纪录片《大英博物馆世界简史》 042鸠摩罗笈多王一世金币（7）（在线收听）

Under the Guptas, the central deities of Hinduism and their worship assumed a form that has dominated the religious landscape of India from that day to this, and in recent years, this Hindu aspect of the Gupta's religious activities has loomed large in historians' accounts of their reign. As the Delhi-based historian Romila Thapar explains, the Guptas continue to make their presence felt in India today, not only in the monuments left behind, but also in the way that the period is used politically:

在笈多王朝的统治下，印度教的主神及其供奉方式成为定制，至今仍支配着印度的宗教格局。近年来，不少历史学家都在探讨笈多王朝中的印度教活动。新德里贾瓦哈拉尔尼赫鲁大学古印度史荣誉退休教授罗米拉塔帕解释说，在今天的印度还能感受到笈多王朝的存在，不仅因为他们留下的建筑物，也包括一些政治方式：

"When colonial history began to be written, and then there was nationalist historical writing, the Gupta period was latched on to as the golden age. There has grown in India in the last few decades, a way of thinking which has been called Hindutva, which is an attempt to suggest that the only person that has legitimacy as a citizen of India, is the Hindu, because the Hindu is supposed to be the indigenous inhabitant.Everybody else-the Muslims, the Christians, the Parsees-all came later and came from outside, they were foreign. Never mind the fact that they are all, 99 per cent of them, of Indian blood. And the Gupta period then came in for a great deal of attention as a result of this kind of thinking."

在开始记述印度殖民史时，有一种民族主义的书写方式将笈多王朝称为黄金时代。过去几十年，一种叫印度教徒主义的理论逐渐壮大，他们认为只有印度教信徒才是印度的合法居民。因为只有印度教是土生土长的。穆斯林、基督徒、祆教徒都是后期从国外来的。可他们却没考虑过这些教徒中99%都是纯印度人。正是因为这种思潮，笈多王朝重新受到重视。

This seems surprising, because as the two coins we've looked at show, the Guptas not only established temple Hinduism in something like its modern form, but they also honoured older religious traditions, and were generous protectors of both Buddhism and Jainism.

这实在令人惊讶。正如我们的金币所示，笈多王朝虽然建立了印度教的全新形式，但他们也尊奉旧有的宗教传统。同时，他们还大力保护与耆那教，并无排外性。