The Gupta Empire: Reunification and the Classical Golden Age

Chandragupta I founded the Gupta Empire around 320 CE, consolidating his power in Magadha through a strategic marriage alliance with the Licchavi princess Kumaradevi and adopting the grand title "Maharajadhiraja," king of kings, in deliberate echo of the Mauryas. His son Samudragupta (r. c. 335-375 CE) transformed this regional base into a dominant pan-Indian power through decades of military campaigning, recorded in vivid detail on the Allahabad Prashasti inscription; he annexed kingdoms across northern India outright while merely imposing tribute on defeated rulers of the Deccan, a conquest record that earned him from a later British historian the epithet "the Napoleon of India."