256 THE GUPTA EMPIRE east to the Jumna and Chambal on the west, and from the foot of the Himalayas on the north to the Narmada on the south. Beyond these wide limits, the frontier kingdoms of Assam and the Ganges delta, as well as those on the southern slopes of the Himalayas, and the free tribes of Rajputana and Malwa, were attached to the empire by bonds of subordinate alliance, while almost all the kingdoms of the south had been overrun by the em- peror's armies and compelled to acknowledge his irre- sistible might. The empire thus defined was by far the greatest that had been seen in India since the days of Asoka, six centuries before, and its possession naturally enti- tled Samudragupta to the respect of foreign powers. We are not, therefore, surprised to learn that he main- tained diplomatic relations with the Kushan King of Gandhar and Kabul, and the greater sovereign of the same race who ruled on the banks of the Oxus, as well as with Ceylon and other distant islands. Communication between the King of Ceylon and Samudragupta had been established accidentally at a very early period in the reign of the latter, about 330 A. D. Meghavarna, the Buddhist King of Ceylon, had sent two monks, one of whom is said to have been his brother, to do homage to the Diamond Throne and visit the monastery built by Asoka to the east of the sacred tree at Bodh Gaya. The strangers, perhaps by reason of sectarian rancour, met with scant hospitality, and on their return to the island complained to the
