An Overview of the Gupta Empire in India

The Gupta Empire was an ancient Indian kingdom that flourished around 320 to 550 CE. At the height of its power, it had dominion over much of the entire Indian sub-continent. We have much information of this period through Indian archaeology, architecture, literary sources etc.

Before the rise of the Gupta Empire, India had fallen into a state of political chaos with the fall of the Kushanas. Foreigners were, for the most part, met with distrust and violence. It wasn’t until a new Ganges valley state, known later as the Gupta Empire, that political unity appeared once more.

The Gupta valley state at this time was centred at Patna. The first Gupta emperor was Chandra Gupta who first reigned in 320 CE, although there are pre-Gupta kings who are said to be Gupta rulers. Within 100 years the north of India was reunited once more and relieved of outside pressure and invasions.

One of the great achievements of the Gupta Empire was the consolidation of art. Stone temples were commissioned, great glories of Indian art and architecture before the Moslem period.  

Literary achievements were also high. “The standardization and systematization of Sanskrit grammar just before Maurya times opened the path to a literature which could be shared by the elite of the whole subcontinent. Sanskrit was a tie uniting north and south in spite of their cultural difference. The great epics were given their classical form in Sanskrit (thought they were also available in translations into local languages) and in it wrote the greatest of Indian poets, Kalidasa. He was also a dramatist, and in the Gupta era there emerges from the shadowy past the Indian theatre whose traditions have been maintained and carried into the popular Indian film of the twentieth century”.

During the Gupta reign, Indian arithmeticians invented the decimal system and it was this period that we can get a sense of the fully evolved Hindu society. It was near to the end of the Gupta reign that a new cult, the mother-goddess Devi, emerged and took a place in Hindu religion that still remains today. It has been suggested that she symbolised a “new sexual emphasis which marked both Hinduism and Buddhism”.

The achievements of the Gupta Empire were many and can still be felt in today’s modern society. Although it was not quite so big an empire as Asoka’s, the Gupta Empire lasted longer and became the Indian’s classical period.

Bibliography:

Roberts, J. M. (1992) The History of the World, Helicon Publishing Ltd, Great Britain.