The Gupta period marks an important phase in the history of ancient India. The long and efficient rule of the Guptas made a huge impact on the political, social and cultural spheres. Though the Gupta Empire was not as widespread as the Mauryan Empire was in India, yet the Gupta dynasty was successful in creating an empire that is significant in the history of India. The Gupta Period is also popularly known as the Golden Age of India and for the right reasons. The lifestyle and culture of the Gupta dynasty is known through the availability of various ancient coins, scriptures, inscriptions, texts, etc. belonging to that era.

The rulers of the Gupta Empire were efficient administrators who knew how to govern with a firm hand without being despotic. During this age, art and education flourished and many great discoveries were made in these fields. Aryabhatta and Varahamihira, the two great mathematicians contributed much during this period in the field of Vedic Mathematics. Aryabhatta estimated the value of "Pi" to the fourth decimal place. Algebra was developed to a great extent and the concepts of zero and infinity were found. The symbols of numbers 1 to 9 were devised which was a great contribution in mathematics. These symbols came to be known as Hindu Arabic numerals later when the Arabs too adopted them.

The Gupta Age is also known for its advances in astronomy. During the reign of the Gupta rulers, astronomers and philosophers proposed the theory that the earth was not flat but round. The theory of gravity was also propounded during this time. The astronomers made a breakthrough when they found out the different planets and started to make horoscopes based on the planetary positions. The field of medicine also advanced a lot during this time and doctors used to perform operations even during that era. Since so many discoveries and advances were made in arts, medicine, literature and science during Gupta period, it has been called the Golden Age of India


Rulers of Gupta Empire

Chandra Gupta I (319 - 335 AD)
Samudra Gupta (335 - 380 AD)
Chandra Gupta II (380 - 415 AD)
Kumara Gupta I (415 - 445 AD)
Skanda Gupta (445 - 480 AD)


Chandra Gupta I (319 - 335 AD)

A Magadha raja named Chandra Gupta -- who was unrelated to the Chandragupta of six centuries before -- controlled rich veins of iron from the nearby Barabara Hills. Around the year 308 he married a princess from the neighboring kingdom of Licchavi, and with this marriage he gained a hold over the flow of northern India's commerce on the Ganges River -- the major flow of north Indian commerce. In 319, Chandra Gupta created for himself the title King of Kings (Maharajadhiraja), and he extended his rule westward to Prayaga, in north-central India.

Samudra Gupta (335 - 380 AD)

Samudragupta was the son and successor of Chandragupta. Samudragupta was popularly known as the "Indian Napoleon" as he conquered many territories without making much of an effort. It is said that after Emperor Ashoka, the empire of Samudragupta was the supreme.He performed the Asvamedha Yagna and gained much fame and power. During his reign, many great discoveries and advancements were made in different fields like astronomy, mathematics, medicine, etc


Chandra Gupta II (380 - 415 AD)

Also known by the name of Vikramaditya, Chandragupta II was chosen by his father as the successor and the future ruler.He extended Gupta rule to India's west coast, where new ports were helping India's trade with countries farther west. His rule influenced local powers beyond the Indus River and north to Kashmir. While Rome was being overrun and the western half of the Roman Empire was disintegrating, Gupta rule was at the apex of its grandeur, prospering in agriculture, crafts and trade. Unlike the Mauryas, who had controlled trade and industry, the Guptas let people free to pursue wealth and business, and prosperity in the Guptan era exceeded that of the Mauryan era.

Many Indians were pursuing pleasure and enjoying life. In the cities were wealthy and middle class people who enjoyed their gardens, music, dancing, plays and various other entertainment. They enjoyed a daily bath, artistic and social activities and a variety of food, including rice, bread, fish, milk, fruits and juices. And despite religious prohibitions, the Indians -- especially the aristocrats -- drank wine and stronger alcoholic beverages.

Greater wealth accrued to those who already had wealth, and the middle class prospered. Big estates grew with the help of dependent labor and slave labor. The poor stayed poor, but apparently there was little dire want. The caste system still existed. So too did the inferior status of women. But charities abounded. The Gupta kings were autocrats who liked to think of themselves as servants to all their subjects. Hospitals offered care free of charge to everyone, rich and poor. There were rest houses for travelers along India's highways, and the capital possessed an excellent, free hospital created by the charity of the wealthy.

Although the Gupta's were more organized in their administrations, with the increase in prosperity had come a greater liberality. The cruel punishments of Mauryan times had been abolished. People no longer had to register with government authorities or carry a passport when traveling within the empire. The government operated without the system of espionage often practiced by Roman emperors and by Mauryan rulers. Law breaking was punished without death sentences -- mainly by fines. Punishments such as having one's hand cut off were applied only against obstinate, professional criminals.

Among civilians, the avoidance of killing that had been a part of Buddhism and Jainism was widely observed. Across India most people had become vegetarians, except for fish which was widely consumed in Bengal and places to its south. And unlike parts of the Roman Empire, a traveler in India had little reason to fear robbery. A visitor from China, Fa-hien, traveled about in India for eleven years and recorded that he was never molested or robbed.

Kumara Gupta I (415 - 445 AD)

Chandragupta II was succeeded by his son Kumaragupta I. Known as the Mahendraditya, he ruled until 455. Towards the end of his reign a tribe in the Narmada valley, the Pushyamitras, rose in power to threaten the empire.



Skanda Gupta (445 - 480 AD)

Skandagupta is generally considered the last of the great rulers. He defeated the Pushyamitra threat, but then was faced with invading Hephthalites or "White Huns", known in India as the Huna, from the northwest. He repulsed a Huna attack c. 477, But the expense of the wars drained the empire's resources and contributed to its decline. Skandagupta died in 487 and was succeeded by his son Narasimhagupta Baladitya

Legacy of the Gupta Empire

Scholars of this period include Aryabhatta, who is believed to be the first to come up with the concept of zero, postulated the theory that the Earth moves round the Sun, and studied solar and lunar eclipses, and Kalidasa, who was a great playwright, who wrote plays such as Shakuntala, which is said to have inspired Goethe, and marked the highest point of Sanskrit literature.

The most significant achievements of this period, however, were in religion, education, mathematics, art, Sanskrit literature and drama, and Kama Sutra, the principles of pleasure. Hinduism witnessed a crystallization of its components: major sectarian deities, image worship, devotionalism, and the importance of the temple. Education included grammar, composition, logic, metaphysics, mathematics, medicine, and astronomy. These subjects became highly specialized and reached an advanced level. The Indian numeral system, i.e the decimal system which is currently in use; sometimes erroneously attributed to the Arabs, who took it from India to Europe where it replaced the Roman system—and the decimal system are Indian inventions of this period. Aryabhatta's expositions on astronomy in 499, moreover, gave calculations of the solar year and the shape and movement of astral bodies with remarkable accuracy.

In medicine, the Guptas were notable for their establishment and patronage of free hospitals. And although progress in physiology and biology was hindered by religious injunctions against contact with dead bodies, which discouraged dissection and anatomy, Indian physicians excelled in pharmacopoeia, cesarean section, bone setting, and skin grafting. Indeed Hindu medical advances were soon adopted in the Arab and Western worlds.The great universities in central and eastern India received an influx of students from many parts of the world. Most notable were the universities of Nalanda and Vikramasila.

Contributions to the world and achievements





Gupta astronomers also made many advances in astronomy by using their mathematical breakthroughs. It was during this empire that philosophers in India first proposed that the earth was not flat but was instead round and rotated on an axis by viewing a lunar eclipses. They also made discoveries about gravity and the planets of the solar system, which they used to tell the horoscopes.

Chess originated in Gupta India, where its early form in the 6th century was known as caturaṅga, which translates as "four divisions [of the military]" – infantry, cavalry, elephants, and chariotry, represented by the pieces that would evolve into the modern pawn, knight, bishop, and rook, respectively. Doctors also invented several medical instruments, and even performed operations.

Indian numerals which is the first positional base 10 numeral systems in the world have originated from Gupta India.

Kama Sutra the ancient Gupta text is widely considered to be the standard work on human sexual behavior in Sanskrit literature written by the Indian scholar Vatsyayana. These ideas spread throughout the world through trade



Gupta Homes

In the villages and towns, homes were mostly one room huts made of wood or bamboo, with thatched roofs. Even the palaces were made of wood! Larger homes had several rooms and balconies.

Gupta villages

Streets between the homes were narrow and twisted. Stalls for selling things were located on both sides of the street. People mostly walked where they wanted to go inside their village. Villages were very noisy places. Not only were they full of happy, busy people, they were full of animals.

Art

The craftsmen worked with iron and copper. Their iron work, especially, was outstanding. Even today, statues exist from this period, made of iron, that show very little rust.

Jobs

People worked on roads and other public works, but, (as they were in ancient Egypt), they were paid for their work. In the Gupta Empire, wheat was the main crop, and they kept cows for milk. This civilization produced great works of literature and marvelous works of art. Sculpture was their thing, though. They were very good at it.

Food Habbits

The concept of breakfast did not exist. In earlier times, meals were both vegetarian and non-vegetarian, depending upon your religious beliefs. After the coming of Buddhism, Jainism and other pacifist religion and reforms in Hinduism, vegetarian food (strictly excluding animal and fish meat) became the norm for as much as half of the population. In the Gupta Empire, they mostly ate vegetables, cereals, fruits, breads, and drank milk.

Education

Older kids, who went to school, lived at school. School (ashram) life was tough. You had to do everything yourself. There were no servants. Even princes had to wash their clothes, cook their food, and follow a rigorous course of studies. They had a lot to learn. They studied math, science, engineering, literature, art, music and religion.

Marriages

In ancient India, the most popular form of marriage was called Swayamvara. In this type of marriage, potential grooms assembled at the bride's house and the bride selected her spouse. Instances of Swayamvara ceremony are found in India's national epics, the Ramayana and Mahabharata. There were other types of marriage as well, such as Gandharva Vivaha (love marriage) and Asura Viviha (marriage by abduction).

Sports and Games

Ancient Indians invented many of the games we play today, like chess, polo, and playing cards (which are said to have gone from India to the other parts of our globe). They practiced martial arts, wrestling, and fencing. Hunting was also a favorite pastime of the nobility.


Clothing

Northern India: In the north, Ancient Indians wore (some still wear) an unstitched garment called dhoti. This was a 9 meter long cloth that was draped around the legs and tied at the abdomen. Both sexes wore it the same way. Women wore bright colours. Men wore either white or dark colors.

Ancient Indians did not use banks, so the family "fortune" was worn by the Vaishnav women in the northern half of India. In the north, they wore lots of jewelry. It was used both by men and women. Jewelry included armbands, waist belts, leg and ankle bangles for both sexes, ear rings, nose rings, rings on fingers and toes, crowns and other hair adornments.

Southern India

In the south, however, ancient scriptures describe women as wearing saris. A sari is a single cloth wrapped around the body. It covers the woman from head to toe. A dhoti is less modest. In ancient times, it was considered very important for women to be covered from the neck down to the feet. The southern half of India has been almost exclusively Shaivite for thousands of years. Shaivites typically have very, very few possessions. A Shaivite woman would not have worn such jewelry. Shaivite men have typically worn only a loin cloth and perhaps a cloth on the head to protect from the sun, never jewelry.

Medicine

Gupta physicians developed herbal remedies to treat various illnesses.They also developed a form of plastic surgery for the treatment of facial injuries. Physicians vaccinated against smallpox, a practice later used in China (10th century) and Europe (17th century.)


Arts & Literature

Gupta architecture was dedicated to building stone temples to the various Hindu gods. Also, Buddhists built shrines to house the remains of select holy people.These structures were called Stupas. This form of architecture made its way to China where it was altered slightly and renamed the pagoda.

Gupta literature consists of fables and folktales written in Sanskrit. These stories spread west to Persia, Egypt, and Greece, and became the basis for many Islamic literary works such as, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and Aladdin and his Magic Lamp.













Decline and Fall

Chandra Gupta II died in 415 and was succeeded by his son, Kumara Gupta, who maintained India's peace and prosperity. During his forty-year reign the Gupta Empire remained undiminished. Then -- as was the Roman Empire around this time -- India suffered more invasions. Kumara Gupta's son, the crown prince, Skanda Gupta, was able to drive the invaders, the Hephthalites, back, into the Sassanian Empire, where they were to defeat the Sassanid army and kill the Sassanid king, Firuz.

In India, women and children sang praises to Skanda Gupta. Skanda Gupta succeeded his father in 455. Then the Hephthalites returned, and he spent much of his reign of twenty-five years combating them, which drained his treasury and weakened his empire. Skanda Gupta died in 467, and after a century and a half the cycle of rise and disintegration of empire turned again to disintegration. Contributing to this was dissention within the royal family. Benefiting from this dissention, governors of provinces and feudal chieftains revolted against Gupta rule. For awhile the Gupta Empire had two centers: at Valabhi on the western coast and at Pataliputra toward the east. Seeing weakness, the Hephthalites invaded India again -- in greater number. Just before the year 500, the Hephthalites took control of the Punjab. After 515, they absorbed the Kashmir, and they advanced into the Ganges Valley, the heart of India, raping, burning, massacring, blotting out entire cities and reducing fine buildings to rubble. Provinces and feudal territories declared their independence, and the whole of north India became divided among numerous independent kingdoms. And with this fragmentation India was again torn by numerous small wars between local rulers.