The present research work on the Imperial Guptas by Professor S.R. Goyal will blaze, we believe, a new trail in the historiography of ancient Indian political history, for it looks upon the history of the Imperial Guptas not from the traditional ‘what and when happened approach’ but from multidisciplinary integral standpoint in which main political developments and events are put in their proper context by an analysis of their determining influences – social, economic, religious, geographical, etc. with the help of other branches of knowledge, of course without overlooking the need of reconsidering the ‘what and when happened’ problems afresh, wherever necessary. For example, on such problems as the social origin and original home of the Guptas, location of their capital, Chandragupta I – Kumaradevi coins, early and later chronology of the Gupta, place of Kacha in Gupta history, nature of Samudragupta’s conquests and empire, place of Ramagupta in Gupta dynasty, indentity of Chandra of the Meharauli prasasti, place of Prakasaditya in Gupta history, Gupta-Vakataka relations, impact of religion and feudalism on Gupta history and political ideology and culture, contribution of the Guptas to the Vikramaditya legend, etc. the author has made interesting and cogent suggestions. Unlike Marxist historians who explain political events and developments by looking at them only in the light of changes in production relations, the author of the present work has tried to study the colour scheme of the variegated canvas of the Gupta history in totality and read the meaning of the relation of the central picture with every component of its background. In such a venture none can claim finality but the author of the present work hopes and believes that his work is the most up-to-date study of the political history of the Guptas, that it takes into consideration the recent-most discoveries of sources and that solutions he has offered to various problems are not only logical but are also without prejudice to other alternatives which may be offered by other scholars now or when fresh data and new facts come to light.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR S R Goyal
Professor S.R. Goyal is the retired Professor and Head, Department of History, J.N.V. University, Jodhpur. Described as ‘one of the five best recent historians of ancient India’ by Professor David N. Lorenzen, the great Mexican Orientalist, Professor Goyal combines all the qualities associated with scientific scholarship. He has authored more than thirty voluminous works and over 150 research papers which cover so diverse fields as political history, religious history, literature, biographies, numismatics and epigraphy. He was honoured with the General Presidentship of the Silver Jubilee Congress of the Epigraphical Society of India held at Udupi in 1999 and was elected the Honorary fellow of the Society. His doctoral thesis, A History of the Imperial Guptas (1967), was acclaimed as ‘the best analysis of the Gupta Period which I have ever read†by Professor A.L. Basham (National Professor of Australia) and as ‘imaginative’, ‘well-written’ and ‘a model of historiography’ by Professor Eleanor Zelliot (Minnesota, U.S.A.). The varaious theories propounded in it are described by Professor R.C. Majumdar as ‘deserving very careful consideration’. Among his other major works are included three corpus-like volumes on ancient Indian inscriptions, two volumes respectively on Kautilya and Megasthenes, a three volume authoritative study of ancient Indian history in about two thousand pages, a three volume study of ancient Indian numismatics, and four volumes on great rulers of ancient India. Professor Goyal is deeply involved with the study of the history of Indian religions. Apart from the present monograph he has published two volumes entitled A Religious History of Ancient India (Vol. I, 1984; Vol. II, 1986), and Harsha and Buddhism (1986). All these works of his have been highly acclaimed and admired both in India and abroad. Professor Goyal has been honoured with several Festschrifts, including Reappraising Gupta History for S.R. Goyal (ed. By Professor B.Ch. Chhabra et al) for S.R. Goyal : His Multidimensional Historiography (ed. By Professor Jagannath Agarwal and Dr. Shankar Goyal). A four volume Festschrift in his honour entitled Sriramabhinandam (Reconstructing Indian History for S.R. Goyal) has recently been published.
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