North Indian Inscriptions

THE KṚITA ERA

be taken to mean simply “in accordance with the mode of reckoning of the Mālavas.” Gaṇa here cannot but mean gaṇanā, for which we have the authority of the Śabdārṇavakōśa, as shown above. The word gaṇa here cannot, thus, signify a tribal oligarchy, and it is not, therefore, at all reasonable to infer that Mālava-gaṇa in these expressions stands for the Mālava oligarchy and that this tribal oligarchy was somehow responsible for the origination of Kṛita years. In course of time, the meaning of Mālava-gaṇa-sthiti was forgotten. Even when Kielhorn first pointed out the correct sense of this phrase, he left it doubtful whether the Mālavas spoken of here were the people of Mālava or the rulers of that country.1 But the word āmnāta in the phrase Mālava-gaṇ-āmnātē leaves no doubt as to these Mālavas being the people of Mālava. Nevertheless, as time passed, the term Mālava was gradually understood in the sense of “the rulers of the Mālava country.” The earliest example of this change is that supplied by the Mandasōr stone inscription2 of Prabhākara, which, in point of date, is between the Mandasōr record (No. 35 below) of Kumāragupta and Bandhuvarman dated 493 and employing the phraseology Mālavānāṁ gaṇa-sthityā and the Mandasōr epigraph³ of Yaśōdharman-Vishṇuvardhana dated 589 and using the expression Mālava-gaṇa-sthiti-vaśāt. The inscription of Prabhākara, as we have seen above, sets forth its date as follows: “when, in course (of time), there had elapsed a number of years, viȥ., five centuries increased by eight multiplied by three (i.e., 524), indicative of the fame of the Mālava lineage (vaṁśa) . . .” This means that the Vikrama era originated with some Mālava dynasty. It is, no doubt, possible to argue that vaṁśa of this record is somehow connected with gaṇa of the other Mandasōr inscriptions. But, this argument cannot hold water. Because, gaṇa denotes a tribal oligarchy, whereas vaṁśa signifies a royal family.

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Besides, the word vaśāt in the phrase Mālava-gaṇa-sthiti-vaṡāt clearly shows that gaṇa can here mean neither ‘a tribal oligarchy’ nor ‘a royal family.’ It can mean gaṇanā, ‘computation’, as Kielhorn has rightly remarked; and we have an authority in support of this equation, as we have pointed out. Besides, if this era had been founded by a member of a royal family of Mālava, the phrase Mālava-kāla would have been prevalent much earlier than Vikrama year 943, the date of the Gyārāspur inscription, wherein it occurs for the first time. Besides, the name current for this era before Vikrama year 589 was Kṛita, as is quite clear from the Mandasōr inscription of Naravarman. There, the term saṁjñita ‘named’ occurs, and what is further noteworthy is that Kṛita is not the name of an era so much as the years of that era. So, what we have to notice here is that between Vikrama years 493 and 589 a double change was coming over the nomenclature of this era. It was, on the one hand, connected with Mālava-gaṇa-sthiti, “the mode of reckoning of the Mālavas” which is quite reasonable and, on the other, with the Mālava-vaṁṡa, ‘the Mālava lineage’, which is somewhat curious. The latter idea was gradually gaining ground over the former. It, however, took more than two centuries and a half for it to develop into a full-fledged tradition. Thus, the Kaṇaswā inscription4 of Śivagaṇa sets forth its date as follows: Saṁvatsara-ṡatair=yātaiḥ sa-paṁchanavaty-arggalaiḥ saptabhir=mMālav-ēṡānāṁ, “when seven hundred, joined with ninety-five years, of the Mālava lords had gone by.” Lastly, the Mēnālgaḍh inscription5 has Mālavēṡa-gata-vatsara-ṡataiḥ dvādaṡaiṡ =cha shaṭviṁṡa-pūrvakaiḥ, “when 1226 years had gone by since the Mālava lord.” This places a second tradition before us. The years of this era did not pertain to any originated by the Mālava family or the Mālava kings but rather reckoned from the event of the death of some Mālava king. The same traditions prevailed in later times under a different form. This Mālava king, the people identified with Vikrama or Vikram-
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¹ Ind. Ant., Vol. XIX, p. 57.
² D. R. Bhandarkar, A List of the Inscriptions of Northern India, etc., No. 7.
³ CII., Vol. III, 1888, No. 35.
⁴ Ind. Ant., Vol. XIX, p. 57 and Plate.
⁵ JASB., Vol. LV, part I, p. 46.