GUNTUR, a town and district of British India, in the Madras presidency. The town (pop. in 1901, 30,833) has a station on the Bellary-Bezwada branch of the Southern Mahratta railway. It is situated east of the Kondavid hills, and is very healthy. It appears to have been founded in the 18th century by the French. At the time of the cession of the Circars to the English in 1765, Guntur was specially exempted during the life of Basalat Jang, whose personal jagir it was. In 1788 it came into British possession, the cession being finally confirmed in 1823. It has an important trade in cotton, with presses and ginning factories. There is a second-grade college supported by the American Lutheran Mission. Until 1859, Guntur was the headquarters of a district of the same name, and in 1904 a new District of Guntur was constituted, covering territory which till then had been divided between Kistna and Nellore. Area, 5733 sq. m. The population on this area in 1901 was 1,490,635. The district is bounded on the E. and N. by the river Kistna; in the W. a considerable part of the boundary is formed by the Gundlakamma river. The greater part consists of a fertile plain irrigated by canals from the Kistna, and producing cotton, rice and other crops.
GUPTA, an empire and dynasty of northern India, which lasted from about A.D. 320 to 480. The dynasty was founded by Chandragupta I., who must not be confounded with his famous predecessor Chandragupta Maurya. He gave his name to the Gupta era, which continued in use for several centuries, dating from the 26th of February, A.D. 320. Chandragupta was succeeded by Samudragupta (c. A.D. 326-375), one of the greatest of Indian kings, who conquered nearly the whole of India, and whose alliances extended from the Oxus to Ceylon; but his name was at one time entirely lost to history, and has only been recovered of recent years from coins and inscriptions. His empire rivalled that of Asoka, extending from the Hugli on the east to the Jumna and Chambal on the west, and from the foot of the Himalayas on the north to the Nerbudda on the south. His son Chandragupta II. (c. A.D. 375-413) was also known as Vikra-Maditya (q.v.), and seems to have been the original of the mythical Hindu king of that name. About 388 he conquered the Saka satrap of Surashtra (Kathiawar) and penetrated to the Arabian Sea. His administration is described in the work of Fa-hien, the earliest Chinese pilgrim, who visited India in A.D. 405-411. Pataliputra was the capital of the dynasty, but Ajodhya seems to have been sometimes used by both Samudragupta and Chandragupta II. as the headquarters of government. The Gupta dynasty appears to have fostered a revival of Brahmanism at the expense of Buddhism, and to have given an impulse to art and literature. The golden age of the empire lasted from A.D. 330 to 455, beginning to decline after the latter date. When Skandagupta came to the throne in 455, India was threatened with an irruption of the White Huns, on whom he inflicted a severe defeat, thus saving his kingdom for a time; but about 470 the White Huns (see [Ephthalites]) returned to the attack, and the empire was gradually destroyed by their repeated inroads. When Skandagupta died about 480, the Gupta empire came to an end, but the dynasty continued to rule in the eastern provinces for several generations. The last known prince of the imperial line of Guptas was Kamaragupta II. (c. 535), after whom it passed “by an obscure transition” into a dynasty of eleven Gupta princes, known as “the later Guptas of Magadha,” who seem for the most part to have been merely local rulers of Magadha. One of them, however, Adityasena, after the death of the paramount sovereign in 648, asserted his independence. The last known Gupta king was Jivitagupta II., who reigned early in the 8th century. About the middle of the century Magadha passed under the sway of the Pal kings of Bengal.
See J. F. Fleet, Gupta Inscriptions (1888); and Vincent A. Smith, The Early History of India (2nd ed., Oxford, 1908), pp. 264-295.
GURA, EUGEN (1842-1906), German singer, was born near Saatz in Bohemia, and educated at first for the career of a painter at Vienna and Munich; but later, developing a fine baritone voice, he took up singing and studied it at the Munich Conservatorium. In 1865 he made his début at the Munich opera, and in the following years he gained the highest reputation in Germany, being engaged principally at Leipzig till 1876 and then at Hamburg till 1883. He sang in 1876 in the Ring at Bayreuth, and was famous for his Wagnerian rôles; and his Hans Sachs in Meistersinger, as performed in London in 1882, was magnificent. In later years he showed the perfection of art in his singing of German Lieder. He died in Bavaria on the 26th of August 1906.
GURDASPUR, a town and district of British India, in the Lahore division of the Punjab. The town had a population in 1901 of 5764. It has a fort (now containing a Brahman monastery) which was famous for the siege it sustained in 1712 from the Moguls. The Sikh leader, Banda, was only reduced by starvation, when he and his men were tortured to death after capitulating.
The District comprises an area of 1889 sq. m. It is bounded on the N. by the native states of Kashmir and Chamba, on the E. by Kangra district and the river Beas, on the S.W. by Amritsar district, and on the W. by Sialkot, and occupies the submontane portion of the Bari Doab, or tract between the Beas and the Ravi. An intrusive spur of the British dominions runs northward into the lower Himalayan ranges, to include the mountain sanatorium of Dalhousie, 7687 ft. above sea-level. This station, which has a large fluctuating population during the warmer months, crowns the most westerly shoulder of a magnificent snowy range, the Dhaoladhar, between which and the plain two minor ranges intervene. Below the hills stretches a picturesque and undulating plateau covered with abundant timber, made green by a copious rainfall, and watered by the streams of the Bari Doab, which, diverted by dams and embankments, now empty their waters into the Beas directly, in order that their channels may not interfere with the Bari Doab canal. The district contains several large jhils or swampy lakes, and is famous for its snipe-shooting. It is historically important in connexion with the rise of the Sikh confederacy. The whole of the Punjab was then distributed among the Sikh chiefs who triumphed over the imperial governors. In the course of a few years, however, the maharaja Ranjit Singh acquired all the territory which those chiefs had held. Pathankot and the neighbouring villages in the plain, together with the whole hill portion of the district, formed part of the area ceded by the Sikhs to the British after the first Sikh war in 1846. In 1862, after receiving one or two additions, the district was brought into its present shape. In 1901 the population was 940,334, showing a slight decrease, compared with an increase of 15% in the previous decade. A branch of the North-Western railway runs through the district. The largest town and chief commercial centre is Batala. There are important woollen mills at Dhariwal, and besides their products the district exports cotton, sugar, grain and oil-seeds.