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

THE GUPTA INSCRIPTIONS; INTRODUCTION 45
ous nature of the grant. But, treating the date as being in the fourth century of the
Śaka era,—not in specifically the Śaka year 400,—and expressing his belief that the grant
though a forgery, was an ancient one, and was forged within fifty years of the latest of the
Valabhî grants discovered up to that time, he recorded his opinion (id. p. 244) that
"whether the grant be genuine or not, the evidence in regard to the name of the era does
"not materially lose its value; as the forger has been careful not to give the exact year,
"but simply to state the century of the era, which we must accept as correct, as this
"forger may naturally be expected to avoid an error in date, which would vitiate the
"document more than any other single error." His general conclusions were much the
same as those arrived at on the previous occasion; viz. (id. p. 247) that the dates in the
Valabhî grants refer to the Śaka era, which, he held (id. p. 238), was the era "of Naha-
pâṇa, in all likelihood a Parthian monarch, and a descendant of Phrahates;" (id. p. 246)
that the Gupta era commenced A.D. 318, and Kumâragupta and Skandagupta succeeded
the last of the kings of Valabhî; and consequently (id. p. 247 f.) that the Valabhî era of
Albêrûnî, if identical with the Gupta era, was certainly not the era used by the Kings of
Valabhî themselves, but was the Gupta era, introduced into Kâṭhiâwâḍ by Kumâragupta
and Skandagupta. His results led him also to the conclusion (id. p. 249 ff.) that Hiuen
Tsiang's visit to India, must really be placed about sixty years earlier than the accepted
and well-established period, about A.D. 630 to 643; a proposition which in itself almost
ought to have shewn him that there was some radical error in his deductions. And on this
occasion (id. p. 246) he put forward the suggestion, afterwards accepted and endorsed by
Mr. Fergusson,—or at least he drew pointed attention to the apparent fact,—that the
Gupta era commenced on the completion of four of the Sixty-Year Cycles of Jupiter after
the commencement of the Śaka era; to suit this suggestion, however, he had to distinctly
put aside Albêrûnî's statement that the difference between the two eras is two-hundred and
forty-one years, which, of course, by any arrangement, is one year over and above four
cycles of sixty years each. These conclusions are, of course, about as good a sample
as could well be sought, of the general state of confusion into which the question had
then fallen.
Meanwhile, in 1863, in the Jour. Beng. As. Soc. Vol. XXXII. pp. ii. to cxix., Gene-
ral Cunningham had published his Archæological Report for 1861-62, which was sub-
sequently reprinted in 1871 in the Archæol. Surv. Ind. Vol. I. pp. 1 to 130, and which I shall
notice again further on. In this, he laid aside his original opinion of A.D. 319 for the
commencement of the Gupta era; and adopted, instead of it, the view that this year was
really the date of the extermination of the dynasty, and that their recorded dates should be
referred, as proposed by Mr. Thomas, to the Śaka era. Again, in 1865, in his paper on
the "Coins of the nine Nâgas," in the Jour. Beng. As. Soc. Vol. XXXIV. p. 115 ff., he
stated that, from a comparison of the Gupta gold coins with their Indo-Scythian prototypes,
and of the Gupta silver coins with the Sâh coins of Saurâshṭra, he had seen (id. p. 118)
"that the first Guptas must certainly have been contemporary with the earlier princes of the