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

38 CORPUS INSCRIPTIONUM INDICARUM, VOL. III.
And, in general corroboration of his views, he (id. p. 12, note 4) quoted, some remarks by
Major Kittoe to Colonel Sykes, that the grant of the Mahârâja Hastin of the year 163,
No. 22, page 100, shewed,—on the supposed identity of this Mahârâja with the Hastivar-
man, king of Vengî in the south, who is mentioned in line 20 of the Allahâbâd pillar
inscription,—that one hundred and sixty-three years of the Gupta dynasty had passed in
the time of Samudragupta, and thus proved that the Guptas reigned from the second to the
fifth century A.D. This, however, hardly fits in with Mr. Thomas' reference to A.D.
172 (id. p. 5, note) of a Chandragupta whose date in the Gupta era is the year 93, and
who could only be the father or the son of Samudragupta.
In 1854, General Cunningham published his Bhilsa Topes, in which, on p. 138 ff.,
he drew particular attention to the fact that Albêrûnî three times mentions the Gupta and
Valabhî eras, and identifies them with each other; and on each occasion specifies them
as starting from the same date, A.D. 319. He proceeded to remark—" but it appears to
" me that the most important of these passages must be either corrupt or obscure; for
" the translation given by M. Reinaud makes the epoch of the Guptas commence from
" the date of their extermination! If this is a correct translation, there can be little
" doubt that the text of Abu Rihân must be erroneous; for we know positively that the
" Guptas were reigning during the fifth and sixth centuries of our era. ............
" The statement made in M. Reinaud's version is so extraordinary, that, even without
" any direct proofs of its inaccuracy, I would have set it aside as erroneous. The era of
" the Seleukidæ began with the foundation of the Syrian empire by Seleukos; the Chris-
" tian era is dated from the establishment of Christianity; and the era of the Guptas
" without doubt commenced with the settlement of their own dynasty. For the Guptas,
" as I have mentioned before, date their inscriptions in an era of their own; which, though
" not so named by them, was actually a Gupta-Kâl, and must, therefore, have been called
" such by the people." And he suggested a different translation of Albêrûnî's statement;
to the effect that the Gupta era became extinct with the Gupta dynasty, instead of
dating from the extermination of it; and throughout the rest of his book, he applied the
epoch of A.D. 319 to the Gupta dates. If General Cunningham, our leader in Indian
archæology since the death of Prinsep, had continued to hold these views, and had
worked out his other researches in accordance with them, we should probably have heard
but little more of any theory assigning to the Guptas an earlier period. But, as we
shall see, he soon adopted other opinions
In 1855, in his paper "On the Epoch of the Gupta Dynasty," published in the
Jour. Beng. As. Soc. Vol. XXIV. p. 371 ff., Mr. Thomas made a special reply to
General Cunningham's views and arguments as set forth in Bhilsa Topes. This paper,
however, contains nothing at all worth quoting. And we pass on to 1858, when, under
his own editing, he published a collection of the works of Mr. James Prinsep, then
deceased, under the title of Essays on Indian Antiquities. Prinsep, in his account of