Gupta (
Gupta script
The Gupta script (sometimes referred to as Gupta Brahmi script or Late Brahmi script)Sharma, Ram. '' 'Brahmi Script' ''. Delhi: BR Publishing Corp, 2002 was used for writing Sanskrit and is associated with the Gupta Empire of the Indian subcon ...
:
![Gupta allahabad gu](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Gupta_allahabad_gu.jpg)
![Gupta allahabad pt](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Gupta_allahabad_pt.jpg)
''Gu-pta'', fl. late 3rd century CE) was the founder of the
Gupta dynasty
The Gupta Empire was an Outline of ancient India, ancient Indian empire which existed from the early 4th century CE to late 6th century CE. At its zenith, from approximately 319 to 467 CE, it covered much of the Indian subcontinent. This period ...
of northern India. He is identified with king Che-li-ki-to (believed to be the Chinese transcription of "''
Shri
Shri (; , ) is a Sanskrit term denoting resplendence, wealth and prosperity, primarily used as an honorific.
The word is widely used in South and Southeast Asian languages such as Marathi, Malay (including Indonesian and Malaysian), Javanese, ...
''-Gupta"), who, according to the 7th century Chinese Buddhist monk
Yijing
The ''I Ching'' or ''Yi Jing'' (, ), usually translated ''Book of Changes'' or ''Classic of Changes'', is an ancient Chinese divination text that is among the oldest of the Chinese classics. Originally a divination manual in the Western Zhou ...
, built a temple near Mi-li-kia-si-kia-po-no (
Mṛgaśikhāvana) for Chinese pilgrims.
Name
Gupta is not attested by his own inscriptions or coins, although some seals and coins have been wrongly attributed to him. The earliest description of him occurs in his great-grandson
Samudragupta
Samudragupta (Gupta script: ''Sa-mu-dra-gu-pta'', (c. 335–375 CE) was the second emperor of the Gupta Empire of ancient India, and is regarded among the greatest rulers of the dynasty. As a son of the Gupta emperor Chandragupta I and the Li ...
's
Allahabad Pillar inscription, and is repeated verbatim in several later records of the dynasty:
The Allahabad Pillar inscription names Samudragupta's ancestors as ''Shrī'' Gupta (
![Gupta allahabad shrii](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0e/Gupta_allahabad_shrii.jpg)
![Gupta allahabad gu](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7b/Gupta_allahabad_gu.jpg)
![Gupta allahabad pt](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Gupta_allahabad_pt.jpg)
''shri gu-pta''), ''Shrī''
Ghatotkacha
Ghatotkacha ( sa, घटोत्कच, , literally: "Bald Pot") is a prominent character in the story of ''Mahabharata''. His name comes from the fact that his head was hairless (''utkacha'') and shaped like a ghatam, or a pot. Ghatotkacha ...
, and ''Shrī''
Chandragupta. Some earlier scholars believed that the name of the dynasty's founder was "Shri-gupta" (
IAST
The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) is a transliteration scheme that allows the lossless romanisation of Indic scripts as employed by Sanskrit and related Indic languages. It is based on a scheme that emerged during ...
: Śrigupta), as Gupta does not appear to be a given name. However, it is now generally agreed that ''
Shri
Shri (; , ) is a Sanskrit term denoting resplendence, wealth and prosperity, primarily used as an honorific.
The word is widely used in South and Southeast Asian languages such as Marathi, Malay (including Indonesian and Malaysian), Javanese, ...
'' is an honorific title and not an integral part of the king's name; "Gupta" was the actual name of the king. The
Vishnu Sahasranama mentions Gupta among the
1008 names of Vishnu, which suggests that it can be used as a given name. The name derives from the word ''gup'' ("to protect").
Date
Gupta most probably ruled in the second half of the 3rd century, although his reign cannot be dated with certainty based on existing evidence. Various estimates of his reign include:
*
R. K. Mukherjee: c. 240–280 CE
*
A. S. Altekar: c. 270–290 CE
*
V. A. Smith: c. 275–300 CE
* Tej Ram Sharma: c. 275–295 CE
*
S. R. Goel: c. 295–300 CE
Political status
The Allahabad Pillar inscription uses the title ''
Maharaja
Mahārāja (; also spelled Maharajah, Maharaj) is a Sanskrit title for a "great ruler", "great king" or " high king".
A few ruled states informally called empires, including ruler raja Sri Gupta, founder of the ancient Indian Gupta Empire, an ...
'' (
![Gupta allahabad m](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/Gupta_allahabad_m.svg)
![Gupta allahabad haa](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e8/Gupta_allahabad_haa.jpg)
![Gupta allahabad raa](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/47/Gupta_allahabad_raa.jpg)
![Gupta allahabad j](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a7/Gupta_allahabad_j.svg)
"Great King") for Gupta and his son
Ghatotkacha
Ghatotkacha ( sa, घटोत्कच, , literally: "Bald Pot") is a prominent character in the story of ''Mahabharata''. His name comes from the fact that his head was hairless (''utkacha'') and shaped like a ghatam, or a pot. Ghatotkacha ...
, as opposed to the title ''
Maharajadhiraja
Mahārāja (; also spelled Maharajah, Maharaj) is a Sanskrit title for a "great ruler", "great king" or " high king".
A few ruled states informally called empires, including ruler raja Sri Gupta, founder of the ancient Indian Gupta Empire, an ...
'' ("king of great kings") for later ruler
Chandragupta I
Chandragupta I ( Gupta script: ''Cha-ndra-gu-pta'', r. c. 319–335 or 319–350 CE) was a king of the Gupta Empire, who ruled in northern and central India. His title ''Maharajadhiraja'' ("great king of kings") suggests that he was the firs ...
. In the later period, the title ''Maharaja'' was used by feudatory rulers, which has led to suggestions that Gupta and Ghatotkacha were feudatory kings. For example, scholars
R. D. Banerji
Rakhal Das Banerji, also Rakhaldas Bandyopadhyay (12 April 1885 – 23 May 1930), was an Indian archaeologist and an officer of the Archeological Survey of India (ASI). In 1919, he became the second ASI officer deputed to survey the site of ...
and
K. P. Jayaswal
Kashi Prasad Jayaswal (27 November 1881 – 4 August 1937) was an Indian historian and lawyer. Jayaswal's works ''Hindu Polity'' (1918) and ''History of India, 150 A.D. to 350 A.D.'' (1933) are classics of ancient Indian historical literature. A ...
theorize that they were
Kushana vassals.
There is no doubt that Gupta and Ghatotkacha held a lower status and were less powerful than Chandragupta I. However, there are several instances of paramount sovereigns using the title ''Maharaja'', in both pre-Gupta and post-Gupta periods, so the use of the title ''Maharaja'' cannot be considered as conclusive evidence of Gupta's vassal status. The sovereign kings of several contemporary or near-contemporary dynasties, including the
Vakataka
The Vakataka dynasty () was an ancient Indian dynasty that originated from the Deccan in the mid-3rd century CE. Their state is believed to have extended from the southern edges of Malwa and Gujarat in the north to the Tungabhadra River in the ...
s, used the title ''Maharaja''. Moreover, the Kushana Empire had already declined before the rise of the Guptas, so Gupta is unlikely to have been a Kushana vassal.
Identification with Che-li-ki-to
The 7th century Chinese Buddhist monk
Yijing
The ''I Ching'' or ''Yi Jing'' (, ), usually translated ''Book of Changes'' or ''Classic of Changes'', is an ancient Chinese divination text that is among the oldest of the Chinese classics. Originally a divination manual in the Western Zhou ...
, in his description of the itinerary of the earlier Korean traveler(of
Silla
Silla or Shilla (57 BCE – 935 CE) ( , Old Korean: Syera, Old Japanese: Siraki2) was a Korean kingdom located on the southern and central parts of the Korean Peninsula. Silla, along with Baekje and Goguryeo, formed the Three Kingdoms of K ...
) Hwui-lun(慧輪) alias Prajnavarma, mentions that in ancient times, king Che-li-ki-to (室利笈多) built a temple near Mi-li-kia-si-kia-po-no (
Mṛgaśikhāvana) for Chinese pilgrims. The king endowed the temple with the revenue of 24 villages for its maintenance. Only the brick foundation of this temple survived in Yijing's time.
Numismatist
John Allan read Che-li-ki-to as a transcription of Shri-Gupta.
J. F. Fleet
John Faithfull Fleet C.I.E (1847 – 21 February 1917) was an English civil servant with the Indian Civil Service and became known as a historian, epigraphist and linguist. His research in Indian epigraphy and history, conducted in India over ...
opposed this theory, pointing out that according to Yijing's writings, Che-li-ki-to flourished five hundred years before him (that is, in the second century), while Gupta ruled in the late 3rd century. Moreover, the Gupta inscriptions mention the king's name as "Gupta" (which would be transcribed as ''ki-to'', 笈多), not "Shri-gupta" (''Che-li-ki-to''). Allan argued that Yijing's statement about the king's date should not be taken literally, and that the Chinese writers visiting India often used "Shri" as an honorific.
Based on available evidence, Gupta's religious affiliation is unclear. Historian A. K. Narain theorizes that he was a
Vaishnavite
Vaishnavism ( sa, वैष्णवसम्प्रदायः, Vaiṣṇavasampradāyaḥ) is one of the major Hindu denominations along with Shaivism, Shaktism, and Smartism. It is also called Vishnuism since it considers Vishnu as the ...
, who was tolerant of Buddhist activity in his kingdom. This latter scenario would have been comparable with the later Gupta monarchs, who were predominantly Vaishnavite, but under whose regimes heterodox religious movements like Buddhism and
Jainism
Jainism ( ), also known as Jain Dharma, is an Indian religions, Indian religion. Jainism traces its spiritual ideas and history through the succession of twenty-four tirthankaras (supreme preachers of ''Dharma''), with the first in the current ...
were allowed to flourish.
Territory
Some scholars, such as D. C. Ganguly and
R. C. Majumdar, have interpreted Yijing's description to mean that the temple was located more than 40 ''
yojana
A yojana (Sanskrit: योजन; th, โยชน์; my, ယူဇနာ) is a measure of distance that was used in ancient India, Thailand and Myanmar. A yojana is about 12–15 km.
Edicts of Ashoka (3rd century BCE)
Ashoka, in his Major R ...
''s east of
Nalanda
Nalanda (, ) was a renowned ''mahavihara'' (Buddhist monastic university) in ancient Magadha (modern-day Bihar), India.[Ganges river
The Ganges ( ) (in India: Ganga ( ); in Bangladesh: Padma ( )). "The Ganges Basin, known in India as the Ganga and in Bangladesh as the Padma, is an international river to which India, Bangladesh, Nepal and China are the riparian states." is ...]
, and have identified its location in present-day
Bengal
Bengal ( ; bn, বাংলা/বঙ্গ, translit=Bānglā/Bôngô, ) is a geopolitical, cultural and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal, predom ...
region. Majumdar read Mi-li-kia-si-kia-po-no as a transcription of Mriga-sthapana, the name of a
stupa
A stupa ( sa, स्तूप, lit=heap, ) is a mound-like or hemispherical structure containing relics (such as ''śarīra'' – typically the remains of Buddhist monks or nuns) that is used as a place of meditation.
In Buddhism, circumamb ...
which was located in the historical
Varendra
Varendra ( bn, বরেন্দ্র), also known as Barind ( bn, বারিন্দ, link=no), was a region of North Bengal, now mostly in Bangladesh and a little portion in the Indian state of West Bengal.
It formed part of the Pundrav ...
region of Bengal. According to Ganguly, this suggests that the Gupta dynasty originated in Bengal, while according to Majumdar, this only proves that Bengal was a part of Gupta's kingdom.
Other scholars, such as
B. P. Sinha and Jagannath Agrawal, read Mi-li-kia-si-kia-po-no of Yijing's account as a transcription of
Mriga-shikha-vana (
IAST
The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration (IAST) is a transliteration scheme that allows the lossless romanisation of Indic scripts as employed by Sanskrit and related Indic languages. It is based on a scheme that emerged during ...
: ''Mṛgaśikhāvana''), and identify it with Mrigadaya (Deer Park) in
Sarnath
Sarnath (Hindustani pronunciation: aːɾnaːtʰ also referred to as Sarangnath, Isipatana, Rishipattana, Migadaya, or Mrigadava) is a place located northeast of Varanasi, near the confluence of the Ganges and the Varuna rivers in Uttar Pr ...
, in present-day eastern
Uttar Pradesh
Uttar Pradesh (; , 'Northern Province') is a state in northern India. With over 200 million inhabitants, it is the most populated state in India as well as the most populous country subdivision in the world. It was established in 1950 ...
. Ashvini Agrawal argues that Mi-li-kia-si-kia-po-no is not an exact transcription of Mriga-sthapana: Mriga-shikha-vana is closer, and a different interpretation of Yijing's writings suggests that Mi-li-kia-si-kia-po-no was located in Sarnath. Sinha theorizes that Hwui-lun erroneously mentioned its location as east of Nalanda. These historians propose that the Gupta dynasty originated in eastern Uttar Pradesh.
References
Citations
General sources
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Gupta
3rd-century Indian monarchs
Gupta Empire
Founding monarchs