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

THE GUPTA INSCRIPTIONS; INTRODUCTION. 23
of convenience, I follow the custom of the last forty years, and speak of it as "the Gupta
era." Also, as the era did certainly in later times, in Kâṭhiâwâḍ, acquire the name of
"the Valabhî era," I shall, according to the convenience of the moment, speak of it
indifferently as "the Gupta era," "the Valabhî era," and "the Gupta-Valabhî era."
Subject to the remarks that I have made above, this nomenclature needs no further
apology, if I point out that, even by those who maintain that the Early Guptas were
themselves anterior to A.D. 319, it is admitted that the Gupta era which has come down
to us in the writings of Albêrûnî, had the same epoch with the Valabhî era; they only
maintain that the Early Guptas used a Gupta era which was not this Gupta era.

Albêrûnî's Statements, as rendered by M. Reinaud.

Until the discovery of the Mandasôr inscription, No. 18, page 79, the only direct
information available as to the epoch of the Gupta era, was the statement of Albêrûnî,
who, writing in the period¹ between the 30th April and the 30th September, A.D. 1030,
left on record the following notes, as taken from M. Reinaud's French translation in his
Fragments Arabes et Persans, page 138 ff:—
"People employ ordinarily the eras of Śrî-Harsha,² of Vikramâditya, of Śaka, of
"Ballaba,³ and of the Guptas. ............ Ballaba, who also has given his name
"to an era, was the prince of the town of Ballabha, to the south of Aṇhilwâra, at a
"distance of about thirty yôjanas.⁴ The era of Ballaba is subsequent to that of Śaka
"by 241 years. In order to make use of it, we set down the era of Śaka, and deduct at

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¹ See Sachau's Albêrûnî's India, Preface, p. x.
² As is shewn by Albêrûnî's statement further on, this is not the era of Harshavardhana of Kanauj,
commencing A.D. 606 or 607, of which we have an instance in this volume, in No. 43, page 208; but
an earlier era, commencing B.C. 457, of which we have no epigraphical record, and, in fact, no inform-
ation of its existence beyond Albêrûnî's statement, which is accompanied by the remark that, in a
Kaśmîrî almanac, he had read that Śrî-Harsha was 664 years later than Vikramâditya, and that he
could obtain no explanation of the discrepancy (Sachau's Albêrûnî's India, Translation Vol. II. p. 5).
³ Reinaud's Arabic text contains no authority for his use of the double l throughout, and of the
aspirated bh in the name of the town. So, also, Sachau's text contains no authority for his use, once
of the form Ballabha, and once of Balabha. These forms can only be attributed to some fancied
connection between the name of the city of Valabhî and the Sanskrit word vallabha, 'lover, husband,
friend, favourite,' which was very often used as a proper name, but not in the case of any of the rulers
of Valabhî. The word valabhî itself means 'the wooden frame of a thatch, a roof; a turret or
temporary building on the roof of a house.' It occurs in No. 18, line 6, page 81; and, in the form
vaḍabhî, in No. 66, line 2, page 268.—Albêrûnî himself, in treating the name as that of a person, as
well as of a town, possibly wrote under some similar misconception. But, setting aside any such
mistake as this, which is rather like that of his treating Śaka as the name of an individual, instead of
a tribe, he is of course speaking of the era that was used by the well-known Kings of Valabhî.
⁴ The yôjana, a measure of distance, seems to have varied from 2½ to 9, or even 18, English
miles; but with an average length of between 4 and 5 miles.—Walâ, the modern representative of
the ancient Valabhî, is about one hundred and thirty-five miles almost due south of Aṇhilwâḍ.