Founding of the Gupta Empire
Chandragupta I took the title of great king of kings around 320, and the dynasty he founded is conventionally dated from that year. Northern India had been politically fragmented for centuries after the Kushans, divided among tribal republics and small kingdoms, and the Guptas began as one of those — a family of uncertain origin holding territory around Magadha in the middle Ganges. The decisive step was a marriage. Chandragupta married Kumaradevi of the Licchavi, an old and prestigious clan, and the coins struck for the occasion name them both and the Licchavis besides, which suggests that the prestige came from her side. His son Samudragupta expanded enormously, and the record is an inscription carved onto a pillar that Ashoka had already inscribed six centuries earlier at Allahabad, listing kings uprooted in the north and kings defeated and reinstated as tributaries in the south. The period is often called a golden age, and the label needs care. It covers the decimal place-value system and the concept of zero as a number, Aryabhata's calculation of the length of the year and his argument that the earth rotates, Kalidasa's poetry and drama, the Ajanta paintings, and an iron pillar at Delhi that has not rusted in sixteen centuries. It also covers a hardening of caste and of restrictions on women that later law codes made permanent. Chinese pilgrims describe a prosperous and lightly governed country. The Hunas broke the empire in the sixth century. The empire also standardised a gold coinage of high purity depicting kings hunting, playing the lyre and performing horse sacrifices, which is unusually informative about how they wished to be seen. The dynasty's own dating era, beginning in 320, remained in use in parts of India for centuries.
- Year: 320 CE
- Category: Diplomacy
