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

on similar grounds, he arrived at the conclusion (id. p. 261) that the Śaka era was estab-
lished by Kanishka, and took the name of the Śâlivâhana era from having been intro-
duced into India in the reign of Śâtakarṇi II. of the Andhra dynasty, the "chief of the
"Śâtavâhana or Śâlivâhana race." As regards the Gupta era, Mr. Fergusson took this
opportunity of recording his impression (id. p. 285) that his view of it "would
"never have been considered doubtful, had it not been that the chronology of that period
"had hitherto been based almost exclusively on numismatic researches." And, in re-
peating his conviction (id. p. 281) that the commencement of the era was in A.D. 319,
and (id. p. 270) that it was established in the reign of the Andhra king Gôtamiputra,
he also now maintained (id. p. 271) that the era did not necessarily date from the acces-
sion of the king, or from his death, or from any specific event in his reign, but
that, in order that dates in the new era might be easily convertible into the old era,
the commencement of the new era was simply fixed by the expiration of four of Jupiter's
Sixty-Year Cycles from the commencement of the Śaka era. In respect of his theory that
the Śaka era was established by Kanishka, and of some others of his general results, I see
no reason, at present, to dispute them, apart from the arguments on which they were
based. But a few words seem necessary in connection with the key-note to his whole
paper, which is plainly to be recognised in his desire to find for the Vikrama era some
origin other than its actual establishment in B.C. 57, and, according to tradition, by a king
Vikrama or Vikramâditya, actually reigning at that time. He had already thrown out this
suggestion in his previous paper. And now he claimed that, granting the correctness of
his other conclusions, there could be found (id. p. 271) no direct evidence for the existence
of a Vikrama era in the first century B.C., nor for a very long time afterwards; for so
long, in fact, that it was impossible to establish any connection between a king Vikrama
and the original establishment of the era. Referring to two passages in the Râjataraṁ-
giṇî, one of which¹ speaks of Pratâpâditya, who was brought from another country to be
crowned king of Kaśmîr, as a kinsman of a king Vikramâditya who, the book states, was
wrongly thought by some to be the Śakâri or 'enemy of the Śakas,' and the other of which ²
states that, at the time of the death of Hiraṇya of Kaśmîr, there reigned at Ujjain a powerful
king Vikramâditya, who had the second name of Harsha, and who also had destroyed the
Śakas; and quoting also Albêrûnî's explanation that the Vikramâditya who, according to
the tradition given to him, conquered the Śakas a hundred and thirty-five years after the
establishment of the Vikrama era, could not be identical with the founder of that era,—the
conclusions at which he arrived were (id. p. 274) that the Vikramâditya who conquered the
Śakas at the battle of Karûr, was Harsha-Vikramâditya of Ujjain; that his death took
place about A.D. 550, and the battle of Karûr, in A.D. 544; that, about or before A.D.
1000, when "the struggle with the Buddhists was over, and a new era was opening for the
"Hindu religion," the Hindus sought to establish some new method of marking time, to

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¹ Calcutta edition, ii. line 6; page 15.          ² Calcutta edition, iii. lines 125, 128; page 26.