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

THE GUPTA INSCRIPTIONS; INTRODUCTION. 133
present, in connection with India itself, we know of no king the commencement of whose
reign can with any certainty be referred to A.D. 320; and of no historical event to which
we can safely allot that date. Nor, while the Early Gupta sovereignty continued, is there
any indication of the Gupta era having been used, in India, by any other independent
dynasty. The nearest approximation to the year in question that we have, is in the case
of the Kalachuri dynasty of Central India; in respect of which certain points in the
records of the Parivrâjaka Mahârâjas and the Mahârâjas of Uchchakalpa do tend to
support the actual existence, in the Early Gupta period, of a Kalachuri era, and,
consequently, of Kalachuri kings under some earlier name.¹ The Kalachuri dates,
however, certainly cannot be referred to the Gupta epoch. And circumstances indicate
that the dominion of the Kalachuri kings, at that time, was confined entirely to the more
eastern parts of Central India; so that they were only contemporaries of the northern
dynasty of which the Early Guptas were at first the servants. Mr. Fergusson's opinion,²
again, was in the direction of the era being established, with the foundation of Valabhî as
a new capital of Western India, by the Andhra king Gôtamiputra, whom he placed³
between A.D. 312 and 333; the Mahârâja Gupta being a feudatory of him or of one of
his immediate successors. But the chronology of the Andhras,—who, at the best, seem
to have been too essentially a western and southern dynasty to be concerned in any lead-
ing way with the history of Northern India,—still remains to be finally determined. And
Dr. R. G. Bhandarkar, who has given more consideration to the subject than any one else
as yet, places Gôtamiputra about two centuries earlier,⁴ in the period A.D. 133 to 154;
and, according to his view of the early chronology, we should have to refer the establish-
ment of the Gupta era to some event connected with either the downfal of the Kshatrapas
of Saurâshṭra or the history of the Râshṭrakûṭas of the Dekkan. The Kshatrapas, how-
ever, certainly did not use the Gupta era. And there is not the slightest particle of
evidence that the Râshṭrakûṭas ever had an era of their own. There can be but little doubt
that the real paramount lords of the Mahârâjas Gupta and Ghaṭôtkacha, and at first of
Chandragupta I. himself, were some of the later Indo-Scythian kings of Northern India,
whose duration is certain at any rate up to the time of Samudragupta. These Indo-
Scythian kings must have used the Śaka era. But this era, again, had not then become
an astronomical era;⁵ and there was, therefore, no special inducement for the Early Guptas
to adopt it; but, on the contrary, there was an objection of the kind already indicated.
Further, the Vikrama era was not an astronomical era; and the use of it, in those days, under
the name of the Mâlava era, was probably confined to the different sections of the Mâlava
tribe, and to territories of which no part was brought under the Early Gupta sway until the
time of Samudragupta. And, finally, the Kaliyuga era in all probability was used only
¹See page 8 ff. above.
²Jour. R. As. Soc. N. S. Vol. IV. p. 128 f. ³id. p. 122.
⁴Early History of the Dekkan, p. 27. ⁵See Appendix I. below