710 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
the whole of north-western India, including northern Sind, the Punjab and perhaps Benares. There was a considerable trade between India and the Roman Empire at this period and an embassy was sent to Trojan, apparently by Kanishka (c. 78-123), the successor of Kadphises. This monarch played a part in the later history of Buddhism comparable with that of Asoka in earlier ages. [1] He waged war with the Parthians and Chinese, and his Empire which had its capital at Peshawar included Afghanistan, Bactria, Kashgar, Yarkhand, Khotan [2] and Kashmir. These dominions, which perhaps extended as far as Gaya in the east, were retained by his successors Huvishka (123-140 A. D.) and Vasudeva (140-178 A. D.) but after this period the Andhra and Kushan dynasties both collapsed as Indian powers, although Kushan kings continued to rule in Kabul. The reasons of their fall are unknown but may be connected with the rise of the Sassanids in Persia. For more than a century, the political history of India is a blank and little can be said except that the kingdom of Surastra continued to exist under a Saka dynasty.
Light returns with the rise of the Gupta dynasty, which roughly marks the beginning of modern Hinduism and of a reaction against Buddhism. Though nothing is known of the fortunes of Patali-putra, the ancient imperial city of the Mauryas, during the first three centuries of our era, it continued to exist. In
320 a local Raja known as Candragupta I increased his dominions and celebrated his coronation by the institution of the Gupta era. His son Samudra Gupta continued his conquests and in the course of an extraordinary campaign, concluded about 340 A. D. appears to have received the submission of almost the whole peninsula. He made no attempt to retain all this territory but his effective authority was exercised in a wide district extending from the Hugli to the rivers Jumna and Chambal in the west and from the Himalayas to the Narbuda. His son Candragupta II or Vikramaditya added to these possessions Malwa, Gujarat and Kathiawar and for more than half a century the Guptas ruled undisturbed over nearly all northern India except
1 Fleet and Franke consider that Kanishka preceded the two Kadphises and began to reign about 58 B. C.
2 . He appears to have been defeated in these regions by the Chinese general Pan-chao about 90 A. D. but to have been more successful about fifteen years later.