# Chandragupta I and the Gupta era
**चंद्रगुप्त प्रथम और गुप्त संवत**

- Canonical page: https://indianepics.online/event/gupta-era-320/
- Chapter: [Gupta and the classical age](https://indianepics.online/chapter/classical.md)
- Track: evidence (archaeology and documents)
- When: 319 CE – 320 CE
- Where: Pataliputra (Patna), Bihar (25.61, 85.14)
- Tags: political, state-formation

## Summary

The Gupta era begins in 319-320 CE, most likely with Chandragupta I's accession; coins show his marriage to a Licchavi princess.

गुप्त संवत 319-320 ई. में आरंभ होता है, संभवतः चंद्रगुप्त प्रथम के राज्यारोहण से; सिक्कों पर लिच्छवि राजकुमारी से उसका विवाह अंकित है।

## Account

Gupta inscriptions are dated in an era whose first year began in 319-320 CE. Fleet fixed the epoch in 1888 from the dated inscriptions and al-Biruni's eleventh-century account of it. The first of the family to take the title maharajadhiraja, king of great kings, was Chandragupta I, and the era is generally counted from his accession, though no inscription says so.

Gold coins of the king-and-queen type show Chandragupta with Kumaradevi and name her people, the Licchavis, the old ruling clan of Vaishali; his son Samudragupta called himself the daughter's son of the Licchavis. The marriage probably brought the Guptas land and prestige in north Bihar. Whether the coins were struck by Chandragupta or by his son in his memory is debated, and where the family began, Magadha or the country around Prayaga, is unknown.

## Sources

- Fleet, J. F., Corpus Inscriptionum Indicarum, vol. 3: Inscriptions of the Early Gupta Kings and Their Successors (1888) — https://archive.org/details/india.history.resource.498
- Thapar, R., Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300 (2002)

## Image

Queen Kumaradevi and King Chandragupta I on a coin. Uploadalt, CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AQueen_Kumaradevi_and_King_Chandragupta_I_on_a_coin.jpg

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