Page:History of India Vol 2.djvu/320

 278 THE GUPTA EMPIRE AND THE WHITE HUNS although apparently perfectly tolerant both of Bud- dhism and Jainism, were themselves beyond question zealous Hindus, guided by Brahman advisers, and skilled in Sanskrit, the language of the pandits. An early stage in the reaction against Buddhist con- demnation of sacrifice had been marked by Pushya- mitra's celebration of the horse-sacrifice toward the close of the second century. In the fourth, Samudra- gupta revived the same ancient rite with added splen- dour, and in the fifth, his grandson repeated the solemnity. Without going further into detail, the mat- ter may be summed up in the remark that coins, in- scriptions, and monuments agree in furnishing abundant evidence of the recrudescence during the Gupta period of Brahmanical Hinduism at the expense of Buddhism, and of the favour shown by the ruling powers to " classical " Sanskrit at the expense of the more popu- lar literary dialects, which had enjoyed the patronage of the Andhra kings. Good reasons can be adduced for the belief that Chandragupta H Vikramaditya, who reigned at the close of the fourth and the beginning of the fifth cen- tury and conquered Ujjain, should be regarded as the original of the Raja Bikram of Ujjain, famed in popu- lar legend, at whose court the Nine Gems of Sanskrit literature are supposed to have flourished. Whether Kalidasa, poet and dramatist, the most celebrated of these authors, actually graced the durbar of Chandra- gupta Vikramaditya at Ujjain, or lived under the pro- tection of his son or grandson, is a question still open,