Journey
The Hunnic wars & the end of the Guptas
The Guptas met the Alchon Huns in the 450s and did not survive the century intact. Almost all the evidence is epigraphic — four inscriptions and a coinage that visibly debases — which is why this journey is a set of inscribed stones and a debased coinage rather than a set of battlefields.
Stops (10)
- Skandagupta · c. 455–467
The Gupta emperor who met the first Huna invasion and, in his own words on the Bhitari pillar, restored the fortunes of a shaken house. His silver and gold coinage is markedly debased against his predecessors', which is the physical evidence that the wars cost more than his inscriptions admit.
- Bhitarī pillar · c. 455
A red sandstone pillar in a Ghazipur village carrying Skandagupta's genealogy, his claim to have restored the dynasty, and a passage about the Hunas that is one of the few Indian statements about them from the Gupta side. The stone is worn exactly where the crucial reading lies, and has been argued over for a century.
- Girnār rock inscriptions (Junāgaḍh) · 455–458
Skandagupta's inscription is cut on the same rock as Ashoka's edicts and Rudradaman's Sanskrit prashasti, and it records the rebuilding of the Sudarshana dam after a flood in 455. Three imperial dynasties across seven centuries wrote on one boulder, and the Gupta text among them is about maintenance and public works rather than conquest.
- Mihirakula · c. 502–530
The Alchon ruler who succeeded Toramana, with coins and inscriptions from Gandhara to the Ganges plain. Kashmiri and Chinese Buddhist sources remember him as a destroyer of monasteries; a Gwalior inscription of his fifteenth year records a sun temple built by a subordinate, so his own documents say something else.
- Eran · c. 510
Bhanugupta's inscription at Eran records a battle and the death of his ally Goparaja, whose wife then burnt herself — the earliest dated record of sati in India. A Toramana inscription stands at the same site. Two dynasties' claims on one small Vidisha-district field, and no clear account of who won.
- Yaśodharman · c. 515–545
The Aulikara ruler of Dasapura whose victory pillars claim that he made Mihirakula bow his head — the only explicit record of a Huna king defeated in India. He also claims territory the Guptas had held. Three inscriptions are all that survive of him: no coins, no chronicle, and no successor.
- Mandasor (Daśapura) · c. 528 and 437–473
Dasapura's inscriptions do double duty: Yashodharman's victory pillars at Sondani four kilometres out, and the earlier record of a silk-weavers' guild that migrated here from Lata and paid for a sun temple, then for its repair. Political history and social history from the same small town, ninety years apart. Political history and social history from the same small town, ninety years apart.
- Kauśāmbī · to the sixth century
The Vatsa capital on the Yamuna, with a six-kilometre rampart circuit, an Ashokan pillar and the Ghositarama monastery. It was a working city through the Gupta period and not afterwards. The abandonment of the great second-urbanisation cities of the Ganges-Yamuna doab belongs to these decades, and the reasons are still argued.
- Gandhāra · after Mihirakula
The Gandharan monastic landscape — Taxila, Hadda, the Swat valley shrines — does not recover after this generation. Xuanzang, travelling a century later, describes hundreds of monasteries in ruins and stupas standing empty. The centre of gravity of Indian Buddhism moves permanently east to Nalanda and the Pala viharas. Xuanzang, travelling a century later, described hundreds of monasteries in ruins and stupas standing empty.
- Deogarh Dashavatara temple · c. 500
The Dashavatara temple at Deogarh is among the earliest stone temples with a shikhara, and the reference point for what Gupta architecture means. It is also roughly contemporary with the Huna wars, which is the useful correction: the period that broke the dynasty is also the period that settled the north Indian temple form.