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The Indian Analyst
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South Indian Inscriptions |
EPIGRAPHIA INDICA expired (according to both the Ârya-and the Sûrya-siddhânta) would have been Jyêshṭha, and the 6th May A.D. 673 the full-moon day of the first or intercalated Jyêshṭha. But this very intercalated month, by an earlier─ Brahmagupta’s─ rule, would have received its name, not from the following month Jyêshṭha, but from the preceding month Vaiśâkha, i.e. it would have been called Vaiśâkha, not Jyêshṭha, and, by the earlier rule referred to, the 6th May A.D. 673 would thus have been correctly described as the full-moon day of Vaiśâkha (or, more fully, of the second Vaiśâkha). This date at once reminds us of the date of the Kaira plate of Dharasêna IV. (Northern List, No. 484), which quotes a ‘ second Mârgaśira,’ and falls in A.D. 648 or Śaka-saṁvat 570 expired. In the case of that date, by the rules of mean intercalation and according to the Ârya-and Sûrya-siddhântas, a month was intercalated in Ś. 570 expired before the month Pausha. By the ordinary rule that month would have been called Pausha, so that there would have been two months called Pausha ; but the date, in quoting ‘ the second Mârgaśira,’ shows that there really were two months called Mârgaśira, and that therefore the intercalated month, by the earlier rule, had received its name from the preceding Mârgaśira. I would besides compare the Chôḷa date No. 33, of the 25th November A.D. 1033 (above, Vol. V. p. 21), where the given name of the month─ Mârgaśira, instead of Pausha─ likewise can be accounted for only by the assumption that a month, by the rules of mean intercalation intercalated before Pausha, had taken its name from the preceding, not from the following month. In that Chôḷa date the month Mârgaśira which is quoted was the second Mârgaśira, just as in the date under discussion the month Vaiśâkha in my opinion was the second Vaiśâkha. For a date (of the 5th February A.D. 817, with a lunar eclipse), which proves the observance of the rules of mean intercalation, but is otherwise of no importance here, see my Southern List, No. 68. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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