North Indian Inscriptions

THE GUPTA ERA

       This gives as its English equivalent 28th April, 705 A.D., if it is taken as Gupta year. And, in fact, Kielhorn has taken all the five dates as years of the Gupta era. But, says Bühler: “The Nakshatra and Muhūrta, mentioned in [Bhagwanlal] No. 1, no doubt, come out correctly for Gupta-Samvat 386. But, as Dr. Schram informs me, they come out correctly also for northern Vikrama-Samvat 386 current and for southern Vikrama-Samvat 386 expired, i.e. either April 27, 328, or May 5, 330 A.D. and for Śaka-Samvat 386 expired, i.e. April 23, 464 A.D.” It is thus clear that this and the other four dates are possibly, but not necessarily, years of the Gupta era. Again, in the opinion of Bühler, all the circumstances of the case speak against the assumption that Mānadēva ruled as late as 705 to 732 A.D. and that he had to share the small valley of Nepal with a rival king. Even admitting for the sake of argument that Fleet’s and Kiehorn’s interpretation of the five dates quoted above is correct, it would, at best, show that the era, identical with that of the Guptas, was used in Nepal from the seventh to the ninth century A.D. For the earliest Lichchhavi date found in Nepal is 316 =635 A.D., whereas the earliest Gupta date found in India in the time of Fleet was Gupta year 82, furnished by the Udayagiri cave inscription of Chandragupta II, though, now, it is Gupta year 61 contained in the Mathurā stone pilaster inscription of the same Gupta king. In fact, there is no evidence to prove that this era was used in Nepal at all before the seventh century A.D. The conclusion is, therefore, irresistible that it could not have been established by the Lichchhavis who were ruling in Nepal and borrowed or accepted by the Guptas who were an imperial power in India and to whom Nepal was a frontier and tributary province as is clear from Harishēṇa’s praṡasti. The natural inference is that the Lichchhavi kings of Nepal adopted the Gupta era on becoming vassals of the Guptas, just as the Nepal kings of the Ṭhakura race adopted the Harsha era of 606 A.D., after Harsha, as Bāṇa says, “had taken tribute from the country in the Snowy Mountains, that is difficult of access.”

THE EXACT EPOCH OF THE GUPTA ERA

        In 1881 appeared in the Indian Antiquary a translation of the article of H. Oldenberg, entitled On the Dates of Ancient Indian Inscriptions and Coins.¹ Three years later R. G. Bhandarkar published in his Early History of the Dekkan, a note on the Gupta Era, which was republished also in his second edition of the work.² In these articles, both have endeavoured to show that there was no reason whatever to doubt the accuracy of the initial date of the Gupta Era given by Al Bērūni and that such of the Gupta dates as contained enough data for astronomical calculations confirmed the statement of the Arab writer. But this remark of theirs was utterly unheeded though it deserved careful consideration, because the statement of Al Bērūni, unfortunately, was a mixture of both truth and fiction—truth so far as the initial years of the eras were concerned, and fiction so far as the tradition about their origin was mentioned,– with the result that there was confusion worse confounded.

        Let us, in the first place, see what Al Bērūni says about these eras. According to E. C. Sachau’s translation, it runs as follows: “For this reason people have given up using them, and have adopted instead the eras of –(1) Śrī Harsha; (2) Vikramāditya; (3) Śaka; (4) Valabha; and (5)Gupta. . . The era of Valabha is called so from Valabha, the ruler of the town of Valabhī, nearly 30 yojanas south of Anhilvāra. The epoch of this era falls 241 years later than the epoch of the Śaka era. People use it in this way. They first put down the year of the Śaka-
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¹ Ind. Ant., Vol. X, pp. 213 and ff.
² B. G., Vol. I, pt. ii, pp. 258 and ff.