North Indian Inscriptions

POLITICAL HISTORY

made their sally upon the Gupta dominions soon after the demise of Kumāragupta. Skandagupta, however, repelled their attacks and forced them to retire to their original tract of country.

        In this connection it seems desirable to say a few words about Purugupta or rather Pūrugupta as he is clearly called on one of the two seals (Nos. 45 and 46 below) of his grandson Kumāragupta III, and, above all. to discuss whether he was separate from or identical with Skandagupta. On both the seals Purugupta is represented as being a son of Kumāragupta I through Anantadēvī. As Chandragupta II had another appellation, namely, Dēvagupta, and Kumāragupta had Gōvindagupta, there is nothing to preclude us from holding that Skandagupta also had another appellation, namely, Purugupta. But for a long time there was difficulty in the acceptance of the identification, because Allan had described one Archer Type of Gupta coins as belonging to a king whose name he read as Purugupta on the obverse and Śrī-Vikrama on the reverse. As R. D. Banerji has correctly said, “in the coinage of the Imperial Gupta dynasty there is not a single instance in which two personal names of the same emperor have been used in his coinage”.¹ As there was thus one Gupta prince who called himself Skandagupta on some coins and another who called himself Purugupta on others, the two could not possibly be identified till 1935, when Sarasi Kumar Saraswati for the first time correctly pointed out² that the legend read as Puru by Allan, as a matter of fact, was either Busha or Budha, and that as sha after Bu was meaningless, the correct reading must be taken to be Budha especially as the existence and imperial position of Budhagupta was attested by Gupta inscriptions. And this conclusion is further strengthened by the fact that this reading alone would assign some coins to Budhagupta who had hitherto none at all assigned to him by the numismatists although he was an Imperial Gupta ruler and reigned for a pretty long time.

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As there are thus no coins attributable to Purugupta, nothing prevents our identifying him with Skandagupta for whom coins have been found in numbers, just as Dēvagupta and Gōvindagupta who have no coins ascribed to them can be identified with Chandragupta II and Kumāragupta I respectively whose coins are numerous and varied. Besides, if this identification of Purugupta with Skandagupta is once accepted, it simplifies the chronology of the later Imperial Guptas. Thus the last known date for Skandagupta is Gupta year 146. For Kumāragupta II we have Gupta year 154, for Budhagupta dates ranging from 157 to 175, for Vainyagupta 188, for Bhānugupta 191, and so forth and so on. It is then quite natural to take Kumāragupta who issued the Bhitarī and Nālandā seals as the grandson of Skandagupta. If we, however, take Skandagupta and Purugupta as two separate brother kings we are forced to cramp three reigns of three generations within a period of eleven years, that is, between Gupta year 146 and 157. If, on the other hand, we take Skandagupta and Purugupta as two names of one and the same Gupta king, it is not cumbrous to accommodate two reigns, namely, of Narasiṁhagupta and his son Kumāragupta, within that period.

       We possess a number of records of Skandagupta’s reign, two of which are most important from the political point of view. They are the Bhitarī pillar and the Junāgaḍh rock inscriptions. What light they throw on the political history of the beginning of Skandagupta’s reign has already been pointed out. Let us now examine what further information they give us. The purport of the first of these epigraphs is to record the installation of an image of Śārṅgin (Vishṇu) which would be a monument (kīrtti) to his father Kumāragupta. Unfortunately the last line of verse 10 of this record has been effaced. But, if the restoration proposed by us is accepted, the god so installed was named Kumārasvāmin after him. Skandagupta also granted a village for the maintenance of the shrine and thus for the augmentation of the spiritual
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¹ ABORI., Vol. I, pp. 73-74.
² IC., Vol. I, pp. 691-92.