North Indian Inscriptions

THE GUPTA ERA

..........No. 8, Vishṇuvardhana III, 37 years
..........No. 9, Vijayāditya I, son of No. 8, 18 years
..........No. 10, Vishṇuvardhana IV, son of 9, 36 years
..........No. 11, Vijayāditya II, son of 10, 44 years or 48 years.

        The total of the four reigns, says Bühler, is thus 135 or 139 years, the average thus comes to 33-3/4 or 34-3/4. In the presence of these indisputable facts, it is ludicrous to lay too much stress on the abnormal average rate, whether of a Hindu reign or a Hindu generation. “In my opinion,” rightly adds Bühler, “some of the social customs of the Indian royal families favoured the occurrence of a succession of long reigns. Every king had scores of queens and contracted, as his fancy dictated, from time to time, new matrimonial alliances. Each new favourite tried to have a son by all possible means, and to deprive the sons of the elder wives of the successsion. Thus, there was always a good chance that a king, who lived to the age of 60 or 70, might be succeeded by a son twenty or even younger. Of course, early excesses, revolutions and wars carried off many a ruler in the prime of life, and acted as a corrective.”

        Let us now consider the extraneous source to which Fleet turns to explain the origin of the Gupta era. From the inscriptions of Nepal, an account of which he gives in Appendix IV, and the dates of which range from 635 to 854 A.D., it is clear, he remarks, that there were two separate houses ruling contemporaneously, one called the Ṭhākuri family in the Vaṁṡāvalī and uniformly using the Harsha era, and the other the Lichchhavi family, distinctly so named in the inscriptions and uniformly using an era with the Gupta epoch. The Lichchhavi clan or tribe was of great antiquity and power. There is also evidence of relationship between the Early Guptas and the Lichchhavis. Chandragupta I married the Lichchhavi princess Kumāradēvī, for which reason their son Samudragupta has been called Lichchhavi-dauhitra. It is further indicated by some gold coins which, on the obverse, bear their figures and names and, on the reverse, the name of the Lichchhavis. Further, the Allahābād pillar inscription shows that the kingdom of Samudragupta extended up to the confines of Nepal. The Gupta kings must, therefore, have known the nature and epoch of whatever era was being used by their Lichchhavi connections in Nepal. Fleet, therefore, concludes that “in all probability the so-called Gupta era is a Lichchhavi era, dating either from a time when the republican or tribal constitution of the Lichchhavis was abolished in favour of a monarchy; or from the commencement of the reign of Jayadēva I, as the founder of a royal house in a branch of the tribe that had settled in Nepal.” Now, Fleet’s theory of a Lichchhavi era, rightly remarks Bühler, suffers from a fatal weakness, which would at once have become apparent, if he had inserted in his discussion the actual dates of the Nepal Lichchhavi inscriptions, which, in his opinion, show an era with the same epoch as that of the Guptas, instead of relegating them to Appendix IV. The earliest five of them are:

..........Bendall No. 1, Samvat 316, i.e., 635 A.D.
..........Bhagwanlal No. 1, Samvat 386, i.e., 705 A.D.
..........Bhagwanlal No. 2, Samvat 413, i.e., 732-33 A.D.
..........Bhagwanlal No. 3, Samvat 435, i.e., 754 A.D.
..........Bhagwanlal No. 4, Samvat 535, i.e., 854 A.D

        Out of these, the only date that admits of verification is Bhagwanlal No. 1, which, in full, runs as follows:

        Samvat 300 80 6 Jyēshṭha-[mā] sē ṡukla-pakshē pratipadi 1 [Rō] hiṇī-nakshatra-yukrē chandramasī m[u]hūrttē praṡastē=bhijiti.