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

THE GUPTA INSCRIPTIONS; No. 4, PLATE III A. 27
5 [tsann - aśvamēdh - āharttur = mma]hārāja - śrī - Gupta - prapau[t]r[asya]
6 [mahārāja-śrī-Ghaṭōtka]cha-pautrasya mahārājādhir[āja]-
7 [śrī-Chandragupta-pu]trasya Lichchhavi-dauhitrasya mahā[dē]-
8 [vyāṁ Kumāra]d[ē]vyām=utpannasya mahārājādhirā-
9 [ja-śrī-Sa]mudraguptasya putrēṇa tat-parigṛi-
10 [hī]t[ē]na mahādēv[y]āṁ Dat[t]adēv[y]ām=ut[p]an[n]ē-
11 [na¹ paramabhāgavatēna mahārājādhirāja-śrī]-
12 [Chandraguptēna] ..........................
(The rest of the inscription is entirely
broken away and lost.)
TRANSLATION.
(Line 8.)—By him who is the son,—accepted by him,² (and) begotten on the
Mahādēvī Dattadēvī,— of the Mahārājādhirāja, [the glorious] Samudragupta,—
(L. 1.)—[Who³ was the exterminator of all kings;⁴ who had no antagonist (of
equal power)] in the world; [whose fame was] tasted [by the waters of the four oceans⁵];
¹ I add these two lines in order to shew the continuation of the construction of this record.
² See page 12 above, note 1.
³ i.e. Samudragupta.
⁴ sarva-rāj-ōchchhéttri.—In the nominative case, sarva-rāj-ōchchēttā, this epithet occurs on the
reverse of some gold coins, hitherto always classed in the Early Gupta series (see Jour. Beng. As. Soc.
Vol. LIII. Part I. p. 169 f., and Pl. ii. No. 1; also Archæol. Surv. West. Ind. Vol. II. p. 36, and Pl. vii.
No. 1), which have on the obverse the name of Kācha, in the place where the king's name usually
stands on coins, with the marginal legend kāchō gām=avajitya karmabhir=uttamair=jayati,
“Kācha, having conquered the earth, is victorious by (his) most excellent deeds,” and which have
always been attributed to the Mahārāja Ghaṭōtkacha, the grandfather of Samudragupta.—But, in
the first place, the name on these coins is distinctly Kācha, and nothing more; and kācha, which
means ‘glass, crystal; the string of the scale of a balance; alkaline salt, black salt; wax; &c.,’ is a
tōtally different word from utkacha, ‘having the hairs (of the body) standing erect (through pleasure),’
which is the second component of the name of Ghaṭōtkacha. Secondly, Ghaṭōtkacha, being only a
feudatory Mahārāja, was not entitled to issue a coinage in his own name. And thirdly, the epithet
sarva-rāj-ōchchhettri on the reverse, is, in the inscriptions, always applied to Samudragupta, and
to him only.—There is nothing distinctive in this epithet, sufficient to shew that it belonged only
to the Early Gupta dynasty (and, in that dynasty, to Samudragupta). Nor, I think, is it absolutely
certain that these coins belong to the Early Gupta series. But the general appearance of them,
with the legends on them, justifies such an opinion. And, if they are Early Gupta coins, then they
must be attributed to Samudragupta, not to Ghaṭōtkacha; and Kācha must, in that case, be a personal
and less formal name of Samudragupta; and with it we may compare such instances as Śāba,
‘cadaverous, of a dark yellowish colour, tawny; the young of any animal,’ used as a second name
of Vīrasēna, a minister of Chandragupta II. (No. 6 below, Plate ivA. line 4); Vyāghra, ‘a tiger,’
applied to a Jain named Rudrasōma (No. 15 below, Plate ixA.); and Permāḍi (also Parmāḍi, Par-
māṇḍi and Paramardi), a name of the Western Chālukya king Vikramāditya VI. (Jour. Bo. Br. R.
As. Soc. Vol. XI. pp. 225, l. 9, 253, l. 14; Bühler’s Vikramāṅkadēvacharita, Introd. p. 30, note 2; and
Rājataraṁgiṇī, vii. 1122, 1124).—The only other instances, known to me, in which the name Kācha
occurs, are in the case of two rulers or chieftains, Kācha I. and Kācha II., mentioned in one of the
inscriptions in the Ajaṇṭā caves (Archæol. Surv. West. Ind. Vol. IV. p. 129, lines 4, 6), belong-
ing to a period that is at any rate appreciably later than that of the Early Guptas.
⁵ i.e. “whose fame extended up to the shores of the four oceans.”—Jambudvīpa, or the central
division of the known world, including India, was supposed to be surrounded on all sides by the
ocean.
E 2.