THE HISTORY OF KATHIAWAD slow to take advantage of this intercourse, and the stimula- tion given to trade had the effect of making Saurashtra the best known and perhaps one of the richest provinces under the Magadh dominion. In AJX 413 Chandra Gupta II died, and his son Kumara Gupta wielded the sceptre of his father. Of his rule very scanty informa- tion has been handed down to history, but when he died in A.D. 455 it was to pass on to his successor, Skanda Gupta, the very serious task of preserving the unity of the Empire against the onslaught of the Huns. The savage hordes constituting these people poured into India from the Steppes of Central Asia, and came very near to conquering the Magadh Empire. Skanda Gupta, however, defeated them with much loss, and for ten or twelve years they were unable to renew the struggle. This victory was gained within two years of his succession to the throne, for the third and last of the inscriptions on the Asoka stone at Junagadh, dated A.D. 457, states that he had " already humbled his enemies." This inscription records the bursting of the dam of the Sudarsana Lake in the year of Skanda Gupta's succession. He had appointed one Parnadatta to the post of Viceroy of the Western provinces, who in his turn had made his son, Chakrapalita, Governor of Wamansthali. On the bursting of the dam, Chakrapalita had lost no time in setting to work to restore it. This was successfully done and the great work was commemo- rated by the building of a temple to Vishnu, and by the writing of the inscription on a vacant portion of the stone set up by Asoka. This inscription consists of twenty-nine lines, written in the Sanskrit language, and it has been translated as follows: Glory. Vishnu who snatched from Bali, for the happiness of Indra, that wealth which is worthy of 32