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

THE GUPTA INSCRIPTIONS; INTRODUCTION. 65
occur at all in any of the numerous Valabhî grants that have come to light; nor does
any one of them furnish the slightest grounds for the assertion that there was ever any con-
fusion between the terminations sêna, siṁha, and bhaṭa. And, though Dr. R. G. Bhandarkar
pointed out that Hiuen Tsiang seems to be referring to more than one king of Valabhî,
whom he held to be the two brothers Dharasêna III. and Dhruvasêna II., yet I cannot find
any authority, either in M. Stanislas Julien's translation, or in Mr. Beal's, for his asser-
tion that Hiuen Tsiang was speaking of only two kings, and that it was the younger of
them whom he denoted by the name of T'u-lu-p'o-po-tu. This, however, as I have indi-
cated at page 40 f. above, is a point which cannot be finally cleared up, until we
have some more explicit and reliable exposition of the words actually used by Hiuen
Tsiang.
And finally, in 1885, in the Centenary Review of the Asiatic Society of Bengal from
1784 to 1883, Dr. A. F. R. Hoernle, after a brief résumé of the results of the work of
preceding investigators, arrived at the opinion (id. Part II. p. 111) that "the terminal
"date," A.D. 319, "of the Gupta empire, as determined by Mr. Thomas, may now be con-
"sidered as one of those great historical landmarks, the truth of which is admittedly no
"more open to question;" and (id. 113) that General Cunningham's theory of A.D. 166-67
for the epoch¹ of the Gupta era, "has every prospect of ultimately meeting with univer-
"sal assent, and being the final verdict of the historic researches regarding the Gupta
"dynasty."
The Mandasôr Inscription of Mâlava-Saṁvat 529.
The summary that I have given above will shew sufficiently well the curious ingenuity
that was displayed from time to time, in aiming at any settlement of the question rather
than the correct one; and also the insufficiency of the arguments used in support of the
true solution, even by those who perceived it.
But of course it may be claimed that, as long as M. Reinaud's translation of the
statement regarding the circumstances under which the era of A.D. 319-20 or there-
abouts was established, remained without correction, there was something to be said from
the point of view that we had to deal with a mistake made by Albêrûnî, lying in a confu-
sion between a true Gupta era, anterior to A.D. 319, used by the Early Gupta kings them-
selves, and another Gupta era, or more properly a Valabhî era, with an epoch of A.D.
319-20 or thereabouts, established, whether used or not, by some member of the Valabhî
family: and that he was right in respect of the historical event, from which, as he appeared
to assert, this latter era took its origin. And, in default of definite evidence, settling the
question one way or the other, perhaps the strongest argument against the views held by
Mr. Thomas, General Cunningham, and Sir E. Clive Bayley, was to be found in the fol-

¹ Dr. Hoernle called A.D. 166 the initial year of the era; but this is not an exact representa-
tion of Gen. Cunningham's results.