Ramagupta

Ramagupta (IAST: Rāma-gupta; r. c. late 4th century CE), according to the Sanskrit play Devichandraguptam, was an emperor of the Gupta dynasty of northern India. The surviving fragments of the play, combined with other literary evidence, suggest that he agreed to surrender his wife Dhruvadevi to a Shaka enemy: However, his brother Chandragupta II killed the Shaka enemy, and later dethroned him, marrying Dhruvadevi.

The official Gupta genealogy does not mention Ramagupta, and therefore, the historicity of the Devichandraguptam narrative is debated. Several other sources refer to the events mentioned in the play, but these sources do not mention Ramagupta by name, and may be based on the play itself. Three undated inscriptions, written in a variety of the Gupta script and discovered in central India, mention a king called Ramagupta: this seems to attest the existence of a Gupta emperor named Ramagupta, although it does not conclusively prove the historicity of the Devichandraguptam story. Some coins discovered in central India have also been attributed to Ramagupta, but this attribution has not been unanimously accepted by modern historians.