same time perished the great University of Taxila, for centuries the greatest centre of learning in the country.