Fa Hiens account on the Golden Age
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Answer:
Fa-hien, a Chinese pilgrim, visited India during the reign of Chandra Gupta II. His primary aim was to visit the Buddhist religious places and to take with him the copies of the Buddhist religious texts. He, therefore, travelled through the Gupta empire and also wrote down his impressions about India.
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Explanation:
Samudra Gupta was initially succeeded by his eldest son, Rama Gupta who was soon deposed by his younger brother, Chandra Gupta II due to inefficiency. It was under this ruler whose coins proclaim him as Vikramaditya ‘the Shining Sun’ that the Gupta Empire expanded into western India by the conquest of Malwa and Gujarat from the last of the Shakas. This feat of Chandra Gupta II has led to his identification with the legendary Vikramaditya or at least seen as the inspiration for the tales of the mythical brave king who dares the unknown. Chandra Gupta II also made peace with his Deccan contemporaries, the Vakatakas by marrying his daughter, Prabhavati to Rudrasena II, the Vakataka king. This indirect expansion ensured external peace as well for the Gupta realm. Chandra Gupta II’s reign thus saw the creation of the unrustable Iron Pillar as ‘a lofty standard to Lord Vishnu’, the rise of Kalidas, a contemporary Sanskrit poet whose Raghuvamsa depicts the feats of Raghu, an ancestor of Rama which are uncannily similar to those of Samudra Gupta and his illustrious son. Raghuvamsa depicts the king’s ultimate goal as the welfare of one and all.
Samudra Gupta was initially succeeded by his eldest son, Rama Gupta who was soon deposed by his younger brother, Chandra Gupta II due to inefficiency. It was under this ruler whose coins proclaim him as Vikramaditya ‘the Shining Sun’ that the Gupta Empire expanded into western India by the conquest of Malwa and Gujarat from the last of the Shakas. This feat of Chandra Gupta II has led to his identification with the legendary Vikramaditya or at least seen as the inspiration for the tales of the mythical brave king who dares the unknown. Chandra Gupta II also made peace with his Deccan contemporaries, the Vakatakas by marrying his daughter, Prabhavati to Rudrasena II, the Vakataka king. This indirect expansion ensured external peace as well for the Gupta realm. Chandra Gupta II’s reign thus saw the creation of the unrustable Iron Pillar as ‘a lofty standard to Lord Vishnu’, the rise of Kalidas, a contemporary Sanskrit poet whose Raghuvamsa depicts the feats of Raghu, an ancestor of Rama which are uncannily similar to those of Samudra Gupta and his illustrious son. Raghuvamsa depicts the king’s ultimate goal as the welfare of one and all. Furthermore, according to Fa Hien, Pataliputra was indeed a utopian city with a cosmopolitan culture encouraging both Buddhist and Brahmanical practices with magnificent stupas and an annual Buddhist festival though the Emperor declares himself as ‘Paramabhagavata’ ‘the foremost devotee of Vishnu’ on his coins. This account demolishes another Marxist claim of strife between ‘Buddhism’ and Brahmanism. Fa Hien does go on to describe the caste-based hierarchy prevalent in the period in which the Chandalas were the lowest in stature. Thus, the Gupta Age presents us a mixed picture of perfection with rise of caste-based hierarchical divisions. The latter becomes more acute especially when viewed from modern perceptions which needn’t have been the case, as in practice, harmony seemed to dominate the scenario on the ground as evident by Fa Hien’s unbiased accounts of the period when gold literally flowed through the land.