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

inscription, in which, though he adopted the correct reading, śântê, at the end of line 2, he
followed the general tenor of Prinsep's translation, and rendered the date (id. p. 3, note)
by "the empire of Skandagupta being extinct for the hundred and forty-first year." To
this he appended the remark, "in supersession of a proposal formerly put forth, and from
"which my present state of information would have withheld me, I now accede to the
"view that the Kahâuṁ inscription is dated from the overthrow of the Guptas, of whom
"Skanda must have been virtually the last." These words referred to his previous
treatment of the verse in 1859, in the Jour. Amer. Or. Soc. Vol. VI. p. 530, when he
had rendered the date by "in the one hundred and forty-first year; the empire of Skanda-
"gupta being quiescent;" with the remark "there is, then, nothing here recorded con-
"cerning the death of Skandagupta, as Mr. Prinsep supposes. Being neither the first
"ruler of the Gupta dynasty, nor the last, nor of special note, it would be extraordinary
"indeed, if time had been computed from his decease." As regards the expression in the
grants of the Mahârâja Hastin, it seems almost needless to comment further on its mean-
ing; because any unbiassed Sanskṛit scholar will see at once what the real purport of it is.
But it is curious what vitality some mistakes possess. The suggestion has been made to
me, quite recently, that possibly even Albêrûnî's own apparent statement, as to the Gupta
era dating from the extermination of the Gupta kings, may have originated in a misunder-
standing, by the Hindus who supplied him with information, of this same expression Gupta-
nṛipa-râjya-bhuktau. I can only say that it is absolutely and utterly impossible that any
Hindu, acquainted with Sanskṛit, could interpret this expression as meaning anything
except that, at the date connected with it, the sovereignty of the Guptas was still con-
tinuing. And it is equally impossible for any European Sanskṛitist to give it any other
meaning; unless, as I have said elsewhere, under the influence of a preconceived bias, so
strong as to preclude entirely the critical consideration which would at once shew the
error.—In the same volume, page 14 ff., Dr. Hall published his own versions of the Êraṇ
inscriptions of Budhagupta and Tôramâṇa, No. 19, page 88, and No. 20, page 91; and,
in the course of his remarks, announced (id. p. 15, note) that the details of the date of
Budhagupta's record were correct if referred to the Vikrama era, the English equivalent
being Thursday, the 7th June, A.D. 108, New Style.—And the general question was taken
up by him again in his "Note on Budhagupta," published in the same volume (p. 139 ff.);
with the conclusion (id. p. 148 ff.) that Budhagupta was probably the first sovereign
of a more ancient branch of the Gupta family which ended with himself; and that the
dates in the records of Skandagupta and his ancestors possibly ran from an epoch in A.D.
278, which Pandit Bapu Deva Shastri of Benares had found, by actual calculation, to suit
the details of the Bhêra Ghaut inscription of the Kalachuri king Narasiṁhadêva, dated
in the year 907 (of the era used by his dynasty), and the Têwar inscription of the same
king, dated in the year 928.
In 1862, in the Jour. Bo. Br. R. As. Soc. Vol. VII. p. 1 ff., Mr. Newton published
a lengthy disquisition "On the Sâh, Gupta, and other Ancient Dynasties of Kaṭhiâwâd
f 2b