DECLINE

DECLINE

The line of succession after Skanda Gupta is uncertain. Puru Gupta, a son of Kumara Gupta by the chief queen, ruled for some time and was succeeded by his son Budha Gupta whose earliest known date is AD 477 and the latest AD 495. But a king named Kumara Gupta II is known to have reigned in AD 474. This indicates internal dissension which continued after the end of Budha Gupta's reign.

At the close of the fifth century AD fresh Huna inroads occurred, and this time were even more difficult to repel. The empire was disunited, and no strong man of the calibre of Skanda Gupta came forward to drive out the invaders For some 30 years, from AD 500 onwards, western India was in the hands of the Huna kings, two of whom, Toramana and his son Mihirakula, were apparently mighty monarchs and had advanced up to Gwalior and Eran (Madhya Pradesh). Mihirakula is remembered by Hiuen Tsang as a
fierce persecutor of Buddhism, and in Kashmir, one of the centres of his power, memories of his sadistic tyranny were still alive in the twelfth century, when they were recorded by the historian Kalhana.

At this grave crisis rose a great warrior named Yasodharman (AD 530-540) whose family ruled as feudatories of the Guptas in Malwa. He not only defeated Mihirakula and stopped the advance of the Hunas, but also destroyed the Gupta empire. His official record engraved in duplicate on two pillars at Mandasor, claims that his suzerainty was acknowledged over the vast area bounded by the Himalayas, the Brahmaputra, the Mahendra mountains in the Ganjam district, and the Arabian Sea, and that he was lord of territories not possessed by the Hunas and even by the Guptas. This may be a boast, but undoubtedly the Gupta empire was practically destroyed by the victories of Yasodharman. But Yasodharman's large kingdom did not survive his death. Though Mihirakula apparently retained his hold on Kashmir and parts of the North-West, Huna power never again seriously threatened India, and the Hunas soon lost their individuality.

Though shorn of power and prestige, traces of the Gupta empire still remained. Narasimha Gupta survived Yasodharman and probably drove out the Hunas from the Ganga valley. However, no trace of Gupta rule exists after AD 550.

The break-up of the Gupta empire was followed by the rise of a number of independent states. Magadha was ruled by a line of kings with names ending with Gupta. They are called the Later Guptas in order to distinguish them from the Imperial Guptas. The Later Guptas ruled in Magadha till the eighth century.