that he was endowed with no ordinary powers; and that he was in fact a man of genius, who may fairly claim the title of the Indian Napoleon.
“By a strange irony of fate this great king warrior, poet, and musician—who conquered nearly all India, and whose alliances extended from the Oxus to Ceylon—was unknown even by name to the historians until the publication of this work.[1] His lost fame has been slowly recovered by the minute and laborious study of inscriptions and coins during the last eighty years.”
It may be mentioned, in passing, that monarchs of the Samundra Gupta type, who may be compared easily with a Charlemagne, a Frederick or a Peter the Great, have flourished in India almost every second generation. Hindu folk-lore has known them as Vikramadityas (Suns of Power) and has invested their names with “the halo of Arthurian romance.” And this was a time in the history of the world when Egypt and Babylon had already passed away, when China was in a state of “anarchy,” when the Roman Empire was under the heels of the barbarians, and when the Saracenic Empire (Caliphate) had not yet come into existence. England, France and Germany were simply non est.
Now, the history of India before 1000 A. D. has not yet been completely constructed, and who knows but that by future researches some other Samundra Guptas may be discovered? But in any case, the point is not so very important. In that sense even now, India may not be called a complete political
- ↑ First Edition, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1905.
