Ancient & Medieval History · Rise of the Guptas & Political History
UPSC Prelims 2025, Question 15
The concept being tested: Chandragupta II's reign and foreign contacts.
Fa-hien (Faxian), the Chinese pilgrim, travelled to India during the reign of
Options
- ASamudragupta
- BChandragupta IICorrect answer
- CKumaragupta I
- DSkandagupta
The answer: Chandragupta II
Fa-hien travelled through India between roughly 399 and 414 CE, entering via the northwest and leaving by sea from Tamralipti after visiting Sri Lanka. That window falls squarely inside the reign of Chandragupta II, dated to about 380-415 CE. Fa-hien's own account, the Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms, describes exactly the conditions historians attribute to Chandragupta II's rule: general prosperity, a mild penal code with no capital punishment for ordinary offences, free hospitals and rest-houses for travellers, and Chandalas living segregated outside towns. Chandragupta II, who also carried the title Vikramaditya after his conquest of the Shaka satraps of Malwa and Gujarat, was thus the ruling Gupta emperor throughout Fa-hien's entire stay, which settles the question in his favour.
What UPSC was testing
UPSC often builds this distractor set around the common confusion between Fa-hien, who visited Chandragupta II in the Gupta period, and Hiuen Tsang, who visited Harshavardhana over two centuries later; aspirants who only remember 'a Chinese pilgrim visited a Gupta king' without pinning the exact ruler and dates fall for the wrong option.
How often this comes up
This concept has appeared 5 times in UPSC Prelims General Studies Paper I between 2015 and 2025 — in 2019, 2020, 2024 and 2025.
The option-by-option autopsy for this question — why each of the other three is wrong, and which neighbouring concept each one was built from — is in the app.