KUMARA GUPTA I AND SKANDA GUPTA

KUMARA GUPTA I AND SKANDA GUPTA

Dhruvadevi's son Kumara Gupta I Mahendraditya suc­ceeded his father around AD 415. He kept the empire intact, which now extended from north Bengal to Kathiawar and from the Himalayas to the Narmada. He performed the Asvamedha sacrifice. A number of inscriptions shed light on Kumara Gupta's efficient administration and the deep love that the people had for him. But in the last years of Kumara Gupta I, the peace and prosperity of the empire was disturbed due to internal dissensions and external inva­sions. Among the chief enemies were the new invaders called the Hunas.

The Hunas were a Central Asian people known to Byzantine writers as Hephthalites or White Huns, and they are today considered a branch of the great group of Turko­Mongol peoples, who were. threatening Europe at about the same time; certain modern scholars, however, claim that they were in no way related to the Huns of Attila, but were of Iranian stock. The Hunas had OCcupied Bactria some time before, and now, like the earlier Greeks, Shakas and Kushans, they crossed the mountains and attacked the plains of India.

During the war with the Hunas, Kumara Gupta died, and Skanda Gupta (454-467) assumed power, though not born of the chief queen and therefore not the regular heir to the throne. He succeeded in re-establishing the Gupta empire, and by the end of 455 it was again at peace. But after his death the great days of the Guptas were over. The empire continued but central control weakened, and local governors became feudatory kings with hereditary rights. To the west of Varanasi the Gupta emperors now exercised little more than titular control.
In his religious outlook, Skanda Gupta was a Vaishnava, but followed the tolerant policy of his predecessors.