History of India, c. 150 A.D. to 350 A.D.: Naga–Vakataka Imperial Period c18.s1.20

c18.s1.20

Against whom is this bitter criticism directed? Again and again the historian uses the word Rāghava. Did not Samudra Gupta try to revive the tradition of Rāma the Rāghava, from Ayodhyā? Did not Kālidāsa render Samudra Gupta's conquest in Raghu's Digvijaya? The hit is palpably against the builder of the last empire chronicled in the Purāṇa—the builder of the Gupta empire whom he has left unnamed in his chronicle. He means to say that a history which is worth remembering is a history of good deeds and just services; the deeds which trample upon the rights and liberties of others are not to be canonised by the historian. If he were alive to-day, he might have said—'Remember Vikramāditya, the son of Samudra Gupta, but forget Samudra Gupta. Note only virtue, give no countenance to vice in any form or shape.' Samudra Gupta, like Alexander, killed the free spirit of his country. He destroyed the Mālavas and the Yaudheyas, who were the nursery of freedom; and many others of their class. Once those free communities were wiped out, the recruiting ground for future heroes and patriots and statesmen disappeared. The Gupta themselves, both from their mother's side and their father's side, had descended from those republican communities. They themselves were crops of those seed-communities, but they totally destroyed them.