CHAPTER I.
THE CHRONOLOGY.
The century which preceded the final rise of Magadha as the leader of the nations of Northern India is yet one of the darkest periods of Indian History. The series of epigraphs which illustrate the history of the Imperial Great Kuṣāṇas at Mathuāa end abruptly towards the close of the second century A.D. For Western India we possess an almost complete series of dated coins of the later Western Kṣatrapas, for the Panjab we have the coins of the Later Great Kuṣāṇas and the Kidāras, but for Eastern India we possess nothing. In the beginning of the fourth century A.D., a strong flood of light is suddenly thrown on the history of North Eastern India with the rise of the Gupta dynasty. Nothing is known about the antecedents of Candragupta I except that his ancestors were petty landholders with the rank of Mahārāja. In the fourth century A.D., this title had ceased to denote the Imperial rank or even that of an independent prince and had been bestowed on provincial governors by the later emperors of the Gupta dynasty. Some writers even suppose that the ancestors of Candragupta I were people of humble origin and even the humble title of Maharaja had been bestowed upon them as an
