Chandragupta I, ‘great king of kings’, and the beginning of the Gupta era

Chandragupta was the son of Ghatotkacha and the grandson of Gupta, both of whom the Allahabad pillar inscription calls only maharaja, ‘great king’. His own title and the gold coins bearing his name suggest that he was the first imperial ruler of the dynasty, but how he turned a small ancestral kingdom into an empire is not known. A widely accepted view is that his marriage to Kumaradevi of the ancient Licchavi clan helped him extend his power: the gold coins with portraits of the royal couple carry the legend Lichchhavayah, ‘the Licchavis’, and Gupta inscriptions call their son Samudragupta ‘the son of the daughter of the Licchavis’. Whether these coins were struck by Chandragupta himself or by Samudragupta in memory of his parents is debated. The extent of the kingdom is uncertain too: a passage of the Vayu Purana gives the Guptas Saketa (Ayodhya), Prayaga and Magadha, and R. C. Majumdar thought that it took in Bihar and parts of Uttar Pradesh and Bengal.

Dated Gupta inscriptions are reckoned in an era of their own. In the 11th century al-Biruni placed its starting point in year 241 of the Shaka era, that is 318–319, although he believed that it marked the end of the Guptas; V. A. Smith and P. L. Gupta date the epoch to 319–320, Georg Bühler to 318–319. The most widespread view is that the era marks Chandragupta’s coronation, but this remains a conjecture: D. C. Sircar and R. C. Majumdar linked it with Samudragupta’s accession, and S. R. Goyal thought that it was introduced by Chandragupta II. Estimates of the reign therefore range from 305–325 (A. S. Altekar) to 319–350 or 319–353; Upinder Singh gives 319–335/336. According to the Allahabad inscription, the king — by then, as is usually inferred, of advanced age — chose Samudragupta as his successor before the court and bade him ‘protect the whole earth’.