Chandragupta II

The campaign against the Western Kshatrapas was the defining military achievement of Chandragupta’s reign. Inscriptions carved into the sandstone cave shrines of Udayagiri in Central India record the presence of Chandragupta’s foreign minister, Virasena, who traveled there with his king on a mission to "conquer the whole world." Other records, like the Sanchi inscription of his general Amrakardava, speak of a soldier who "acquired victory and fame in many battles." By the first decade of the fifth century, the distinct silver coinage of the Western Kshatrapas abruptly vanished, replaced by Gupta coins that deliberately mimicked the local style but substituted the traditional Shaka Buddhist temple symbol with the imperial Gupta emblem of Garuda, the divine eagle. Through this conquest, Chandragupta did not merely eliminate a historic rival; he secured the wealthy ports of the Arabian Sea, opening up direct maritime trade with the Roman Empire and the Mediterranean, pouring unprecedented wealth into his capital of Pataliputra.

This influx of wealth fueled a cultural explosion that defined the classical age of India. Though Chandragupta was a devout Vaishnav—styling himself Paramabhagavata, an ardent worshiper of Vishnu—he maintained an atmosphere of deep religious tolerance. He funded Buddhist monasteries and Hindu temples alike, creating a cosmopolitan society where diverse intellectual traditions could flourish side by side. According to later Indian tradition, his court was illuminated by the Navaratnas, or the "Nine Gems"—a circle of the era's greatest minds, including the legendary Sanskrit poet and dramatist Kalidasa. Under his patronage, Sanskrit literature moved away from the austere styles of the past toward an ornate, highly stylized aesthetic that celebrated the beauty of the natural world and the emotional depths of human experience.

The lived experience of this golden age was captured in vivid detail by the Chinese Buddhist pilgrim Faxian, who traveled through Chandragupta’s domains during the early fifth century. Faxian, who had journeyed across the perilous Gobi Desert and the Pamir Mountains in search of authentic Buddhist scriptures, described a land of remarkable peace, prosperity, and social stability. He noted that the citizens were free to come and go as they pleased without government passes, that the administration did not practice capital punishment, and that the king's officers were paid regular salaries rather than being left to exploit the peasantry. Faxian wrote of a society where hospitals were funded by wealthy citizens to care for the poor and destitute, and where the roads were safe from the bandits that plagued other parts of the ancient world. While his account may have been somewhat idealized by his devotion to the Buddhist holy land, it reflects a society enjoying a rare interval of internal peace.

By the time Chandragupta’s long reign drew to a close sometime between 412 and 415 CE, his empire stretched from the Oxus River in the far northwest, where he had vassalized the Hunas and defeated the Sassanids, to the delta of Bengal in the east, and from the Himalayas down to the Narmada River. He was succeeded by his son, Kumaragupta I, who inherited an empire at the absolute zenith of its administrative efficiency and cultural prestige. Yet it is Chandragupta II who lingered longest in the collective memory of the subcontinent. Long after the Gupta Empire dissolved under the pressure of later invasions, the name of Vikramaditya lived on in folklore and literature as the archetypal righteous king—a defender of the realm, a patron of the arts, and a ruler who walked the earth disguised among his people to understand their suffering. In the end, the iron pillar of Delhi remains his most fitting metaphor: a monument of immense strength, untouched by the decay of time, bearing the quiet name of a king who turned the fleeting victories of war into an enduring monument of civilization.