Political History of Ancient India, from the Accession of Parikshit to the Extinction of the Gupta Dynasty c21.s1.3

c21.s1.3

² That Samudra Gupta had many sons and grandsons appears clear from the Eraṇ epigraph The theory of Dr. Altekar (JBORS, XIV, pp. 223-53; XV, pt. i-ii pp. 134 f.), and others that a king named Rāma (Sarma? Sena?) Gupta intervened between Samudra Gupta and Chandra Gupta II is unsupported by any contemporary epigraphic evidence. The tradition that a Gupta king killed his brother and took his wife and crown, dates only from a ninth century epigraph. The literary evidence on the point is discrepant and hardly conclusive. The version given by Bāṇa in the seventh century differs in important respects from the story known to the author of the *Kāvya-Mīmāṁsā*, Cir. 900 A.D. (Cf. *Ind Ant.*, Nov., 1933, 201 ff.; JBORS, XVIII, 1, 1932, 17 ff.). The simple story, narrated in the *Harsha-Charita*, that Chandra Gupta, disguised as a female, destroyed a Saka (not Khasa) king, who coveted the wife of another, in the very city of the enemy, was doubtless embellished by later poets and dramatists, and (as is clear from certain data, to which Mr. V. V. Mirashi draws attention in IHQ, March, 1934, 48 ff.) details, such as fratricide, and association with ghouls, not found in the earlier account, continued to be added in the days of Amoghavarsha I (A. D. 815-78) and Govinda IV (A.D. c. 927-933). The *Devī Chandraguptam* and similar works are as much unsuited to form bases of the chronicles of Chandra Gupta II as the *Mudrārākshasam* and the *Aśokāvadāna* are in regard to the doings of the great Mauryas. The subject has been fully discussed by the present writer in an article entitled "*Vikramāditya in History and legend*" contributed to the Vikrama-volume, Scindhia Oriental Institute (1948), pp. 483-511. The story of Chandra Gupta's adventure in its developed form has absorbed a good deal of folklore, such as tales about ghouls, Piśācha. The motif of the wife leaving a mean-spirited husband is found in Penzer, *Kathā S. S.*, III. 290.