Page:History of India Vol 2.djvu/323

SKANDAGUPTA AND THE HUNS 281 When Skandagupta came to the throne in the spring of 455, he encountered a sea of troubles. The Pushya- mitra danger had been averted, but one more formid- able closely followed it, an irruption of the savage Huns, who had poured down from the steppes of Central Asia through the northwestern passes, and carried devasta- tion over the smiling plains and crowded cities of India. Skandagupta, who was probably a man of mature years and ripe experience, proved equal to the need, and inflicted upon the barbarians a defeat so decisive that India was saved for a time. It is evident that this great victory over the Huns must have been gained at the very beginning of the new reign, because another inscription, executed in the year 457, recites Skandagupta 's defeat of the bar- barians, and recognizes his undisputed possession of the peninsula of Surashtra (Kathiawar), at the extreme western extremity of the empire. The dedication, three years afterward, by a private Jain donor of a sculptured column at a village in the east of the Gforakhpur Dis- trict, distant about ninety miles from Patna, testifies to the fact that Skandagupta 's rule at this early period of his reign included the eastern as well as the western provinces, and the record expressly characterizes the rule of the reigning sovereign as being " tranquil." Five years later, in the year 465, a pious Brahman in the country between the Ganges and Jumna, which is now known as the Bulandshahr District, when endow- ing a temple to the Sun, felt justified in describing the rule of his king in the central parts of the empire as