The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c29.95

c29.95

A son of Vikramāditya by one of his queens named Dhruva Devī ascended the throne as a young man in A. D. 413, and reigned for more than forty years. He is known to history as Kumāragupta I, in order to distinguish him from his great-grandson of the same name. The events of this king's reign are not known in detail, but the distribution of the numerous contemporary inscriptions and coins permits of no doubt that during the greater part of his unusually prolonged rule the empire suffered no diminution.² On the contrary, it probably gained certain additions, for Kumāra, like his grandfather, celebrated the horse-sacrifice as an assertion of his paramount sovereignty; and it is not likely that he would have indulged in this vaunt unless to some extent justified by successful warfare. But the extant records furnish no information concerning specific events, beyond the fact that at the close of his reign, that is to say, in the middle of the fifth century, Kumāra's dominions suffered severely from the irruption of the Hun hordes, who had burst through the north-western passes, and spread in a destructive flood all over Northern India. Before entering upon the discussion of the Hun invasion and the consequent break-up of the Gupta empire, it is desirable to pause, in order to record a few brief observations on the significance of the rule of the great Gupta sovereigns in the evolution of Indian language, literature, art, science, and religion.¹