Scarcely, however; unless the fairy god-mother had worked hard, since the bride's race warrants us in presupposing beauty. Even now, says a contemporary witness, "the delicate features and brilliantly fair complexion of the Lichchâvi women are remarkable." Anyhow, the immediate result of what must have been a love match was the appearance for the first and last time in Indian History of a veritable Prince Consort, who, though calling himself king, struck coins which bore the name of his queen as well as his own, and whose son claimed succession as the "son of the daughter of the Lichchâvis." Indeed, save as husband and father, Chandra-gûpta, the first of the Gûpta race, has little claim on attention. After the fashion of Prince Consorts, he is more or less of a figure-head, though the prospects of his dynasty were considered sufficiently dignified and secure to permit of his coronation date being made the beginning of yet another of the many Indian eras; one which has, however, passed entirely out of use. Chandra-gûpta seems to have died when still quite a young man, leaving his son, apparently quite a boy, to reign in his stead. A precocious stripling this Samûdra-gupta, who was to fill the throne of India as it has seldom been filled for more than half a century. Possibly there may have been some interval of Regency with the Queen-Mother at its back, but one of the most curious features in this fifty-year-long reign, is that we know nothing of it from the words of any historian, that we gather no allusion to it from any contemporaneous literature. Our knowledge, which year by year increases, comes from coins, from inscriptions; notably from a pillar which now stands in the fort at Allahabad. Originally incised and set up by Asôka six centuries earlier, Samûdra-gupta's court panegyrist has used its waste space for a record of his master's great deeds. A quaint contrast; since these were chiefly bloody wars, and Asôka everywhere was a peace propagandist. In truth, Samûdra-gupta appears to have been an Indian Alexander. What he saw he coveted, what he coveted he conquered. From this same pillar we learn that his empire included all India as far south as Malabar, as far north as Assam and Nepaul. It was thus larger than any since the days of Asôka, though the southward sweep of Samûdra-gupta's victorious armies cannot, in the nature of things, have been much more than a raid. A campaign, involving fully 3,000 miles of marching, which cannot have occupied less than three years, and the furthest limit of which lands one more than 1,200 miles from one's base, must be a mere march to victory and a retreat with spoils. The record of this march is fairly complete. The courtly panegyrist's stilted verses tell us in detail of Tiger-Kings subdued, of homage and tribute; but, so far as this slight history is concerned, all we need picture to ourselves is an apparently invincible hero, laden with loot from all the treasures of the south.