गुप्त अभिलेख संग्रह (जे. एफ. फ्लीट - गुप्त सम्राटों एवं परवर्ती नरेशों के ऐतिहासिक पाषाण व ताम्रलेख)

132 CORPUS INSCRIPTIONUM INDICARUM, VOL. III.
should have to allot to each of the four Early Gupta kings in question. And even this
result is due chiefly to the extraordinarily long reign of Vikramâditya VI., for fifty-two
years, from Śaka-Saṁvat 997 to 1048. If we take the whole period of the Western
Châlukya dynasty, covering one hundred and ninety years, from Śaka-Saṁvat 895, the
first year of Taila II., down to Śaka-Saṁvat 1084, as the end of the reign and the death
of Taila III.,¹ we have ten reigns, with an average duration of just nineteen years each.
An average of thirty-two years for four successive reigns of Hindu fathers and sons, seems,
from every point of view, an impossibility. And this prevents our making the Gupta era
run from the commencement of the reign of Chandragupta I. We must, therefore,
accept it as certain that the Early Guptas only adopted the era of some other
dynasty. And we must look for its origin to some extraneous source.
Now, it is evident that the Early Guptas rose to power first as feudatory Ma-
hârâjas, the third of whom, Chandragupta I., while holding that same rank, established his
independence; so that, his successors maintaining the same position, the paramount titles,
and not his original feudatory title, are always coupled with his name in the genealogical
passages in their records. And, from the Mahârâja Gupta down to Kumâragupta, we
have two feudatory governments and four reigns; which, at the average rate of twenty
years, almost fill up the period indicated by the latest certain date for Kumâragupta, and,
by a coincidence, place the commencement of the government of the Mahârâja Gupta
very near to A.D. 320. If, then, we could determine the paramount sovereign of whom
the Mahârâja Gupta was a feudatory, we should have in him the founder of the era; pro-
vided we could only shew that his successors also dated their records in it. And the only
difficulty then remaining, would be,—When Chandragupta I. and his descendants had
asserted themselves as independent sovereigns, by rebellion against their masters, why
should they continue to use a purely dynastic era, which had only been running for a short
time and had certainly not become an astronomical era, and which would always remind them
of the originally subordinate status of their ancestors; instead of establishing a new era
of their own, or instead of adopting some well-known era, of general use, which could
evoke no reminiscence of a humiliating kind?² The Early Gupta records, however, throw
no light on this point; nor can we expect any, unless we obtain inscriptions of the time of
the Mahârâjas Gupta and Ghaṭôtkacha, or of the early years of Chandragupta I. And at

---

¹ I exclude the short reign of Sômêśvara IV., from Śaka-Saṁvat 1104 to about 1111, because there
had been meanwhile an interruption of the Western Châlukya power by the Kalachuris of the
Dekkan.
² An objection of this sort does not apply to the use of the Gupta era by the Valabhî family. The
Sênâpati Bhaṭârka drove out the invaders who had overthrown the Gupta sovereignty in Western
India; and may possibly have been himself the feudatory of some descendant of the original Gupta
stock. And when Dharasêna IV. became a paramount sovereign, it was on the disruption of the
Kanauj kingdom. At neither point was there any reason for the members of this family to feel any
ersion to the Gupta era.