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

THE GUPTA INSCRIPTIONS; INTRODUCTION. 57

" to it," he arrived, by a series of historical, numismatic, and palæographical arguments, at
the conclusion that the rise of the Early Guptas must be placed in A.D. 319, and their
downfall about A.D. 480. In the course of the paper, he suggested (id. p. 219) that
the T'u-lu-p'o-po-tu of Hiuen Tsiang may be Dêrabhaṭa of Valabhî, or may indicate one
of the Dharasênas or one of the earlier Śîlâdityas of that family; and that, at any
rate, the occurrence of the title Dhrûbhaṭa in the Alînâ grant, as only a secondary title,
furnishes no conclusive evidence against the commencement of the era in A.D. 319. He
announced (id. p. 220) that, with the epoch of A.D. 319, the record of the Êraṇ pillar
inscription of Budhagupta, that the twelfth lunar day of the bright fortnight of the month
Âshâḍha of Gupta-Saṁvat¹ 165 was a Thursday, was quite correct by the Tables and
formulæ in Warren's Kala-Sankalita. And (id. p. 222), referring to the supposed tradition
of the bards of Kâṭhiâwâḍ, he gave perfectly good reasons for holding, even without further
proof, that it was nothing but "a very poor compilation, pieced up of what those
' ' ' bards' knew by hearsay of the results of modern epigraphical and numismatical inves-
tigation."
In the same year, the general question was taken up again by Mr. Thomas, in his
paper on " The Epoch of the Guptas," published in the Jour. R. As. Soc. N. S. Vol.
XIII. p. 524 ff. On this occasion (id. p. 524) he abandoned the opinion that the dates
on the Sâh coins were to be referred to the supposed Harsha era commencing B.C.
456; and expressed himself as inclined to accept Mr. Newton's theory that they are recorded
in the Vikrama era of B.C. 57. But, as regards the Gupta era, he still (id. p. 549)
adhered to the view that it was identical with the Śaka era, or, at any rate, that the
Gupta dates were to be referred to the Śaka epoch. In this paper (id. p. 529 f.) he in-
troduced some other passages from Albêrûnî, shewing that eras had been established from
the death of 'Alexander the Founder' and of 'Yazdajird ben Shahryâr,' which were
used by him as indicating that Albêrûnî must have exercised due deliberation before
making the (supposed) statement that the Gupta era dated from the extermination
of the Guptas; and he brought forward a discovery (id. p. 545) that certain signs in
front of the horse's head on the reverse of some coins of 'Syalapati,' Sâmantadêva,
'Khadavayaka,' and Bhîmadêva, of Kâbul, represented, in various degrees of legibility,
the syllables Gu, Gup, and Gupta, which were consequently held to refer to the Gupta era
the conventional date, 617, which these signs introduced. He had previously suggested
A.D. 935 for the accession of Sâmantadêva.² And, pointing out that the conventional

---

¹ Or, rather, of Gupta-Saṁvat 166; since he treated the record as meaning the year 165 expired
and 166 current. But the epoch would then be A.D. 318, not 319. It was probably through an
oversight that Dr. Oldenberg spoke in this connection of A.D. 319 as the epoch. Elsewhere
(id. pp. 215, 227) he distinctly specifies A.D. 319 as the beginning of the Gupta era; according to
which, A.D. 318 would be the epoch selected by him.
² Jour. R. As. Soc. F. S. Vol. IX. p. 179.
h