1884.] V. A. Smith —Gold Corns of the Imperial Gupta Dynasty. 159 
The districts around Benares are rich in remains of ancient cities, 
and at present it does not seem possible to fix on any one of these with 
certainty as the Gupta capital. Very probably there was more than 
one capital, even at one and the same time, in the same way as Mahoba, 
Khajuraho, and Kalinjar may be appropriately described as respectively 
the civil, religious, and military capitals of the Chandel kingdom in 
Bundelkhand during medieeval times. 
If a choice must be made, I should be inclined to fix upon Patali- 
putra (Patna) as the headquarters of the eastern dominions of the 
Gupta kings.* It is a little east of the places where the gold coins have 
been most often found, but is sufficiently near those places to make it 
quite credible that it was the capital city and chief mint. It must be 
remembered that the ancient Pataliputra has been almost entirely carried 
away by the Ganges,f and that consequently treasure trove is naturally 
scarce in the city which is its modern representative. No argument is 
needed to show that in the time of the Mauryas Pataliputra deserved to 
be called ‘the Delhi of the Hindus.’ It was still a city in the time of 
Fa-Hian (400 A. D.), but, when Hwen Thsang visited the spot in 632 A. D., 
the once splendid metropolis had been reduced to a squalid village.;]: 
The cause of its ruin is not known, but I would conjecture that the White 
Huns may have destroyed the famous city. 
General Cunningham has pointed out that the account of another 
Chinese traveller indicates that Pataliputra was still flourishing as the 
capital of a great kingdom between the years 222 and 280 A. D., and has 
conjectured that the king referred to by the Chinese author was Kumara 
Gupta Mahendra and that “ the decline of Pataliputra was due to the 
fall of the great Gupta dynasty and the consequent removal of the seat 
of government to. another place.”§ It will be admitted by all that 
p. 153 note) appears, so far as it goes, to indicate that they were issued from the 
same mints as the gold coins. The silver coinage was evidently provincial. 
* Wilford long ago fixed on Patna as the Grupta capital, but in doing so was 
guided by a mistaken notion that Padmavati was an equivalent of Pataliputra {Wil¬ 
son's Vishnu Purdna, 4to. edn. p. 480, note 70). I find that the late Mr. Wilton Oldham 
also speaks of “the Glupta dynasty, the capital of which was in Magadha or Bihar, 
the city of Pataliputra, or the modern Patna” {Hist, and Stat. Memoir of the Ghdzi- 
pur District. Part I. p. 38 ). Ayodhya was probably one of the chief cities of 
the Guptas. 
f Arch. Rep. VIII, pp. XII, and 24. 
J McCrindle, Ancient India, p. 207, note. 
§ Cunningham, Arch. Rep. XI, 153. An English rendering of Stanislas Julien’s 
revised version of the Chinese text is given in the Indian Antiquary, Yol. IX (1880) 
p. 17. An earlier version will be found in J. A. S. B., Yol. YI. pp. 61-75. The 
Chinese author does not specify Pataliputra by name, but it is probable that Patali- 
X 
