Hindu Polity: A Constitutional History of India in Hindu Times c27.8

c27.8

The Pushyamitras 'developed great power and wealth'² to such an extent that they dealt a blow at the imperial throne from which it could not fully recover. The defeat inflicted by them on the imperial forces under Kumāra Gupta made the dynasty, to quote the language of his son Skanda Gupta, totter to its fall.³ Evidently Kumāra Gupta himself was killed.⁴ In the second war Skanda Gupta remained on the battlefield the whole night and slept on the bare ground. The next morning when the battle continued he succeeded in forcing a decision which entitled him, as the inscription says, to plant his foot on the royal footstool, *i.e.*, became entitled to sovereignty.⁵ But it is not claimed that the Pushyamitras bent their head or became feudatory. It was therefore a military defeat at most, or rather if we take into consideration the site of the publication of this record of victory (Bhitari in Ghazipur District), it was the stemming back of the invading Pushyamitras. The subsequent history of Hindu India might have received a different turn had they reached Pāṭaliputra and made it the seat of their republican government. We might have seen a vast republic, vaster than the country had yet seen. But the issue was decided otherwise. The Pushyamitras retired, but the glory of the Guptas never returned. The course of their weakness and decline consequent on the Pushyamitra wars could not be checked. There seems to be a strange fatality in the history of the Guptas. They rose to power with the help of a republic, they abolished the ancient republicanism, and they in turn were shaken off their foundations by a republic. The Pushyamitras having executed this historical revenge withdrew in the mystic past.