160 V. A. Smith— Gold Coins of the Imperial Gupta Dynasty. [No. 2, 
Pataliputra, by reason of its ancient importance, must have been one of 
the chief cities in the Gupta dominions. We are not, however, alto¬ 
gether restricted to indirect inference for proof of this fact. 
The inscription on the back of the Tawa cave at Udayagiri near 
Bhilsa records that the cave was made by one Saba, whose ancestral 
name was Virasena a poet, and a resident of Pataliputra, who had come 
thither with his king, Chandra Gupta.^ 
The broken inscription at Garhwa near Allahabad, which appears 
to belong, like that in the Tawa cave, to the reign of Chandra Gupta II, 
mentions Pataliputra at the end of the eleventh line, but the inscrip¬ 
tion is so mutilated that the context cannot be made out.f 
The inscriptions which give the genealogy of the Gupta family inform 
us that Kumari Devi, the queen of Chandra Gupta I, was the daughter 
of Lichchhavi, an assertion which is fully confirmed by the legend 
‘ Kumari Devi Lichchhavayah ’ on the gold coins. It is highly probable 
that the lapidary and numismatic record means that the queen belonged 
to the Lichchhavi family of Kshatriyas who resided at Vaisali, and are 
famous for their devotion to the Buddha in earlier times. Vaisali is the 
modern Besarh or Besadh, 27 miles distant from Patna, {Gunn. Arch. Bep. 
Vol. I, p. 55), and, if the identity of the Lichchhavi family in Buddhist and 
Gupta times be admitted, the alliance of the Gupta kings with that 
family is another indication that their capital was at or near Patna. I 
may note in passing that the alliance is also a proof that the Guptas were 
a Kshatriya family, and not either S^iidras or foreigners. The narrative 
of I-tsing (circa 690-700 A. D.) shows that the dominions of STi Gupta, 
the founder of the dynasty, were situated in Magadha, *and included Bud¬ 
dha Gaya. He says, “ All parts of the world have their appropriate tem¬ 
ples, except China, so that priests from that country have many hard¬ 
ships to endure. Eastward, about forty stages (scil. yojanas'] following 
the course of the Ganges, we come to the Mrigasikavana Temple. Not 
far from this is a ruined establishment called the Tchina Temple. The 
old tradition says that formerly a Maharaja called S'ri Gupta built this 
for the priests of China. At this time some Chinese priests, some twenty 
men or so came from Sz’chuan to the Mahabodhi Temple to pay worship 
to it, on which the king, seeing their piety, gave them as a gift this plot 
of land. The land now belongs to the king of Eastern India, whose name 
is Deva Varmma.” (J. B. A. 8. Fok XIII, N. S. pp. 57i, 572J. This 
putra was the city referred to. If that supposition be correct, Pataliputra must 
have been the Gupta capital, at the period indicated, for at that period it was cer¬ 
tainly under Gupta rule. 
* Cunningham, Arch. Rep. X, pp. 51, 52. 
f Cunningham, Arch. Rep. Ill, 57. 
