PART ONE
1
The chronology of ancient India, as determined by modern historians, diverges completely from the chronology framed by India herself for her own antiquity. The complete divergence applies not only to very remote occurrences like the Bhārata War: it applies also to comparatively late ones like the rule of the Imperial Guptas. Could India be utterly at fault about historical time? Surely, here is an issue of capital importance - and. as if to rivet our attention on it, it becomes crucial apropos of the very point that brought modern historians their moment of "Eureka!"
The Problem of the Two Chandraguptas
Modern historians were convinced of a systematic start in their studies when the Frenchman de Guignes and the Englishman Sir William Jones1 independently proposed a known historical original for the Indian king whose name had been mentioned in a Greek form by foreign writers on India soon after the invasion of the Punjāb by Alexander the Great in 326 B.C. Outstanding among these writers was Megasthenes, the ambassador sent to India in c. 302 B.C. by Seleucus Nicator, the chief successor of Alexander in the East. He came to the court of the king whom the Greeks called Sandrocottus and whose capital they designated Palibothra in the country of the Prasii.
The Prasii have been recognised as the Prāchya (Easterners), Palibothra as Pātaliputra and the eastern kingdom whose capital was Palibothra as Magadha. Sandrocottus has been identified with the Maurya adventurer Chandragupta who. like him, founded a dynasty in Magadha. Since Sandrocottus is reported to have not been a king when as an ambitious youth he first met Alexander and-to have already mounted the throne when in c. 305 B.C. Seleucus crossed the Indus to invade India but was pushed back by Sandrocottus, Chandragupta Maurya's accession to the Magadhan
1. Asiatic Researches, IV. p. 11.
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kingship has been considered solidly fixed between 326 and 305 B.C. This kingship has to be distinguished from a monarchical status won in the Indus-region in relation to a conflict with the foreign governors left behind by Alexander. Interpreting, on the one hand, the Greek background for it and, on the other, the Buddhist tradition, modern historians, by and large, favour 321 B.C.1 Here, or close to it, is a point of certainty for them and all Indian chronology has been computed backwards and forwards from it.
The founder of the Mauryas, however, is not the only Chandragupta known to history as a Magadhan emperor and the founder of a dynasty. There is also the first of the Imperial Guptas, Chandragupta I. Modern historians put him over 600 years after Sandrocottus and set forth many reasons for the identification of the latter with Chandragupta Maurya. These are claimed to be supported most impressively by several lines of evidence converging to place Chandragupta Maurya's grandson Aśoka around the middle of the 3rd century B.C. But the ancient Indian chronology, based on the dynastic sections of the Purānas and other indigenous testimonies and traditions, runs counter to this historical vision. It leads us to identify the alternative Chandragupta as Sandrocottus.
The Traditional-Purānic Chronology of India
Perhaps the best approach to India's own account is through the Aihole Inscription2 of King Pulakeśin II, the successful opposer of the southward push of King Harsha who is mentioned by the Chinese scholar Hiuen Tsang as his patron during his travels in India in 630-643 A.D. Pulakeśin has a double mode of dating his inscription. He specifies "the Śaka Era Year 556". Counted from the well-known Śaka Era of 78 A.D., this year brings us to (78+556=) 634 A.D., which falls within the period indicated by Hiuen Tsang for his association with Harsha. The second mode of dating is: "3736 years after the Kaliyuga." Going backwards by 3736 years from 634 A.D., we arrive at (3736-634=) 3102 B.C.
1.Cf. "Chandragupta, the Founder of the Maurya Empire" by F.W. Thomas. The Cambridge History of India, edited by E. J. Rapson (1922), I, pp. 471,473. See also the choice on p. 698 ("Chronology"), and Rc-mila Thapar, A History of India (A Pelican Original, Harmondsworth, 1966), I, p. 90.
2.Epigraphia Indica, VI, pp. 11, 12.
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This Kaliyuga of 3102 B.C. - held to be the last Age in a series of Four Ages or Yugas - is a major reference-point in the traditional-Purānic chronology. Another such point is the Bhārata War. And the Aihole Inscription carries, along with its reference to the Kaliyuga, the words: "and after the Bhārata War." Evidently, Pulakeśin links the Bhārata War intimately with the Kaliyuga and understands it to have become a closed chapter at that point of time. But to consider him as openly coinciding the year of the one with that of the other would be rather unrealistic. For, by 634 A.D. the national poem, the Mahābhārata, about the war had already reached its final form and was part of the Indian consciousness and we cannot expect anybody who associated the Kaliyuga with 3102 B.C. to forget that by this date Yudhishthira, the eldest of the war's victorious Pāndava brothers, had been king of Hastināpura for a number of years and that the actual fighting against the Kauravas had ended before his accession. However, the epic does link the Kaliyuga and the Bhārata War intimately in three ways.
The Kaliyuga is marked by (1) the death of Krishna, about whom A. D. Pusalker1 writes: "It was mainly and solely due to the important part played by Krsna in the great war that the Pāndavas emerged victorious"; (2) the abdication of the throne of Hastina-pura by Yudhishthira as the result of Krishna's death; (3) the grief-stricken departure of all the Pāndava brothers on a great northward pilgrimage after Yudhishthira's installation of his grand-nephew Parīkshit in his own place - Parīkshit who was born in the year of the Bhārata War.
These three events are the last of the occurrences connected with the Pāndavas who came out victors in the war. Understanding the inscription's words - "after the Bhārata War" - in a broad rather than a literal sense, we may take the war to have ended with these three events. All personages in the winning camp died or disappeared from the scene of the war and its aftermath. Thus the curtain may be said to have rung down on the whole sanguinary drama.through its epilogue. Whatever was directly linked with it came to a close in 3102 B.C.
J. B. Fleet interprets the inscription's allusion to the war in essentially the way we have suggested, except that he omits
1.Studies in the Epics and Purānas of India, p. 73.
2.The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1911, pp. 677-79.
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Krishna's death because he does not date it to the same year as Yudhishthira's abdication (leading to Parīkshit's enthronement) and the great northward pilgrimage of all the Pāndava brothers -two happenings which to him are the "final occurrence in the story of the Pāndavas and the Kurus" in relation to the Bhārata War.
Fleet adds that most probably the astronomer Aryabhata had in mind the same occurrence when he mentioned Bhārata Thursday as the last day of the Age which preceded the "Fourth Yuga" (=the Kali). Fleet quotes Aryabhata's commentator Paramesvara as explicitly connecting Āryabhata's words to this occurrence.
Regarded along Fleet's lines, though without his omission of Krishna's death, the Aihole Inscription does not differ from the Purānas and the Mahābhārata.
The traditional-Purānic chronology draws from the Epic the number of years by which the Kaliyuga was later than the Pāndava-Kaurava clash. E. J. Rapson1 tells us: "According to the epic, as usually interpreted, [Parīkshit] was appointed king of Hastinapura more than thirty-six years after the great war between the Kurus and Pandus." Since the Bhārata War lasted only 18 days, its date can be computed, in keeping with the required condition, as (3102+36=) 3138 B.C. in the scheme of the traditional-Purānic chronology.
Bearing this year in mind, we have to note two characteristics of the Purānas' calculations. First, the calculations pertain centrally to the kings of Magadha. Second, they repeatedly hark back from one or another Magadhan dynasty to the birth of Parīkshit in the year of the war. Apropos of these characteristics, we have to overlook the prejudices arising from an ultra-analytical view of the Purānas. Admittedly, our documents exist in a somewhat corrupt state. Scholars have dwelt on the different time-lengths for the same dynasty and often a diversity of king-names in it as well as a variety of names for the same king. Again, they have argued that some dynasties are wrongly arranged. Researchers like S. N. Pradhan and H.C. Raychaudhuri have sorted out what they consider to be mistakes in naming dynasties and placing kings. Others have insisted that a couple of dynasties rated as Magadhan were not really so. But all this is irrelevant to our purpose and should not come in the way of grasping rightly the thrust of the Purānas in
1. "The Purānas", The Cambridge History of India. I. p. 306. C'f. the Mahābhārata, Mausala Parva. 1.1.
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the chronological direction. Through whatever corruption of text and miscomprehension of history and even deliberate-seeming distortion we must mark how they carry the dynasties of Magadha across huge stretches of time by mentioning certain intervals.
Where the values of these intervals happen to vary we must choose the one which agrees best with the general drive of the chronology as manifested elsewhere in the Purānas or helps most to reach what appears to be the last Magadhan dynasty on their list. Thus an interval running back to the birth of Parīkshit from the coronation of Mahapādma, also called Mahānanda (founder of the Nanda dynasty of Magadha just preceding the Mauryas) is given differently in different Purānas. F. E. Pargiter1, in his famous pioneer study, lists the variants as 1015, 1050, 1500 years. Indian scholars too are aware of several readings. Anand Swarup Gupta, editor of the 6-monthly periodical Purāna published from Vāranāsi, informs us of the figures 1015, 1115, 1500.2 He also guides us towards reading the real Purānic intention among the discrepant numbers. He3 says that 1500 years have to be chosen because they tally with the total of the durations which most Purānas ascribe to the dynasties of Magadha from the Bhārata War to Mahapādma's coronation: 1000 years (Barhadrathas) + 138 (Pradyotas) + 362 (Śiśunāgas). P. V. Kane,4 author of the classic History of Dharmaśāstra, though "holding as most modern scholars do that the Nandas flourished in the 4th century B.C.", reached the same conclusion earlier on reviewing the various Purānic texts.
The next interval the Purānas give is - to quote the Matsya Purāna (271.39) - from the Pulomas-Āndhras,5 known to modern historians as the Satavahana dynasty, back to Mahapādma. This interval is of 836 years. In the succeeding verse an interval equal to
1.The Purāna Text of the Dynasties of the Kali Age (London, 1913), p. 58, line 5 and fn. 21.
2."The Problem of Interpretation of the Purānas". Purāna (Vārānasi), January 1964, pp. 67-8.
3.Ibid., p. 68.
4.History of Dharmasāstra (Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Poona, 1946), Vol. Ill, pp. 899-900.
5.Strictly speaking, the first part of the expression employed - paulomastu tathāndhrastu - means "the offspring of Puloma". Perhaps a Puloma founded the family and perhaps that is why there were a number of Pulomas in the Āndhra dynasty.
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1500+836 is said to be there from the Āndhras back to Parīkshit. But the Sanskrit expression is at first glance somewhat ambiguous: āndhr-āntād a-Parīkshitah. We may be tempted to construe it: "from the Āndhra-end to Parīkshit." A look at the preceding verse tells us of Mahapādma as he is found in the phrase that puts 1500 years between his coronation and Parīkshit. We pick up where we left off there. The natural sense is that 836 years cover the period from the start of the Nanda dynasty to that of the Āndhras. And a confirmation of it comes on our observing a peculiarity of verbal construction in the Purānas' dealings with "intervals". Thus we have the phrase: Mahapādmāntare,' connoting conventionally "at an interval of Mahapādma", which is meaningless, for Mahapādma marks in the sentence concerned one extreme of an interval. In Sanskrit grammar a bahuvrīhi, an adjectival compound, is permitted as a replacement of an apparently regular genitive (shashthitat-purusha). A bahuvrīhi here would give the connotation: "at an interval to Mahapādma." Similarly the expression mahānand-ābhishek-āntam2 cannot signify "to the end of Mahānanda's coronation". To save it from being nonsense it must mean "to Mahānanda's coronation at the end" -literally "to (the time) Mahānanda's-coronation-ended". Our andhr-āntād is most consistently understood as an adjectival compound signifying "from (the time) Āndhra-ended" - that is, from the time with the Āndhras at its end.
Hence the traditional-Purānic chronology brings the commencement of the Āndhras to the period reached when we deduct 1500+836 years from 3138 B.C. We are brought down to (3138-2336=) 802 B.C.
What about the close of the Āndhras? As D.C. Sircar' notes, the Purānas record for the full run of them several time-lengths: 300, 411, 412, 456 and 460 years. Which of them shall we choose?
Side by side with the "intervals" the Purānas have another mode of computation: what is termed the cycle of the Sapta Rishi, the Seven Rishis, the stars of the constellation Great Bear. The Seven Rishis are supposed to make a cycle of 2700 years by a stay of 100
1.Pargiter, op. cit., p. 58.
2.Ibid.
3."The Sātavāhanas and the Chedis", The Age of Imperial Unity, edited by R.C. Majumdar and A. D. Pusalker (Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bombay, 1951), fn. continued to p. 196 from p. 195.
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years in each of the 27 Nakshatras or lunar asterisms of the ecliptic. 75 years before the Kaliyuga - that is to say, in (3102+75 = ) 3177 B.C. - they are held to have entered for. a century's stay the asterism Maghā. The Vayu Purāna (90.423), as well as the Brahmānda (11.24.234), says that the Seven Rishis who were in Maghā at the time of Parīkshit will be in the 24th century in a part of the Āndhras (āndhrāmse). Another version of the same sloka uses the word āndhrānte and appears to put in that century the end of the Āndhras. But this word can surely be a bahuvrthi and the whole phrase, with the word construed like the earlier andhr-āntād as an adjectival compound, can read: "the 24th century having at its end the Āndhras." All this means that when 2400 years passed after 3177 B.C. - the beginning of the Maghā-century in which the time of Parīkshit (3138 B.C.) had fallen - the Āndhra dynasty has already started. So we come down to a little before (3177—2400=) 777 B.C. for its commencement, a result not inconsistent with our previously found 802 B.C., since "a little before" easily allows a span of 25 years.
The Brahmānda (III.74.230) again says that the asterism whose guardians are the Pitris (Ancestors) - namely. Maghā - and which was associated with the time of Pfrikshit follows once more after the 27th century, "amongst the very Āndhras" (āndhrānantu). A variant both here and elsewhere - e.g., the Matsya1 - of āndhrānantu is āndhrān-ānte, a Prakritism for āndhrāndmānte, which can be translated either as "at the end of the Āndhras" or as "in the end..." The second rendering would be in keeping with the substance of the other form of the Brahmānda verse. And both the forms, putting the 27th century in the terminal portion of the Āndhras, balance the verses which put the 24th century in the initial portion.
What we can gather about the closing part of the Āndhra line is: it extended from the completion of the Sapta Rishi's 27th century down to some point during the returning Maghā-century. In other words, the Āndhras closed somewhere in the 100 years after 27 centuries had elapsed from 3177 B.C. Their termination lies between (3177-2700=) 477 B.C. and (477-100=) 377 B.C.
D. R. Mankad2 offers a possible interpretation of the Viiyu's and Brahmānda's reference to the number 24, which would apply
1.Pargiter, op. cit., p. 59.
2.Purānic Chronology (Anand. 1951), p. 293.
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it to the return of the Maghā century in the end of the Āndhras. These Purānas, with their collocation andhrdrhse sachaturvirhse, would then read: "in the 24th part of the Āndhras" or "in a part of the 24th Āndhra." So, after the return of the Maghā-century in 477 B.C., there would be some years or at least one year of the 24th Āndhra's reign plus the total of the reigns of the remaining Āndhras. The Āndhra line consisted, according to most Purānas,' of 30 kings. Thus there would be 6 remaining members. All the last 7 Āndhras' reigns sum up in the Purānas2 to (28+7+3+29+6+10+7=) 90 years. Hence the end of the dynasty must come a little before (477-90=) 387 B.C. The exact date would depend on how many years of the 24th Āndhra had passed before the Maghā-century returned. In this way we reach a reckoning more precise than the one which left us with a century to range in. Now it is only the 24th Āndhra's 28 years to make the uncertainty. That is to say, the dynasty must have finished between (28+387=) 415 and 387 B.C.
Thus we have both a broad and a narrow time-bracket with which to match the consequences of accepting as the true duration one or another of the five time-spans given by the Purānas for the whole Āndhra line: 300, 411, 412 , 456, 460 years. Out of these alternatives, 411 and 412 alone bring us from 802 to a point not only between the two ends 477 and 377 B.C. of the repeating Maghā but also within the more particular range from 415 to 387 B.C. derived from Mankad. So we may consider the Āndhras Purānically to have ended in either (802-411=) 391 B.C. or (802-412=) 390 B.C. For the sake of convenience we may choose the latter round number.
This conclusion would not be affected if we were to correct some of the Purānic reign-lengths in the light of the inscriptions and coins modern research has found. The slightly changed figures would run: 29+7+7+29+6+10+8=96 years.3 96 years backwards from 390 B.C., would take us to 486 B.C. as the beginning of the 24th Āndhra's reign. With 29 years for the length of this reign, we reach 457 B.C. as its end and so cover 477 B.C., which completes the Seven Rishis' 27th century declared by the Purānas to close within the period of the 24th Āndhra.
1.Pargiter, op. cit., pp. 36, 72.
2.Ibid., pp. 71-2.
3.The Age of Imperial Unity, pp. 204-06.
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With the passing of the Āndhras the Purānas do not fall silent but stop their detailed dealings with dynasties - the roll of king-names, individual reign-lengths, whole durations. After them the next great dynasty known in history is that of the Imperial Guptas. The Purānas1 mention it thus: "(Kings) of the Gupta race will, enjoy these territories: namely, along the Ganges, Prayaga, Sake-ta and the Magadhas." As more than one Gupta is involved and as we know for certain that at least in the time of the second in the line - Samudragupta - the empire was much wider than indicated here, the writer must have used the plural number not because more than one king was known to him but because of the impressively firm establishment of the kingdom by the first Gupta so as to ensure dynastic succession. Again, nothing outside what may be termed the central seat of the Gupta empire, which seemed bound to be hereditary, was within the knowledge of the Purānas when the phrase we have quoted was penned. Hence this part of the account must have closed at the very outset of the new dynasty. Such is the suggestion also from the fact that we have not even the length of the first king's reign nor for him anything beyond his family-designation which alone appeared to be important at the moment for a collective pointer - although it is very likely that at a later date a passage was added and a Gupta conqueror figured there in disguise as "Visvasphani". What is striking in the phrase on the Gupta-kings is that they are collectively linked with "the Magadhas", like all the 8 other dynasties set forth in their particulars in regular sequence: Bārhadratha, Pradyota, Śiśunāga, Nan-da, Maurya, Śunga, Kānva, Āndhra. No other post-Āndhra line is thus linked by the Purānas. And what is notable about Visvasphani who is called "magnificent" and "mighty" and described as "overthrowing all kings" is the expression: "Of the Magadhas the king will be very valiant Visvasphani."2 However, the Purānas supply no direct chronological matter about the Guptas, except that there is some lapse of time between them and the Āndhras.
How is the lapse to be measured with the help of the Purānas themselves? We may get the post-Āndhra situation into proper focus in a general manner by means of some observations of Pargiter's.3 He tells us: "The dynastic portion shows two stages of
1.Pargiter, op. cit., p. 73.
3.Ibid., p. xii.
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termination. The earlier of these stages is the period following the downfall of the Āndhras and the local kingdoms that survived them a while. The Matsya account ends here with the mere mention of the Kilakila kings and no MS of the Matsya contains anything later.... The Vāyu. Brahmānda, Visnu and Bhagavata all carry the narrative on to the rise of the Guptas, which is the later stage." But we must add that within the first stage there are two steps; for the Kilakilas stand apart from the other local kingdoms. About the latter Pargiter1 has said: "These local dynasties are all classed together as more or less contemporaneous." And about them in relation to the former we read:2 "When they are overthrown by Time there will be Kilakila kings." So we have two problems to settle: "How long did the several contemporaneous kingdoms continue after the Āndhras? How much before the Imperial Guptas did the Kilakilas flourish?"
In Pargiter's list, the durations of the contemporaneous kingdoms range from the 52 years of the Sriparvatlya Āndhrabhrityas to the 200 of the Murundas. If we take the 200 as the limit, we may wonder how the Matsya, compiling its account two whole centuries after the Āndhras, could yet omit the various dynasties which the Vayu, Brahmānda, Vishnu and Bhagavata bring in. The Guptas themselves would surely find an entry. Definitely, the 200 years as a post-Āndhra period must be ruled out: much of them must be thought of as falling within the period of the Āndhras. In general we may assert that in view of the dynasties excluded by the Matsya the larger the number of years of the included kingdoms the less probable it is for the space of time from the downfall of the Āndhras to the advent of the Kilakilas. But can we accept even the 52 years of the Śīriparvaīya Āndhrabhrityas as wholly post-Āndhra? If the Murundas must be commenced before the Āndhras fell, there is no reason why any of the dynasties concerned should be exempted. And Pargiter' himself, who dates the end of the Āndhras to c. 236 A.D.,4 considers the Matsya account closed at about the middle of the third century. The date he5 calculates to be most likely is 260 A.D., though he thinks even a
1.Ibid., p. 44.
2.Ibid., p. 72.
4.The usual year with historians today is 225 or 227 A.D.
5.Op. cit., p. xxv.
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little earlier one not impossible. Thus he is prepared to grant all the kingdoms no more than 24 years at most after the passing of the Āndhras. What would be our own reckoning on the basis of the Purānas, with 390 B.C. for the Āndhras' termination?
The impression which the chronological statements on the Sapta Rishi strongly convey is that the Matsya-stage lies within the Maghā-century. This century not only includes the Āndhras' termination but also extends beyond it: the Matsya-pundits stand after the Āndhras and still within this century: so this century allows them to refer to what is'post-Āndhra. There is no need to be post-Maghā in order to make a post-Āndhra reference. By being within the Maghā's 100 years the chronological statements on the Sapta Rishi can qualify to cover the Matsya-stage.
If we ask how it is that no dynasty after the Āndhras is mentioned by these statements, the explanation is the same as for the different way the Matsya treats post-Āndhra history: the lack of importance in the pundits' eyes. Importance was judged by a single double-aspected criterion: "Did a dynasty rule in Magadha and did it run its whole length as a Magadha-ruler?" This criterion held not only for the Matsya-stage but also for the stage of the Vayu, Brahmānda, Vishnu and Bhāgavata. As Pargiter1 has noted, these Purānas made no addition either to the account of the intervals and the Seven Rishis' cycle or to the number and years of the local dynasts after the kings named in the Matsya had been "overthrown by Time". They did not care to add anything here. There is thus no cause for us to doubt that the Matsya-stage was comprised by the Maghā-century.
This stage must be later than at least 390 B.C. and earlier than 377 B.C. In the intervening years, therefore, we have the overthrow of the local dynasts and the coming of the Kilakilas.
What is the distance of the Kilakilas in time from the Guptas? The stage represented by the Purānas other than the Matsya confronts us at once with two assertions. One begins:2 "Then after the Kilakilas Vindhyaśakti will reign" - and continues with what in a literal translation of the version adopted by Pargiter would read:3 "he having known 96 years will enter upon the earth." The other,4 after designating the Kilakilas as Yavanas, makes out Vindhyaśakti
1. Ibid., pp . xv, xxvi,
2. Ibid. , p. 72.
3. Ibid., fn 21.
4. Ibid., fns. 19, 20.
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to be himself a Kilakila. This assertion is in the "Vishnu Purāna (XX111) and. with a reference to the contemporaneous local dynasties after the Āndhras. it says:1 "When they are destroyed, the Kilakila Yavanas will be kings; the chief of them will be Vindhyaśakti..."1 By assimilating Vindhyaśakti to the Kilakilas it practically removes the problem of a separate chronology for them preceding his reign. We are left only with those 96 years of his to explain. Sircar' says that the Vayu Purāna gives him a reign of this length and he1 later remarks: "The Purānic statement that he ruled for 96 years seems to be a mistake, or probably refers not to his reign-period but to the period covered by his long life." Pargiter5 has actually suggested, on a study of the words used,-that the sentence can be construed: "After having known the earth for 96 years he will come to an end." So we have to find how long he reigned, starting from some year between 390 and 377 B.C.
In looking for an answer we have to take into account another statement of the Purānas:'1 "Vindhyaśakti's valiant son, named Pravīra, will enjoy the city Kāncanakā 60 years. His 4'sons will be kings." Evidently, Pravīra too had a long life and surely the Purānas imply that he and his father comprised between them a rather lengthy span. However, if the son could reign for 60 years, the father could not have reigned right till his 96th year: he must have abdicated in his son's favour after a reign of a fair yet not great length. The extent of the two reigns together we may reasonably guess from observing (1) that in contrast to Vindhyaśakti and Pravīra the hitter's sons are given no regnal years and (2) that all of them, instead of the oldest one alone, are said to have reigned. This means that for the Purānas none of them reigned in succession to Pravīra - that is, beyond the hitter's own reign-span - and all of them ruled as petty kings (viceroys) in
1.The Vishnu Purāna: A System of Hindu Mythology and Tradition, translated by 11.11. Wilson (London. 1840). p. 477.
2.The Kilakilas are still unidentified. The word "Yavana", which our historians love to equate mostly with "Greek", cannot here signify this, for Vindhyaśakti, their principal member, is familiar to students of history as "a Brahmana belonging to the Vishnuvriddha gotra" and as "the founder of the Vakataka dynasty" (Sircar, "The Dcccan after Ihe Sātavāhanas", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 219).
3."The Deccan after the Sātavāhanas", p. 217.
4.Ibid., p. 219.
5.Op. cit., p. 72, fn. 21.
6.Ibid., p. 73.
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different parts of their father's dominion at the same time. It is obvious that Pravīra outlived them. Therefore his father's reign and his own stretched jointly over 3 generations. If, with Sircar,1 "we count, as is usual, 25 years to a generation", we get 75 years for the combined reigns of Vindhyaśakti and Pravīra. With the son having 60, the father cannot have more than 15. And we come down from some point within 390-377 B.C. to somewhere in the time starting (390-75=) 315 and finishing (377-75 = ) 302 B.C.
Now we have to inquire: "How do the Purānas' Guptas stand in relation to the 75 years concerned? Do they rise within them or after?" The very next sentence to the one about Pravīra and his 4 sons supplies us with the solution. It: runs: "When the family of the Vindhyakas has passed away, there will be 3 Bāhlika kings." Clearly, the Purānas, referring to the end of the dominion of Vindhyaśakti's family over certain parts, have started counting a period immediately after Pravīra and his sons. It is to this period that, like the 3 Bāhlika kings and several other individuals or groups, the "(Kings) born of the Gupta race" belong. Since there is no sign of any time-steps here, the groups must be taken to be contemporaneous and as commencing in some year within 315-302 B.C. The founder of the Imperial Guptas must be dated to such a year.
As Chandragupta I of Pātaliputra was this founder and as Sandrocottus became king of Palibothra not earlier than 326 B.C. and not later than 305 B.C., it is axiomatic that Purānically Sandrocottus must be the founder of the Imperial Guptas and cannot be Chandragupta Maurya.
Whatever we may say, by way of criticism, about fixing the Kaliyuga in 3102 B.C., the Bhārata War in 3138 B.C., the coronation of Mahapādma Nanda in 1638 B.C. or, since the Nandas Purānically reigned 100 years, the beginning of the Mauryas in 1538 B.C, we cannot help being struck by the precision with which this chronology leads us to synchronise Chandragupta I with Sandrocottus.
Even without our calculations about the kingdoms and dynasties of the post-Āndhra epoch, the very fact that the Purānas can terminate the Āndhras in 390 B.C. and that a Chandragupta of Pātaliputra arrives on the scene not long after - this very fact is
1.Op. cit.. p. 219.
2.Pargiter, op. cit.. p. 73.
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enough, with Sandrocottus in the last quarter of the 4th century B.C., to make us sit up and take sharp notice of the extraordinary coincidence.
The situation in general, and still more with our calculations endowing it with particular acuteness, raises the question: "Does Megasthenes, who lived at the court of Sandrocottus, support the Purāna-prompted conclusion?" And it is indeed pertinent to ask: "Has he gathered from Indian sources any chronological information which would solve in favour of the Purānas the problem of the two Chandraguptas?"
The Crucial Criticism by Modern Historians
Extremely significant as the testimony of Megasthenes would be, we may yet concede in all fairness that it cannot be taken as absolutely final unless we settle all possible controversy bearing from outside it on the general chronology of the Guptas. Everything else can wait, but this issue is an immediate challenge.
Here the first block in our path is what modern historians consider a radical overall argument invalidating from the start the traditional-Purānic chronology. Before meeting any other buildup in favour of the present dating of the Guptas it is best to clear the ground for ourselves by facing the supposed sledge-hammer blow. If it cannot be countered, all talk on behalf of India's own account of her ancient history will be empty chauvinism. And if it can be countered we shall feel confident in confronting every other argument.
We may gather from Fleet1 the elements of the fundamental criticism and state its crucial gist as follows:
"Around 400 A.D. astronomers realised the need to have a specified reckoning with a definite initial occasion. They found the required occasion in what a backward computation by them gave as a conjunction in 3102 B.C. of the sun, the moon and the five then-known planets at the first point of the Zodiacal sign Mesha (Aries). The reckoning thus devised was subsequently identified with the Kaliyuga of which the Purānas speak. The identification is first found, though without the actual name, in the astronomer
1. "The Kali-yuga era", The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1911, pp. 476 ff; also Fleet's article "Hindu Chronology" in The Encyclopaedia Britannica (13th Ed), XIII, p. 497.
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Aryabhata in 499 A.D. By then the Purānic pundits must have adjusted India's traditional history to the new date, fixed the time for the Kaliyuga's close companion, the Bhārata War, and constructed a whole long chronology. The acceptance of the new date must have become universal by 634 A.D., for in that year we have the public use of it in the Aihole Inscription dating itself in the Kaliyuga Era side by side with the well-known Śaka Era of 78 A.D. and referring also to the Bhārata War. But, as the former era is not a real historical one, the entire system of dates the Purānic pundits deduced from it and from the Bhārata War for events is arbitrary. All the ages they have assigned to the various dynasties of the past have no historical value."
Is any answer possible on behalf of the Purānic pundits? Yes -and a very devastating one.
The "Reductio Ad Absurdum" of the Modern Time-Scheme
Before launching on the answer we may doubt whether 3102 B.C. was a date new-fangled after about 400 A.D. rather than part of an old tradition. Even in the days of Megasthenes, the Greek ambassador to India - c. 302 B.C. - Indian history had rightly or wrongly a hoary antiquity for the Indian mind. Pliny (VI.xxl.4-5), Arrian (Indica I.ix) and Solinus (52.5),1 reporting Megasthenes, quote the Indians as saying that the line of kings in India - before Alexander and Sandroccottus - went back by more than 6000 years. In such a chronological scheme - very Purānic in temper -the Kaliyuga could easily start in an age fairly remote from the days of Megasthenes and, if the Guptas of Magadha commenced in the last quarter of the 4th century B.C., the Kaliyuga might well be taken by Megasthenes's contemporaneous calculators of the dynasty-lengths to occur in 3102 B.C. So there is a prima facie case for believing that the date favoured by the astronomers existed much earlier than c. 400 A.D.
Of course, this does not necessarily make the date for the Purānic Kaliyuga historically correct. Nor do we need, for the correctness of equating Sandrocottus with the founder of the Guptas, to have all ancient events reoriented chronologically with
1. The Classical Accounts of India, edited with an Introduction, Notes and Comments by R. C. Majumdar (Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyay, Calcutta, 1960), pp. 340, 223, 487.
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the Kaliyuga of 3102 B.C. as a reference-point. We may admit several items in the old Indian historical system to be incorrectly dated. Our chief concern, prompted by the linguistic Sandrocottus-Chandragupta identity, is to justify the rejection of the Mauryan equation and show the wrong-headedness of placing the Guptas where modern historians put them.
Paradoxically, we are enabled to do so with the help of the very criticism modern historians make of the alternative time-scheme and regard as crucial. They are hardly aware of an amazing implication of it.
If the old chronology was cooked up some time after 400 A.D. and was already in public use by 634 A.D. then according to the chronology of modern historians the Purānic pundits who did the cooking-up lived face to face with the Guptas whose period by the modern chronology is counted from 320 to 570 A.D. But we have submitted that the Indian time-scheme, the work of those very pundits, must begin the Guptas in the last quarter of the 4th century B.C. Hence we have the ridiculous situation that the pundits set contemporaneous kings over 600 years before their own time!
Surely, there is a limit even to the lack of the historical sense we may attribute to Indian chronologists. Critics of the Purānic time-scheme would definitely overshoot the mark by asking us to believe that an Indian living day after day under a particular king could be mad enough to push publicly the same monarch back in history by more than 6 centuries. Here is a reductio ad absurdum of the modern criticism and of the chronology currently accepted.
An Unescapable Predicament
What we have to conclude is clear:
Since the Indian chronology, using the Kaliyuga and closely connecting it with the Bhārata War in a considerably ancient time, was undoubtedly in vogue in the centuries immediately preceding 634 A.D., the date of the Aihole Inscription, the Guptas could never have ruled during those centuries.
If they cannot be placed in this period, they must have started with Chandragupta I in the age of Megasthenes when there flourished as a Magadhan dynasty-founder at Palibothra (Pātaliputra) Sandrocottus, the only Chandragupta of the right associatains
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prior to 320 A.D., the initial point of the Guptas according to she current chronology. And, ipso facto, the Mauryan Chandragupta who at present is dated to c. 321 B.C. must recede into a past sufficiently beyond the post-Alexandrine epoch in India.
Only by the Guptas beginning in that epoch could the Purānic pundits of the period 400-634 A.D. - or of any other period following the age of Megasthenes - be contemporaneous with whatever kings might belong to that period.
Consequently, whether or not we credit the entire corpus of ancient dates calculated by Indian chronology, the commencement which that chronology has to make of the Guptas with Chandragupta I in the period posited for the accession of Sandrocottus in Palibothra - between 326 and 305 B.C. - must be absolutely correct.
All these conclusions must drive our historians into an unescapable predicament.
2
What can we anticipate modern historians to urge with immediate relevance to discredit this conclusion? Two lines of thought are conceivable as first steps. One may bring in the argument that the traditional-Purānic scheme is not the only Indian chronology, an alternative can be alleged in the name of the famous astronomer Varāhamihira. Then we shall have to expose the fallacies inherent in such a contention. This will take us into certain technical details of Indian astronomy as well as into some historical particulars for which we have to prepare the ground earlier. It will be best to begin by imagining our critics as trying to baffle us "factually" if logical opposition seems a forlorn hope. They may claim direct evidence for the present dating of the Guptas' commencement.
The Problem of the Gupta Era: Fleet and Albērūnī
What is today termed the Gupta Era (Sanskrit gupta-kāla) as first fixed by Fleet is indeed remote from our chronology. It takes its start from 320 A.D. as the accession-point of Chandragupta I. But, if we ask the school of Fleet for a definite reason to commence the Imperial Gupta dynasty from 320 A.D., all we hear of direct evidence is: "One can learn from the famous Arab traveller
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and scientist Albērūnī (1031 A.D.) that the Gupta Era started 241 years after the Śaka Era of 78 A.D. The completion of 241 years from 78 A.D. would give us the year 319-320 A.D."
Actually the words of Albērūnī1 are: "As regards the Gupta-kāla, people say that the Guptas were wicked powerful people, and that when they ceased to exist this date was used as the epoch of an era. It seems that Valabha was the last of them, because the epoch of the Guptas falls, like that of the Valabha Era, 241 years later than the Śaka-kāla." Evidently Albērūnī implies that the Gupta Era of 320 A.D. was initiated when the Gupta dynasty came to an end and it was initiated not in celebration of that dynasty but in relief on liberation from it. Every impartial reader has to admit this, as does Sircar2 who is a believer in Fleet's epoch: "According to a late tradition recorded by Albērūnī the Gupta Era (320 A.D.) whose epoch was 241 years later than that of the Śaka Era (78 A.D.) started when the Gupta emperors ceased to exist."
Of course we can try to make out that Albērūnī handed down a capital confusion and say, as Sircar does in continuation: "The legend which is palpably absurd seems to stand on the fact that the word kāla not only indicates an 'era', but also 'death' or 'destruction'." But all this is ingenuity for which neither Albērūnī nor his informants provide the least ground. Their statement is quite natural in their context. The information which Albērūnī transmits about the Śaka-kāla is of the same kind. His words here can serve to render legitimate the very form of his announcement of the Gupta Era. Though there is a peculiarity in them in connection with the legendary king Vikramāditya, which we shall discuss at a later stage of our book, the summing-up3 about 78 A.D. apropos of a Śaka ruler is unequivocal: "Now this date became famous, as people rejoiced in the news of the death of the tyrant, and was used as the epoch of an era, especially by the astronomers."
Mention of the astronomers as support for the communication that the end of the Śaka who had acted the tyrant figured as the beginning of the Śaka Era should exonerate Albērūnī of the charge of muddling matters at this point as well as in regard to the Gupta-kāla. We may quote from three famous astronomers whose works have come down to us and who are often referred to by
1.E. C. Sachau, Albērūnī 's India (London, 1914), II, p. 7.
2."The Vikrama Sarhvat", Vikrama Commemoration Volume, Ujjain, 1948), p. 565. 3. Op. cit., p. 6.
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Albērūnī . Brahmagupta, in his Brahma-Sphuta-Siddhānta (1,26), writes that when the Śakas came to an end 3179 years of the Kaliyuga [of 3102-3101 B.C.] had passed.' The next verse repeats the calculation with a variant expression still closer to Albērūnī , "the end of the Śaka king" (Śākanrpānte). Bhāskara informs us in the Grahaganita chapter of his Siddhānta Siromani (kālamā-nādhyāya, 1.28) that 3179 years of the Kaliyuga finished with a Śaka king's end.2 Utpala (also known as Bhattotpala) brings in Vikramāditya like Albērūnī in a peculiar way, but is quite explicit that the era called Śaka begins from the date of the killing of the Śaka kings.3
In itself the view of 78 A.D. which Albērūnī shares with his astronomers is nothing erratic. A persistent Jain tradition4 presents the Vikrama Era of 58-57 B.C., as marking the death of the legendary Vikramāditya, though not with rejoicing at his demise, and several inscriptions do the same.5 Even apart from Alberunl's astronomers, Satya Shrava" has pointed out from both epigraphy and literature several instances which look upon the Śaka Era of 78 A.D. as signalling the end of the Śakas or of a Śaka king. It is worth looking at the most important items in Shrava's demonstration so that we may see that Albērūnī was not reporting mere fantasy when he gave the Gupta Era no less than the Śaka Era a negative aspect. Among the number of ways the latter is represented Shrava notes: "Śaka-nrpa-kalatīta-samvatsara or the era which marks the expiry of the time of the Śaka king or kings." He cites a long example from Important Inscriptions from the Baroda State, A. S. Gadre, Vol. I, p. 32, of 739 Śaka. A shorter one runs: "Śaka-nrpa-kālātita sathvatsara-sateshu tri (tri) shu daśsotta-reshu."7 Shrava adds that this way of naming the era "is used in a majority of copper plates and inscriptions of the Rāshtra-kūtas and Western Chalukyas". He goes on to quote a verse "found at the
1.Trim" kritādīni kelergo-agaika-gunāh sakdnte-abdah.
2.Nandādrindugunāstathā Śaka-nripasyānte kaiervatsarāh.
3.Benares Edition, p. 193.
4.Journal of the University of Nagpur, December 1940, pp. 52-53.
5.Epigraphia Indica, XIX, Appendix, No. 169; XX, Nos. 383 and 455; "Inscriptions of Kathiawad", New Indian Antiquary, June 1940, p. 112; Bhāratiya-Prdchina-Lipi-Mālā, p. 170.
6.Śakas in India (Pranava Prakashan, New Delhi, 1981), pp. 43, 49-50.
7.Epigraphia Indica, Vol. VII, Appendix, Inscriptions of Southern India, p. 2. No. 1.
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end of Lakshanāvalli, a work on logic by Udayana (906 Śaka). The author says that he completed the work when 906 years from the expiry of the Śakas had elapsed. His dating... shows that an era which began at the end of the Śakas was... in vogue in India." Then Shrava reflects on the meaning of the phrase Śaka-nrpa-kālātita-samvatsara: "Some scholars have translated this phrase as 'the expired year of the time of the Śaka kings.' But there are many clear examples, where this interpretation cannot hold good." Illustrations are provided:
"1. The following inscription of 743...year uses the words atīta and again atīteshu:
Śaka-nrpa-kālātīta-samvatsara-śateshu saptasu trichātvarinśa-
dadhikeshu atīteshu vaisdkha-paurnamāsyām.1
2.Somadeva Suri, a Jain author, writing his Yaśas Tilakacham-pu in Śaka 881, writes in the colophon of this work:
Śaka-nrpa-kālātita-śarhvatsara-sateshvashtasvekasdityadhikeshu gateshu,
i.e., in the year 881 expired of the Śaka-nrpa-kāldtitā era.
3.Again, in an inscription of Śaka 930, the date is expressed as: Śaka-nrpa-kālātitā-samvat sara-śateshu navashu trinśa-dadhikeshu gateshu 930 pravarttamāna saumya-samvatsare.1
"In numbers 1, 2 and 3, if the first atīta means the expired year, as scholars would like to have it, the following atitīeshu or gateshu will be quite redundant. Therefore the word atīta should be joined with &aka-nrpa-kāla and not samvatsara. It will mean Śaka-nrpa-kālamatitya, i.e., at the expiry of the time of the Śaka kings. The correctness of this interpretation of the above term is supported by Jayaditya in his vdrttika also. According to him, the word atīta here forms a compound with Śaka-nrpa-kāla as under the sutra II.i,24, the words kāntāram and atīta form the compound kāntārātita.3. This indicates that the name of the era had the same significance behind it as expressed above by so many authors.
"This idea is further supported by so late a work as Mitāksharā (circa 1100 A.D.), a commentary on the law code of Yājhavalkya. Yājnavalkya writes that all grants of a king should have the time specified in them. On the word time or kāla, the Mitdkshard explains (1.320) that it should be done in the following two ways,
1.Ibid., Vol. XXI, p. 144.
2.Ibid.,
3.See also Sarasvati-kanthabharana, III.2,34. (Shrava's footnote)
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i.e., in the form of Śaka-nrpa-atīta and of Sarhvatsara (60 years Jovian cycle). Prof. D.C. Sircar translates this passage as 'the expired year of the Śaka kings and the (regnal) year'.1 This translation is not warranted by the words of Mitāksharā. The words can only convey the meaning 'at the expiry of the Śaka king or kings.' Dr. Sircar seems to have translated it according to the general impression."
To Shrava2 it is evident from the agreement among a number of ancient authorities that the current Śaka Era did not start, as generally believed, with the advent of the Śaka satraps - in pseudo-Sanskrit "Kshatrapas" - of Western India. It is also beyond doubt3 for him that there were more than one Śaka Era: he thinks of two - the era of 78 A.D. starting "at the extermination of Śaka kings in India" and the other "a still earlier and the actual Śaka era, which was so named because it was used by the Śaka rulers of Western India". At the moment we are not concerned with his exact position as to the earlier era. We shall later touch on the subject here and there as well as finally come to grips with the issue of Śaka-extermination in 78 A.D. Now that we have seen, by analogy from the evidence of a Śaka Era held to begin at the termination of a king or kings, that Albērūnī 's Gupta Era need not be "palpably absurd" we may tackle whatever difficulties may be set in our way on the strength of the current outlook on the Śaka Era.
We shall gather our data from R. C. Majumdar. He4 says that the Śaka Era "is not associated with the Śakas for the first five hundred years or more when it is simply called Varsha" and that "the name of the Śaka king" who is supposed to have "founded the era never occurs". About its origin, Majumdar5 mentions the modern consensus: "it was either founded by a Scythian ruler to commemorate his accession, or arose out of the continual reckoning of the regnal years by his successors. The identity of the Scythian king is, however, a matter of dispute." Majumdar's summing-up" on this era as well as on the earlier "Vikrama" of
1.Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Lahore Session, p. 53.
2.Op. cit., p. 52.
3.Ibid., p. 54.
4."The Vikrama Sarhvat and Śakabda", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 157.
5.Ibid., p. 158.
6.Ibid., p. 154.
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58-57 B.C. is: "The origin of both these eras is shrouded in mystery."
We may deepen the mystery in two ways. First, there is Majum-dar's assertion after noting the dispute over the Scythian king's identity: "As the era was used from the very beginning by the Śaka satraps of Western India, there can be little doubt that it commemorates the reign of their Śaka overlord. If it can be proved on independent evidence that Kanishka flourished about 78 A.D., he can certainly be regarded as this overlord and founder of the era, a view that is now widely accepted. But, unfortunately,...there is a great diversity of opinion regarding his date, and none of the views command general acceptance. The question must therefore be left open until we have a more definite idea of the chronology of the Scythian rulers." If this chronology is uncertain and if we do not yet know who the overlord of the Śaka satraps of Western India was, what grounds do we have to date these satraps from 78 A.D. onwards? Are they connected with any persons or events that we must situate in the post-78 A.D. period?
They had two branches - the Kshaharāta and the Kārdamaka:1 the former was uprooted by Gautamfputra Satakarni, the Satāvāhana king;2 the latter met its end at the hands of Chandragupta II,3 the third of the Imperial Guptas who were the next great dynasty in India after the Sātavāhanas. A powerful member of the Kardāmakas - Rudradāman I - was also in contact with the Sātavāhanas: he defeated a Satakarni.4 Apart from the Sātavāhanas and the Guptas we know of nothing to place the Kshaharātas and the Kārdamakas where at present they are dated. If, following the traditional-Purānic chronology and Alberunl's indication, we shift the beginning of the Guptas to 315 B.C., we have no reason to hold that the two Śaka houses observed the era of 78 A.D. and that their overlord was Kanishka, as most historians believe.
The second deepening of the mystery comes from the fact that Kanishka cannot be the Scythian king who is considered their overlord, for Kanishka is known as a Kushāna, not a Śaka, and it is the Śakas who are Scythians. Sircar5 says: "...the literary and epigraphic texts of ancient India often mention the Śakas
1. Ibid., pp. 179, 182.
2. Ibid., pp. 182, 201.
3.The Classical Age, p. 19.
4.The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 83.
5."The Śakas and the Pahlavas", ibid., p. 120.
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(Scythians)..." The Kushānas, as again Sircar1 writes, "were a branch of the famous Yuechi tribe whose early history is noticed in several Chinese historical works" and who "originally dwelt...in Chinese Turkestan, in the province of Kan-su, according to some scholars." When, under the pressure "of a neighbouring tribe called the Hiung-nu", they migrated westward, in the course of their march they met, defeated and dispersed, as Chinese sources narrate, "the Sae, Sai or Sek (Śaka) dwelling in the plains on the northern bank...of the Jaxartes..."2 We must be careful to avoid mixing up the two tribes. "It is now generally accepted," Richard N. Frye' tells us, "that we are not to identify the Yue-chih with the Śakas", and India was quite aware of the difference as we know from the name given to the Kushānas in its literature. Sircar4 notes the reference by the Kāshmiri historian Kalhana's Rājatarahgini (I, 168-73) to "three kings of the Turuskha race", one of whom is Kanishka. Sircar's comment5 is: "The reference to the Kushāna family as of Turushka or Turkish origin in the Kashmir chronicle is supported by a tradition recorded by Albērūnī [II, pp. 10-11]. According to this tradition the Hindus had kings residing in Kabul, who were said to be Turks of Tibetan origin.... Albērūnī was told that the pedigree of this royal family, written in silk, existed in the fortress of Nagarkot (Kot Kangra in the Punjāb) and that 'one of this series of kings was Kanik, the same who is said to have built the Vihdra (Buddhist monastery) of Purushāwar (Peshāwar). It is called after him Kanik-chaitya.' There is little doubt that Kanik of Albērūnī is the same as the Kushāna king Kanishka who, according to another tradition recorded by the Chinese pilgrims, erected at Purushapura (Peshawar) a great stūpa more than six hundred feet in height.'"1 A little later Sircar7 remarks: "In Indian literature the Kushānas are prcjbably referred to as Tukhara, apparently because they had once settled in the Tukhara country, which
1."The Kushānas", ibid., p. 136.
3.The Heritage of Persia (A Mentor Book, The New American Library, New
York, 1963), pp. 197-98.
4.Op. cit., p. 148.
5.Ibid., p. 149.
6.Sircar's footnote: "Fa-hien, Sung-yun and Hiuen Tsang have described the magnificence of this stupa. The relic casket which it contained has been found in situ in course of-excavations. It bears an effigy and inscription of Kanishka."
7.Op. cit., p. 149.
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seems to have originally been a northern district of Bactria." Surely, in India a Turushka or Tukhāra king could hardly have passed as the initiator of a Śaka Era. To consider the Kushāna Kanishka a Scythian monarch responsible for this era is a rather irresponsible venture.
Shrava' has the same thought and buttresses it by another consideration. First he says: "Kanishka was decidedly a Tushara, and the Tusharas and Śakas have been distinguished one from the other by Indian writers from the earliest times." Then he adds "another very conspicuous fact", namely: "All the inscriptions of the Śakas or the Western Kshatrapas use the word varshe for era, while the inscriptions, copper plates, scrolls, etc. of Kanishka and his successors use the word samvatsara for the era. This clear distinction shows at once that the eras used by the rulers of these two dynasties are totally different. This distinction cannot be regarded as provincial only."
Four points have to be caught here in our context - partly against the background of Majumdar's observation2 that "after more than three hundred years' rule the line of the Western Satraps came to an end" - a rule whose dates are, in the current opinion voiced by Rapson,1 "all in the era which starts from the beginning of Kanishka's reign-in 78 A.D." Point 1 is: the era of the Śaka Kshaharātas and Kārdamakas has to be separated from Kanishka. Point 2 focuses the fact that this era running into over three centuries of Śaka sovereignty cannot be the one of 78 A.D. which takes its start with the expiry or extermination of Śaka kingship. Point 3 is the emergence of the question: "Who brought about this expiry or extermination?" Point 4 also brings up a question: "When precisely does the era of the Śaka Kshaharatas and Kardamakas commence?" We are not obliged now to offer answers to Points 3 and 4. Our concern is simply to suggest the legitimacy of the negative Śaka Era reported by Albērūnī and to put beside it his negative Gupta Era as a legitimate possibility.
We may add that even modern historians are aware of beginnings of a similar nature. Most of the Govindapala records of the 12th century A.D. and two inscriptions of Aśokachalla and one of
1.Op. cit.. p. 52.
2."The Expansion and Consolidation of the Empire", The Classical Age. p. 19.
3."The Scythian and Parthian Invaders", The Cambridge History of India, I, p.
585.
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Jayasena - all from Bengal - are dated from the cessation or destruction of a reign.1 The very gauge-year which Albērūnī2 uses -"the year 400 of Yasdajird" - in order to convey by comparison the chronology of the eras enumerated is practically of an era linked to the end of a dynasty. "Yasdajird" was the last king of the Sassa-nian dynasty of Persia and the era that was followed under his name was reckoned from the first of the 9 years during which he had ruled before losing his throne to the Arabs at the battle of Nihavend and terminating his royal line. Neither in the context of general history nor in that of Albērūnī 's report of kālas can a Gupta Era beginning with the expiry of the Imperial Guptas be deemed a freak. Of course, it would be the negative image of the one they themselves followed far earlier.
The naturalness of it can be demonstrated indirectly by proving how under no circumstances could Albērūnī have fitted the Guptas into the modern chronological scheme. Take his dating of the Bhārata War. True, he does not report the traditional-Purānic date: 36 years before the Kaliyuga of 3102 B.C. He reports the one which we have already referred to as an alternative alleged in the name of Varāhamihira and which had become popular around Albērūnī 's time as we shall see later from Kalhana who lived about a hundred years after him. But, as computed from the gauge-year - "400 of Yasdajird" - it goes back fairly into antiquity. Albērūnī 1 counts "the year 953 of the Śakakāla" as corresponding to the gauge-year. This means (78+953=) 1031 A.D. An earlier correspondence runs:4 "According to both Brahmagupta and Pulisa [two astronomers], of the kaliyuga there have elapsed before our gauge-year 4132 years and between the wars of Bhārata and our gauge-year there have elapsed 3479 years." So the Bhārata War is put in (3479-1031 = ) 2446 B.C. elapsed, while the Kaliyuga is (4132-1031 = ) 3101 B.C. elapsed, which amounts to 3102 B.C. as its starting-point. Albērūnī 's Kaliyuga agrees with the postulate of the Purānic pundits. His epoch of the war falls short of theirs by (3138-2448=) 690 years. But it is most unlikely that with the war still so far away in time as 2448 B.C. he would conceive of the
I Radhagovinda Basak, "Govindapala Records Re-examined", Proceedings of 'he Indian Historical Congress, 3rd Session, Calcutta, 1939, pp. 528-36.
2.Op. cit., pp. 2. 7.
3.Ibid., p. 7.
4. Ibid., pp. 4-5
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Guptas commencing as late as 320 A.D. Their ending in that year is immeasurably more in harmony with his chronological picture. There is no ground to assume any confusion on the basis of the double significance of the word kāla.
The only item striking one in Albērūnī 's statement as odd and requiring some elucidation is the reference to "Valabha" as the last of the Guptas. On the one hand it enforces the general drift -the Guptas' termination - by its stress on their having a last member before 320 A.D. On the other hand, our knowledge that the rulers of Valabhī came after Albērūnī 's Gupta Era, since Hiuen-Tsang names an early ruler of it as having been 60 years before his time (c. 640 A.D.),1 sets Albērūnī 's statement in a queer light: it is as if they were ignored by him and our attention obliquely drawn to Valabhī history as if it came prior to 320 A.D. But even here he merely suggests that the last Gupta bore the personal appellation "Valabha": he does not affirm that after 320 A.D. there were no Valabhī kings. Indeed, as we can show, he could never make such an affirmation. Just ahead of the statement on the Guptas he2 writes: "The Era of Valabha is called so from Valabha, the ruler of the town of Valabhī, nearly 30 yojanas south of Anhilvara. The epoch of this Era falls 241 years later than the epoch of the Śaka Era.... The history of Valabha is given in its prope'r place..." When we seek out the place3 we get the information which Majumdar,4 after giving what "seems to be the most reasonable explanation of the downfall of the Maitraka kings [of Valabhī] proffers: "The general belief, however, is that the Valabhī kingdom was destroyed by the Arabs. This is primarily based on a story recorded by Albērūnī . It is said that a rich citizen of Valabhī had a quarrel with the king and, 'being afraid of his resentment, fled to the Arab ruler of Sindh. He offered the latter presents of money, and asked him to send a naval force against Valabhī. The Arab ruler accordingly made a night attack, killed the king and his people, and destroyed the town.' " Whether right or wrong, this piece of information, bringing in the Arabs, proves the kings of Valabhī continuing for Albērūnī beyond 320 A.D in consonance with our own historical knowledge. But he has no
1.The Classical Age, p. 63.
2.Op. cit., II, p. 7.
3.Ibid., I, p. 192.
4."Northern India during A.D. 650-750", The Classical Age. p. 151.
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mention of the Guptas anywhere else in his book to correct a possible mistake in the passage about the Gupta-kāla. This puts the Valabhī Era on a different footing altogether - with no implication of the kings of Valabhī terminating in 320 A.D. The sole rapport for Albērūnī between "the Era of Valabha" and that of the Guptas' termination was the year common to both, and this common factor misled him to say: "It seems that Valabha was the last of them..." Note the word "seems". It denotes speculation on the basis of the data gathered, a misguided fancy which yet does not prevent Albērūnī from indicating the start of the Valabha Era with "Valabha, the ruler of the town Valabhī".
No legitimate way is open to us to evade Albērūnī 's pronouncement on the Guptas. And it appears to have at least one direct corroboration from outside his book. An era marking the termination of the Guptas is conjured up by a certain epigraphic phrase which has never been satisfactorily explained up till now. The phrase is in the Gōkāk plates of Dejja Mahārāja, published in Epigraphia Indica, XXI, pp. 289 ff.
N. Lakshminarayan Rao who was asked to edit them and offer his comments writes: "The grant registered in the charter was made when 845 years of the Āguptāyika kings had expired. The date is especially noteworthy for we do not know anything of the Āguptāyika kings with whom it is connected. This is the first inscription known to us making mention of these kings. No details about them are, however, recorded in this document except that they belonged to the spiritual lineage of Vardhamana, the 24th Jaina Tirtharhkara. The name of the era started by these personages, namely, the Āguptāyikas or the reckoning to which it belonged are questions which can be decided only by future researches. Palaeographically the document may be ascribed to about the 6th or 7th century of the Christian era. No reckoning is known at present which would give 845 an equivalent in the sixth or seventh century of that era."
Rao, guided by the Jain reference, hazards the guess that the era might be linked with the current Jain dating of Chandragupta Maurya to 313-12 B.C., Chandragupta Maurya whom a late Jain tradition honours as the disciple of the famous patriarch Bhadra-bahu in the last part of his life. Thus Rao gets 532-33 A.D. for the record. "But, considering the palaeography of the record, this date appears to be somewhat too early."
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Along Rao's line, not the first Maurya but a later one named Samprati might come on the scene. "Jain texts," says R. K. Mookerji,1 "treat Samprati as a patron of Jainism almost in the same light as Buddhist texts treat Aśoka." And, according to Raychaudhuri,2 "an era of Samprati, grandson of Aśoka is... mentioned in an ancient Jain MS." If we count onward from his date in the modern time-scheme the palaeographical criterion will be better observed. But, with Chandragupta left behind, we would be hard put to it to explain the word "gupta" in the document.
Even with Chandragupta present, this word would lack full appreciation along Rao's lines. That is one of the arguments broached by D. N. Mookerji who takes up the problem of the plates in The Journal of Indian History, April 1939, pp. 64-68. He submits the interpretation: "...'Āguptāyikanam rājriam' seems to mean in the reckoning of those kings whose names end in 'Gupta'..." So he is convinced that the era has to do with the Imperial Gupta family. He points out that in the Maurya family no one except its founder had the term "Gupta" at the end of his name and therefore the era cannot be linked with Chandragupta Maurya. But the usual Gupta Era of 320 A.D. he finds too late. Remembering that several of the Imperial Guptas bore the title "Vikramāditya" he identifies the Vikrama Samvat of 57 B.C. as the real Gupta Era and obtains (845-57=) 788 A.D. for the grant. In support of his chronology he cites an authority: "Dr. M. H. Krishna of the Mysore University kindly informs me that palaeog-raphically the date of the Gōkāk plate may be about A.D. 700." He also tries to show that Chandragupta I and not Chandragupta Maurya was really associated with Jainism.
Mookerji is justified in dismissing the Mauryas and concentrating on the Imperial Guptas but he is unconvincing in equating the latter's era with the Vikrama Samvat as well as in the attempt to turn these kings into Jains. Even if Chandragupta I be brought into relation with Jainism, how would his dynasty belong to the spiritual lineage of Vardhamana - that is, Mahāvīra? No doubt, the Guptas patronized Jainism no less than Buddhism but they were,
1."Aśoka the Great", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 89.
2.The Political History of Ancient India, 5th Edition (Calcutta University, 1950), p. 376. The author's footnote refers to Vincent Smith's Early History of India, 4th Edition, p. 202 n.
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first and foremost, followers of typically Hindu cults, especially Vaishnavism. If we are to make any sense of the obvious liaison between the era concerned and the Guptas we must separate the Guptas from the kings who are said to be of Mahāvīra's spiritual lineage. These kings are the framers and observers of the era, they are not themselves those whose names mark it: the Guptas. The key to the solution lies in an insight of Mankad's into the nuances of Sanskrit.1 As against Mookerji's interpretation apropos of "Āguptāyika" - "the reckoning of those kings whose names end in Gupta' " - he substitutes: "the era of the kings who go up to the Guptas." He clarifies this reading to signify: "the era will start from the end of the Guptas." Thus we have kings of Mahāvīra's lineage who commence where the Guptas terminate and whose era is counted from that point of termination. In short, the reckoning is Albērūnī 's "Gupta-kāla".2
If Mankad's reading of the peculiar expression used in Dejja Mahārāja's plates connoted, as it might, an era from the start of the Gupta dynasty, it would tend to be somewhat artificial in a post-Gupta record, whereas if it connoted, as it certainly could, an era from the end of this dynasty, one which goes up to the termination of the Guptas, beginning where the total number of them is complete, it would be in that record a pointed manner of speaking. Adopting the style of Mookerji's translation, we may speak not of names ending in "Gupta" but of ended "Gupta"-names. What then of the palaeographical situation? 845 years added to 320 give us 1165 A.D., a sheer 377 years later than Mookerji's 788 A.D. Is such a difference tolerable in serious history - even though our outlook on Dejja Mahārāja's phraseology may illuminate all the details of its ambiguity or eccentricity?
The best answer is to quote the judgment of a few prominent historical writers to prove that palaeography - the comparative study of old scripts - is not an exact science which can be
1.Op. cit.. p. 306. fn. 1.
2.Mankad's own application of his reading differs from ours in some respects. Like us he does start the original Gupta Era in the time of Sandrocottus but he thinks it had more than one start and end. It ended first in the first century B.C. with what is known as the Vikrama Samvat, which seems to have served at the same time to continue the Gupta Era further until it terminated once more in 320 A.D. Mankad's scheme is argued out in a rather complicated manner and we do not concur with all its features.
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mechanically applied. There is the opinion of Sylvain Lévi1 that palaeographical tests have little independent value (autorité absolue) although they may be used as a check (controle) upon or a guide (indice) to the interpretation of positive history. In a narrower context Jouveau-Dubreuil2 has also put palaeography in its true place: he has remarked that it is a bad auxiliary to the chronology of Indian history as very often the documents dated in the same reign differ much from each other and thus its evidence would be mainly suggestive or corroborative but at any rate not conclusive by itself.
Perhaps A. S. Altekar3 provides us with the most significant "slant" on the subject. Discussing the dynasty known as the Maghās of Baghelkund and Kauśāmbī, he mentions three eras by which they might be dated: the Chedi Era of 248 A.D., the Gupta of 320 and the Śaka of 78. Thus the datings would vary by (320-248=)72, (248-78=)170 or (320-79=)242 years. Altekar informs us:
"Messrs N. G. Majumdar and Krishna Deva think it very probable that the era used is the Chedi era... (Epigraphia Indica XXIV, 146 and 253); Rai Bahadur Daya Ram Sahni thinks that the era is the Gupta Era (ibid., XVIII, 159). Marshall, Konow and Dr. Moti Chandra opine that the era used is the Śaka Era (Archaeological Survey of India 1911-12, p. 417; E. I. XXIII, 247; Journal of the Numismatic Society of India II, 95 ff). The most cogent argument in favour of the Chedi or the Gupta Era is palaeographical; there is no doubt that the characters of the Maghā inscriptions are almost the Gupta characters. The argument however is not a convincing one; for many of the Gupta forms of characters are to be seen in an inscription of Kanishka, dated in the 14th [Śaka] year (92 A.D.); see £./. XXI, 2. The most fatal objection against referring the dates to the Chedi or the Gupta era is the contemporaneity of some of these rulers with the Imperial Guptas, which it renders inevitable. The Gupta feudator-
1.Quoted in English by Vincent Smith in The Indian Antiquary, Vol. 31, 1902, p. 196.
2.Quoted in English by Govind Pai in The Journal of Indian History, August 1935, p. 197.
3."New Indian States in Rajputana and Madhyadesa", A New History of the Indian People, edited by R. C. Majumdar and A. S. Altekar (Motilal Banarsidass, Lahore, 1946), Vol. VI, p. 41, fn. I.
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ies even in the distant parts of the empire refer to their overlords in their records; is it likely that Samudra-gupta, who had forcibly uprooted the kings of the Gangetic valley, would have allowed Bhlma-varman to rule as an independent king of Kauśāmbī in the years 339-358 A.D.? No Gupta feudatory was ever permitted to mint any coins. Is it possible that the Guptas would have permitted a feudatory family ruling at Kauśāmbī to issue its own coinage? On the other hand, if we refer the inscriptions to the Śaka era, there will be a gap of more than 50 years between the Maghās and the Guptas. It will explain the independent status of the Maghās, as also the circumstances of the Maghā coinage showing no influence on the Gupta copper issues."
An extra argument in Altekar's favour is Sircar's remark' that this Maghā dynasty may have been founded by a lieutenant of the Kushānas named Maghā.
Of course, a good deal of Altekar's "fatal objection" would vanish if the Gupta Era of 320 A.D. were seen in our light as terminating the Guptas; but here, as in Lévi and Jouveau-Dubreuil, what is to be noted is the acknowledged limitations of the palaeographical criterion and the primacy given to historical conditions within an accepted context.
A striking defect in utter reliance on palaeography is also brought home to us by the current situation in regard to the earliest available Tamil records: the caverinscriptions in the Brāhmī script. R. Venkatraman2 reports: "The dating of these Tamil Brāhmī inscriptions remains controversial. Prof. T. V. Mahalingam was the first to suggest a system of staggered dates for them, which ranged from the 3rd century B.C. to the 4th century A.D. I. Mahadevan suggested a modified staggered dating, ranging from the 2nd century B.C. to the 6th century A.D. These two scholars based their conclusions on a system of palaeographical evolution in this Brāhmī script. They did not take into consideration other relevant fields like Archaeology, Numismatics, etc. Pointing out this lacuna, K. V. Soundarajan dated these inscriptions from the 1st or 2nd century A.D. to the 4th or 5th century A.D." Even within the purely palaeographical field a variation of
1."Northern India after the Kushānas", The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 176.
2.Indian Archaeology: A Survey (NS ENNES Publications. Madurai, 1985), p. 213.
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one century at the start and two at the end is seen as possible. When an all-round view is taken, the possibility is shown of palaeography failing by three to five centuries at the start itself as well as by one or two at the end. How can we speak palaeographi-cally of standing on solid ground everywhere?
Hence, if our treatment of that crucial formula in the Gōkāk plates is sound, palaeography should not be allowed to perplex us.
Dejja Mahārāja seems a very good help to our position, but in case palaeography is somehow deemed difficult to waive, our general stand on the negative Gupta Era need not suffer. For, the sole alternative to our treatment of "Āguptāyika" would still be within the same universe of discourse and turn merely to what we have adjudged the less pointed of the two interpretations we have listed. Instead of saying "up to the end of the Guptas" we would have to say "Up to the start..." There is no avoiding the sense of "Up to" in the Sanskrit "A". And there is no avoiding the Guptas at either their termination or their initiation. Nor is it possible to terminate or initiate a series of Guptas at 57 B.C. with the traditional Vikramāditya who is never said to be of any Gupta family. And, if "Going up to" cannot mean the Guptas' end, all that is left us to do in the interests of palaeography is to begin them between 324 B.C. and 305 B.C. with the Chandragupta who was Sandrocottus. Then we shall have for the Gōkāk plates a date within the period from (845-324 B.C.=) 521 A.D. to (845-305=) 540 A.D. This will take us very close to Rao's 532-33 A.D. and palaeographically not far from the recommended 6th or 7th century after Christ.
With regard to Albērūnī , the difference is no more than a matter of emphasis-shift. Before, the support to his negative Gupta Era of 320 A.D. was direct and an indirect one was extended by implication to our positive Gupta Era in the last quarter of the 4th century B.C. Now the direct support is to the latter and an indirect one implied for Albērūnī 's 320 A.D. where the line of kings from that last quarter might end.
In both instances, we are justified in taking Albērūnī at his word and sticking to a straightforward understanding of him.
Even without the Gōkāk plates though more so with them, Albērūnī - supplying the only explicit allusion in all literature to the establishment of the Gupta Era of 320 A.D. and to its relation to the Gupta dynasty - forces us to date the founder of this
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dynasty, as well as the positive era installed by him and followed by his successors, a number of centuries previous to 320 A.D. But, going backwards where can we stop except at Sandrocottus for our non-Mauryan Chandragupta? As far as Chandragupta I is concerned, Albērūnī rules out the modern chronology and thereby buttresses the ancient Indian or traditional-Purānic.
The Problem of the "Synchronism" Proposed by Lévi
We may next be questioned: "What about the account, Hing-Tchoan. of the Chinese writer Wang Hiuen-t'se who was in India during 647-48 A.D. and who tells of the cordial interchange between two kings of the past - the Indian San-meou-to-lo-kiu-to and the Ceylonese Chi-mi-kia-po-mo? Has not Lévi elucidated this account by identifying the latter as Sirimeghavanna whom modern historians place from 352 to 376 A.D. and the former as the second member of the Imperial Guptas, Samudragupta, the end of whose reign these historians fix at 376 or 380 A.D.? As the identification is unchallengeable, does not Lévi's proposed synchronism establish Fleet's Era of 319-320 A.D.?"
The "synchronism" bristles with a lot of complexity. But we must clarify at the outset that there is no real complexity in the fact that there were two Meghavannas in Ceylon's history, an earlier and a later. Admittedly, the later one has a "Kittisiri" and not merely "Siri" before his name, but the earlier has always the suffix "abhaya" and is also known as Gothabhaya.1 Without this suffix his name is incomplete, whereas "Siri" can easily stand as an abbreviation of "Kittisiri" by an oversight. The real complexity emerges fundamentally in regard to the system of dating used for the later Meghavanna.
There are two systems of dating. The traditional one is known to us from the Ceylonese (or Sinhalese) Chronicles Dīpavamsa and Mahāvamsa (4th and 6th centuries A.D. respectively). Here the history of Ceylon is traced from 543 B.C. as the year of Buddha's Parinirvdna or death. The other system, championed by Wilhelm Geiger and Wickremasinghe, dates Buddha's death to 483 B.C. According to them, this date was originally current in Ceylon and the reckoning from 543 was adopted a considerable time later.
1. Wilhelm Geiger, Mahdvamsa, tr., p. 263.
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By Geiger's epoch Sirimeghavanna would become a contemporary of Samudragupta as dated by Fleet's Gupta Era. But is Geiger justified? Even those who find him convenient to the modern chronology for the Mauryas cannot help looking at his theory a little dubiously. Thus Raychaudhuri1 not only says: "Geiger's date... is not explicitly recognised by tradition." He2 also comments on "certain Chinese and Chola synchronisms" adduced by Geiger to prop up his theory: "The Chola synchronisms referred to... are not free from difficulties, and it has been pointed out by Geiger himself that the account in Chinese annals of an embassy which Mahānāman, king of Ceylon, sent to the emperor of China in 428 A.D., does not speak in favour of his revised chronology." Raychaudhuri3 goes on to note that the traditional date of Menander, the Indo-Greek king, which is 500 years after Buddha, "works out more satisfactorily" with a Parinirvāna Era of 543 B.C. than with that of 483 or even with the date 486 of "a Cantonese tradition" which Raychaudhuri4 chooses to accept "as a working hypothesis for the determination of the chronology of the early dynasties of Magadha".
S. Paranavitana, one-time archaeological commissioner of Ceylon, rejects 483 totally. By implication, we may infer, he would reject anything approximating to it like 486, for the reasons against the one would hold against the other. He has conducted a close examination of the chronological tables prepared by L. C. Wi-jesinha on the basis of the Buddhist Era (B.E.) starting from 543 B.C. and that set forth by Geiger and Wickremasinghe. His scrutiny has a piquant interest for us because it decides against the theory of Geiger and Wickremasinghe by bringing in Lévi himself on his side. He5 writes:
"The theory has landed both these scholars in considerable difficulties in effecting a transition from one Buddhist era to the other. Chinese references to Ceylon during the period between the fifth and eighth centuries published by Sylvain Lévi (Journal Asiatique, 1900, pp. 297 ff, 401 ff) furnish us with indisputable evidence to prove that Wijesinha's dates are preferable to those of
1.Op. cit., p. 227.
2.Ibid., pp. 225-26.
3.Ibid., p. 226.
4.Ibid. p. 227.
5."History of Ceylon", A New History..., pp. 263-64.
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Wickremasinghe and Geiger. Pien-e-itien, chap. 66, records that in the fifth year of Iuen-kia (428 A.D.), the king of Ceylon, Mo-ho-nan by name, sent an embassy to the Chinese court. There is no difficulty in recognising the name Mahānāma in 'Mo-ho-nan' and there was only one king of Ceylon by this name. According to Wijesinha's tables Mahānāma reigned from 412 to 434. The date of the Chinese embassy falls correctly within this period. Computing on the basis of the Buddhist era beginning 483 B.C., Wickremasinghe makes Mahānāma ascend the throne in 468 A.D., forty years after his envoy arrived in China.
"The Nikāya Sangraha, a work of the fourteenth century, gives 818 B.E. as the date of Mahasena's accession. Adding up the lengths of intervening reigns as given in the Mahāvamsa, the first year of Mahānāma would fall in 953 B.E., i.e., 410 A.D. which enables the latter to be on the throne in 428 A.D. when his envoys were received by the Chinese emperor. On the same computation Sirimeghavanna should have ascended the throne in 845 B.E. (302 A.D.)...."
This is practically in conformity with Wijesinha's 304 A.D. for the same king.1 Paranavitana continues:
"There is no valid ground to doubt the general accuracy of the chronicle for the three or four centuries preceding Mahānāma's reign. The great majority of the kings of this period are mentioned in contemporary records and when regnal years are given in these records, they do not come in conflict with the data furnished by the chronicles. Sylvain Lévi, who has tested numerous dates from the fifth to eighth centuries by means of Chinese references, concludes that 'the accuracy of the Sinhalese annals is triumphantly vindicated by this test'. Vincent Smith, than whom there is no severer critic of the Sinhalese chronicles, confesses that 'there is not, I believe, any reason to doubt the substantial accuracy of the Ceylonese dates even for the much earlier time of Dutthāgamanī, about B.C. 161' (Indian Antiquary, XXI, 195). The question is not whether the Parinirvāna of the Buddha actually took place in 483 or 543 B.C., but whether a Buddhist era with 483 B.C. as its starting point was current in Ceylon at any period. The evidence available not only disproves the contention of Wickremasinghe, Geiger and others that such an era was in use during the period covered by this chapter [66-534 A.D.], but establishes that dates
1. Ibid., p. 257.
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were computed during this period in the traditional Buddhist era of Ceylon having 543 B.C. for its epoch."
Here a small "aside" of clarification would be in order. We have mentioned the convenience of Geiger and company to the modern chronology. We meant the usual calculation of 218 years given by the Chronicles as the time from the Parinirvāna to Aśoka's coronation. If we accept 483 B.C. for the former we obtain 265 B.C. for the latter - a result in keeping with the current historical structure, particularly as the Chronicles say that Aśoka was formally consecrated 4 years after his actual accession, so that we get for the accession 269 B.C. With 543 B.C. to start from, we arrive at 325 B.C. for Aśoka, making him a contemporary of Alexander the Great and setting him in the shoes of Sandrocottus. This is obviously bizarre. But Raychaudhuri1 has suggested a way out of the anomaly. The earliest Chronicle, the Dīpavarhsa, calls the king who is coronated 218 years after Buddha's death "Piyadasi". Although usually Aśoka is indicated by this name in Pālī, the Indian drama Mudrā-rākshasa (Act VI) applies the term "Piadatmsana", which is equivalent to it and represents the pure Sanskrit "Priyadarsana", to his grandfather Chandragupta Maurya. Transferred to Chandragupta, the Dīpavarhsa's statement would fix his coronation in 325 B.C., not an utterly unlikely year if he were Sandrocottus. Thus even for the modern chronology the two systems of dating could be on a par.
However, the" whole problem is irrelevant to our purpose. Aśoka and his grandfather do not have to come into the picture at all. We have claimed for the Chronicles correct orientation, from a stipulated epoch of the Parinirvāna, in regard to their own island-kings after a certain period, not in regard to the history of the mainland in a more remote age. In our context, Geiger and Wickremasinghe's alleged convenience for the modern time-scheme has no bearing on Paranavitana's conclusions.2
If Sirimeghavanna is Wang-Hiuen-t'se's Chi-mi-kia-po-mo, his reign in Wijesinha's tables, which are proved accurate by Chinese sources, extends for 28 years from 304 to 332 A.D. Then, if
1.Op. cit., p. 271; also Indian Culture, II, p. 560.
2.The theme of Aśoka in itself, as well as that of the Parinirvāna. needs detailed treatment and we shall concentrate on both in Part Three of our book. At the present stage, they arc beside the point.
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Samudragupta, son of Chandragupta I, is his contemporary San-meou-to-lo-kiu-to, this king must come to the throne in 332 A.D. at the latest. Generally our historians believe that Chandragupta I, the first "Mahārājādhirāja" ("Supreme King of great kings") in the family, founded the Gupta Era on accession in 320 A.D. Mookerji1 adds that this era was, according to Fleet, also that of the Lichchhavis of Nepal from whom it was taken over by Chandragupta I who was intimately connected with them. The intimate connection was by his marriage to the Lichchhavi princess Kumar-adevl who was to be the mother of Samudragupta. So the marriage which must have led to his transfer of the era to himself was most likely in the very year 320 A.D. In that case Samudragupta would be barely 12 years old when he became king. His own Allāhābād Pillar Inscription shows the utter improbability of 12 years, for it speaks in the highest terms of his ability and prowess which rendered him the most eligible out of several princes. Apparently his father abdicated in his favour with the declaration, as Majumdar2 quotes it, "Thou art worthy, rule this whole world." How shall we relate such a situation to a mere stripling of not even 12? But, if Samudragupta could not have succeeded his father in 332 A.D., he could not have been contemporaneous with Sirimeghavanna.
An attempt may be made to endow him with greater maturity at this date by ascribing to him and not to his father the founding of the Gupta Era. Then the accession of Chandragupta I and the marriage with Kumāradevi could occur enough earlier than 320 A.D. to allow Samudragupta to be a fairly grown-up hero before mounting the throne in that year and establishing his era. Majumdar3 sees a good deal of plausibility here because of Sr.mud-ragupta's status as a conqueror on a grand scale. Paranavitana seems tacitly to countenance the theory when, in spite of the old traditional chronology for Sirimeghavanna, he" says: "this is not in conflict with the fact that he was a contemporary of Samudragupta, as we learn from the Chinese writer Wang-Hiuen-t'se." But
1.The Gupta Empire (Hind Kitabs Ltd., Bombay, 1947), p. 15,
2."The Foundation of the Gupta Empire", A New History..., p. 137.
3."The Rise of the Guptas", ibid., p. 132; "The Foundation of the Gupta Empire", ibid., p. 159.
4 "History of Ceylon: Appendix", ibid., p. 264.
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Samudragupta1 himself singles out his father from among his three ancestors by the special title which afterwards distinguishes the Gupta line: the premier role implied by what Majumdar2 terms "the almost unanimously accepted view that Chandragupta I founded the Gupta Era". Samudragupta's special mention of himself as the son of a daughter of the Lichchhavis,1 that is, of Kumāradevī, the wife of Chandragupta 1 - centres importance further on the family-phase immediately before him. He derives his own high value from the greatness initiated and established by both his parents.
The sole concrete support that can be adduced for the theory that he installed the Gupta Era consists of two copper-plate grants discovered at Nalāndā and Gayā and dated respectively to the years 5 and 9 of his reign, as if the family era commenced with it. But the genuineness of these plates is, as Majumdar4 admits, "certainly not above suspicion", though the suspicion, in his eyes, attaches much less positively to the first than to the second. Mookerji5 concedes no shade of difference and calls both of them "spurious". Altekar6 applies the same epithet to them. Although Raychaudhuri7 allows that the claim for Samudragupta's founding the era "cannot be altogether disregarded", it is - according to him - to be thought of "less plausibly" than that for Chandragupta's grandfather Gupta. Obviously, the copper-plates do not carry any weight for him. In fact, he" opines that "no reliance can be placed on them". Indeed they are too shaky a ground for building Samudragupta into an era-founder.
And they are all the more shaky precisely because they come with dates. The two epigraphs which are undeniably Samudragupta's - the Allāhābād Pillar Inscription and the Eran Stone Inscription - bear no dates at all:9 they do not bring in either regnal years or a family-era. By omitting both, they stand in stark contrast to
1.V. D. Mahajan, Ancient India (S. Chand & Co., New Delhi 1974), p. 395.
2."The Rise of the Guptas", A New History..., p. 132.
3.Mahajan, op. cit., p. 404.
4.Op. cit., p. 132.
5.Op. cit., p. 17.
6."The Administrative Organisation", A New History..., p. 292, fn. 2.
7.Op. (it., p. 531, fn. 2
8.Ibid., p. 551.
9.A New History..., p. 136.
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the copper-plates. The Nalanda and Gaya records run counter to Samudragupta's twice-proved practice and thereby ring false.
Apart from every other hurdle to taking 320 A.D. as the accession era of Samudragupta, there is the "serious objection" noticed by Majumdar1 himself: "As Kumāragupta I, the grandson of Samudragupta, was on the throne in the year 136 of the Gupta era, it would give a total duration of 136 years to three generations which is far above the average." Majumdar2 adds that, although this duration "is undoubtedly very high, it cannot be regarded as impossible, for we know that three generations of Western Chalukya kings from Vikramāditya V to Somesvara III ruled for 118 years". Majumdar's analogy is too facile. One can hardly say that some 18 years more, bridging 118 and 136, make very little difference. With unusual averages operating, every year is important and lessens credibility. A decade would be quite crucial and here it is a matter of nearly 2 decades. Even otherwise, what is just remotely possible need not be entertained, unless there is independent evidence suggesting the possibility. In the absence of such testimony, the extremely large average is in itself a valid restrainer.
From no angle can Samudragupta emerge as era-founder, a king already from 320 A.D. The only way left to present him as mature by this date is to hold that Chandragupta's accession was not related to the era he established, that it occurred years earlier and that along with it his marriage was fairly before 320. But to disjoin the accession from the era without any formulable reason is to indulge in an arbitrary fancy. To take the marriage backward so that it precedes the accession-cum-era would fail to take account of what certain gold coins connected with both Chandragupta and Kumāradevī imply. Their significance for our purpose may be conveyed with the help of both Majumdar and Altekar.
Majumdar3 states: "Mr. Allan's contention that these were struck by Samudra-gupta to commemorate the marriage of his parents is hardly convincing. The view, held by the old numismatists, that these coins were issued by Chandra-gupta jointly with the Lichchhavis and their princess Kumāradevī, who was his consort,
1."The Foundation of the Gupta Empire", ibid., p. 159.
2.Ibid., pp. 159-60.
3- "The Rise of the Guptas", ibid., p. 128.
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has been very ably defended by Dr. Aiyangar and Dr. Altekar" [Journal of Indian History VI, Suppl. 10 ff.; Numismatic Supplement XLVII, 105 ff], Altekar' explains: "Had Samudra-gupta issued these coins as commemorative medals, the name of the commemorator would naturally have appeared somewhere upon them, as it does on the admittedly commemorative issues of Agathokles and Eukratides. As it is, Samudra-gupta's own name is conspicuous by its absence on these coins."2 Altekar continues: "On the obverse of the coins... we see the king and his queen... standing and facing each other; the king is probably giving the marriage ring to his consort. The names of both are engraved by their sides. On the reverse is Durga seated on a Hon... The legend is Lichchhavayah, which is probably in acknowledgement of the help the Guptas had received from their Lichchhavi relations."
Obviously, the coins of Chandragupta I commemorate his marriage to KumāradevI no less than the valuable assistance given by her family towards his imperial status. But he could not have had the right to issue them before his accession. Altekar3 justly observes: "With the assumption of the imperial title Mahārā-jādhirāja, Chandra-gupta I started his gold coinage." The marriage which is the most prominent part of its theme - as is clear from Allan's contention on behalf of Samudragupta - must have been the occasion on which the coinage started. Either it must have taken place a little after Chandragupta ascended the throne or else the assumption of the Imperial title coincided with the marriage and the double event commenced the era. All this means that Samudragupta could not have been born prior to his father's accession-year.
Nothing compels us to see in a tiny teenager a mighty monarch so as to make Samudragupta Sirimeghavanna's contemporary.
However, it is not only the absurdity of this situation that puts him out of court for Lévi's synchronism. Even if we could think of him as a less-than-12-year-old hero of many exploits wearing the
1."The Coinage", ibid., p. 302.
2.Majumdar's and Altekar's view of these coins has an important, almost fundamental, bearing on the question whether or not the Guptas came after the Kushānas and imitated their coinage and only gradually Indianized it. We shall deal with the question in Part Three, along with some other unavoidable ones. At the present stage any of them would sidetrack and impede our immediate concerns.
3."The Coinage", A New History..., p. 301.
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crown, we would never be able to get over a certain fact staring us in the face from the Allāhābād Pillar Inscription. It would also refuse to be blinked no matter how much earlier than 320 A.D. we might date Samudragupta's birth. His famous epigraph unmistakably includes "Sirhhala" (Ceylon) in the category of "vassal states", as Majumdar1 puts it. Mookerji2 refers to the same category when he writes of "Simhala" as well as of some other "foreign states'' being "ready to acknowledge the suzerainty of Samudra Gupta". But in Wang's story the Ceylonese king gives only "rich presents"3 to the Indian monarch who has permitted him to get a monastery and a rest-house built at Bodh-Gayā for the convenience of visiting Ceylonese pilgrims. How can San-meou-to-lo-kiu-to's generosity with a bit of his own territory constitute Chi-mi-kia-po-mo's far-away land a vassal state? Not the slightest evidence exists for us to conceive of the Ceylon of Sirimeghavanna as feudatory to Samudragupta. Sirimeghavanna was a king in his own right, owing allegiance to nobody, and in his reign Ceylon is said to have acquired a special importance because of the arrival there of the Tooth Relic of Buddha from Dantapura in Kalinga.4 Here India is shown as honouring Ceylon instead of vice versa. Sirimeghavarma's Ceylon was very far from being under any suzerainty and cannot equate at all with the Simhala of Samudragupta's Inscription.
Consequently, Wang's San-meou-to-lo-kiu-to must be distinguished from the Allāhābād Pillar's Samudragupta. In every respect the two stand apart.
The Real Synchronism
Who then could Wang's Indian King be? He has to be some other Samudragupta than the great one. Among the Imperial Guptas several names repeat: there were two Chandraguptas and three Kumāraguptas among the famous opening members. Once we accept the Imperial Guptas to have ended, as Albērūnī tells us, in 320 A.D. we must begin the line much earlier to accommodate all the family we know of and, if we start where Sandrocottus can
1."The Foundation of the Gupta Empire", The Classical Age. p. 12.
2.Op. cit.. p. 27.
3. The Classical Age, p. 11.
4. Sircar, "Ceylon", ibid., p. 284; also A New History..., pp. 257-58.
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perfectly fit Chandragupta I, it is quite on the cards that a second Samudragupta lived at the time where the Ceylonese Chronicles place Sirimeghavanna's opening 16 years (304-320 A.D.).
There is even a clue to a Samudragupta at what we posit as the tail-end of the Gupta dynasty. In the years between c. 230 and c. 340 A.D. a chief of a Scythian tribe known as Gadahara, ruling the Central Punjāb, issued some coins of Kushāna type with "Samu-dra" on them' and bearing, according to R. D. Banerji,2 much resemblance to the coins of Samudragupta. But there is no convincing way to relate the great Samudragupta to the Gadaharas. On the assumption of the current date for him he is set in relation to a "Kushāna ruler exercising sway over Kabul and a part of the Punjāb, and possibly other territories further to the west".3 And this ruler is identified with the Kushāna chief Kidāra who in c. 340 A.D. put an end to the rule of the Gadaharas as well as of another Scythian tribe in the Central Punjāb and after 357 A.D. tried to be free of his Sassanian overlord but was sharply pulled up and could mature his final plans for independence not before 360: he delivered his blows against Shapur II only in 367-68. During these crucial preparatory years he is believed to have "secured the good will of Samudragupta, who had by this time extended his sphere of influence to the Punjāb..."4 Thus Samudragupta enters the Punjāb-picture and comes into contact with Kidāra around 360 A.D. and therefore at a distance of nearly 20 years from the period c. 340 A.D. when the Gadaharas could have been feudatory to him but were actually subdued by Kidāra at that date. We have necessarily to disjoin him from the Gadaharas and their "Samudra"-coins. Some other Samudragupta, a minor namesake of his, in touch with the Gadaharas but having nothing to do with Kidāra, swims into our ken.
And, as if to lend this minor Samudragupta a natural context, coins with "Chandra" on them and similar to the "Samudra"-coins have also been found.5 So we can think of a second small Samudragupta, the son or the father of a minor third Chandragupta, exercising suzerainty for a time over a Gadahara chief within the
1.A New History..., p. 21).
2.The Classical Age, p. 57. fn. 3.
3.A New History.... p. 147.
4.Ibid., p. 22.
5.Ibid., p. 150; also The Classical Age, p. 56, fn. 3.
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same period (304-320 A.D.) in which he synchronized with Sirimeghavanna.
Thus actually the synchronism à la Lévi of Chi-mi-kia-po-mo and San-meou-to-lo-kiu-to, seen without preconceptions, ties in with Albērūnī 's negative vote and helps rather than hinders the Purānic time-scheme.
Even independently of the necessity we have conjured up of a late small Samudragupta along with a similar Chandragupta, we have reason to envisage members of the Gupta family who preceded 320 A.D. but were not the ancestors of the Guptas whom our historians commence from that date.
I-tsing, the Chinese pilgrim, who was in India during 671-695 A.D. refers to a king named Chi-li-ki-to - that is, Śrīgupta - who lived 5 centuries earlier.1 This takes us to the closing quarter of the 2nd century A.D., yet historians have not been lacking to .take I-tsing's 500 years as a rather rough estimate and to identify his Śrīgupta with the Gupta who is listed in the inscriptions of the Imperial Guptas as the grandfather of Chandragupta I. The identification would imply that the father and grandfather of Chandragupta covered nearly 150 years by just their two reigns. Raychaudhuri2 who accepts Fleet's epoch sees yet no cogent reason for the identification. But I-tsing's Śrīgupta who has to be put around 175 A.D. remains a kind of freak in the modern historical perspective. He is most naturally explicable as part of a tail-end of the Imperial Guptas in an age about which we do not have much information.
There is no doubt of the dimness of our tail-end period. K. A. Nilakanta Sastri3 marks in general "the obscure period of the first three centuries of the Christian era." Mookerji4 brings more precision to the same view: "The history of Magadha, from the end of the Kānva rule [30 B.C. according to the modern scheme5] to the rise of the Guptas, three hundred years later, is very obscure." Within this shrouded area, both a second Samudragupta
1.S.K. Sen, India through Chinese Eyes (University of Madras, 1956), p. 162.
2.The Political History of Ancient India, p. 529.
3.Advanced History of India by K. A. Nilakanta Sastri and G. Srinivasachari (Allied Publishers, New Delhi, 1973), p. 183.
4."The Fall of the Magadhan Empire". The Age of Imperial Unity, p. 100.
5.Ibid., p. 99.
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and a Śrīgupta posterior to the eminent Imperial Guptas could be quite in place.
To the chronological contention against figuring this Śrīgupta as an ancestor of those famous members Sircar1 has added one based on nuances of nomenclature. He remarks about the grandfather of Chandragupta I: "The name of this prince is Gupta and not §ri Gupta. It is therefore unreasonable to identify him with Śrīgupta mentioned by I-tsing as having lived about 175 A.D."
Of course, "Śrī" as an honorific can be prefixed to any name, but it is an integral component of the name of I-tsing's monarch. That is the point Sircar has in mind.
His objection appears to get support from the discovery of two seals.2 One bears the legend Gutasya (in mixed Sanskrit and Prakrit), the other the Sanskrit legend Śrīguptasya. Two different persons with distinct names seem to be here.
The Problem of Fa-hien's Record
The next barrier across the new pathway we are laying out is the famous record by a Chinese pilgrim, which is said to concern the time of Samudragupta's son Chandragupta II who styled himself Vikramāditya. Vincent A. Smith,3 scrutinizing the foreign sources for matter on Indian history, writes: "...by far the most important and interesting of all foreign witnesses are the numerous Chinese pilgrims who visited the Holy Land of Buddhism, between A.D. 400 and 700. Fa-hsian [or Fa-hien], the earliest of them (A.D. 399-414), gives life to the bald chronicle of Chandragupta Vikramāditya, as constructed from inscriptions and coins." There is also Majumdar's declaration:4 "An idea of the peace and prosperity prevailing in the vast [Gupta] empire may be had from the account of the Chinese pilgrim Fa-hien who travelled through Chandra-gupta's wide dominions for more than six years."
Now comes the anti-climax. Smith5 informs us, in the midst of a
1.Select Inscriptions bearing on Indian History and Civilisation (Calcutta, 1942),Vol. I, p. 492, giving the note to line 9 of p. 256.
2.A New History..., p. 131.
3.The Oxford History of India, Third Edition, edited by Percival Spear (1970), pp. 15-16.
4."The Expansion of the Gupta Empire", op. cit., p. 172.
5.Op. cit., p. 170.
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long survey of Fa-hien's records: "The enthusiastic pilgrim was so absorbed in the religious task to which his life was devoted that he never even mentions the name of any reigning sovereign." And Majumdar1 goes on to observe: "Unfortunately Fa-hien does not give any account of the political condition of India, - he does not even mention the name of the great Gupta emperor."
This is a very serious blank. In addition, there are two queer items which may give us further pause. Raychaudhuri,2 assuming that "much light is thrown on the character of Chandra Gupta Vikramāditya's administration by the narrative of Fa-hien", notes apropos of the pilgrim's account of the Indian people of his day his statement: "In buying and selling commodities they use cowries." Raychaudhuri comments: "The last statement evidently refers to such small transactions as Fa-hien had occasion to make. The pilgrim does not seem to have met with the gold coins which would only be required for large transactions. That they were actually in currency, we know from the reference... in inscriptions." A footnote follows: "Chandra Gupta II also issued silver and copper coins..." The historian's excuse is rather lame. Fa-hien is referring not to his own transactions but to those of people in general. Surely, if such low denominations as copper coins were current, commodities would not be bought and sold on any substantial scale with the help of nothing save cowries. Conditions of the Gupta empire do not seem indicated. There is also the discrepancy about punishment. Mahajan3 writes: "According to Fa-hien, punishments were very lenient. To quote him: 'The king governs without decapitation or other corporal punishments. Criminals are simply fined, lightly or heavily, according to the circumstances of each case. Even in cases of repeated attempts at wicked rebellion, they only have their right hand cut off.' However, the testimony of Fa-hien is not accepted and it is pointed out that punishments were pretty harsh in the Gupta period." Mahajan4 further says: "In the Junagadh Rock Inscription of Skanda Gupta, there is a reference to torture. It is stated that during his reign, the accused were not 'over-much put to torture.' " This suggests some diminution in the torture-practice and appears to imply the common employment of
1.Loc. cit.
2.The Political History..., p. 558.
3.Op. cit., pp. 443-4.
4.Ibid., p. 445.
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it to a considerable degree in the reigns of Skandagupta's predecessors.
Of course, certain inaccuracies may always be expected in any record, especially one by a foreigner. But here it is not merely a matter of inaccuracies. What Fa-hien says may be perfectly true and yet it may not be relevant to Chandragupta Vikramāditya. The utter omission of the king's name complicates the issue of truth and falsehood: the truth of Fa-hien's time could be falsehood for the time of this Gupta monarch. And, in view of the absence of the name "Chandragupta", whatever discrepancies we find between the Chinese pilgrim's record and our knowledge of that monarch's reign tend to disqualify all the more the claim that Fa-hien's 6 years in India around the beginning of the 5th century A.D. can dictate Gupta chronology. The Purānic dating has nothing to fear from them.
The Argument from Chronological "Inconsistency"
After all the brief we have held for India's own chronology along Purānic lines, a protest may come from scholars who are themselves proponents of Indian chronological evidence from another indigenous source. They are likely to argue:
"You have mentioned the traditional-Purānic dating of the Bhārata War to 3138 B.C. - 36 years before the Kaliyuga. But do you not know that it is misleading to speak of India's own chronology as if it were of one piece? You may interpret the Aihole Inscription of 634 A.D. in your favour, but in the period shortly before this epigraph there is evidence of a huge discrepancy. The astronomer Varāhamihira, c. 550 A.D., claiming to expound the older astronomer Vriddha Garga, touches on the Indian notion about the constellation Sapta Rishi (Great Bear) and its stay of 100 years in each of the 27 Nakshattras. In his Brihatsamhi-tā, XIII, 1-4, he says, as translated by Kern:1 'I shall tell you, according to the theory of Vriddha Garga, the course of the Seven Seers by whom the northern region is, as it were, protected....The Seven Rishis were in Maghā when King Yudhishthira ruled the earth, and the period of that king is 2526 years before the Śaka Era....'
1. Alexander Cunningham, The Book of Indian Eras (Calcutta, 1883), p. 9.
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"In 1148 A.D. the Kāshmiri historian Kalhana (Rājataranginī, 1.51, 55-56) pointed out how this statement supported him in rejecting the belief that the Bhārata War (in which Yudhishthira had participated) occurred at the close of the Dvāparayuga preceding the Kaliyuga. He calculated backwards from the Śaka Era of 78 A.D. and interpreted Varāhamihira to mean that Yudhish-thira's period was 2526 years before 78 A.D. - i.e., 2448 B.C., which is 654 years after the advent of the Kaliyuga in 3102 B.C. Kalhana's reasoning is faultless. So we have a Varāhamihira-reckoning against the Purānic, with as much right to antiquity.
"Now let us attend to the Purānas exactly as you have yourself done. Counting 1500 years from the Bhārata War to the coronation of Mahapādma Nanda, 836 from that coronation to the start of the Āndhras and 412 as the total time-length of this dynasty, we get 2748 years in all from 2448 B.C. to reach the end of the Āndhras. The end is thus in 300 A.D. Then with the Purānic suggestion of a fairly brief interval, whose length is not univocally indicated, between it and the rise of the Guptas, we can justifiably have the Guptas rising in 320 A.D. as in the modern chronology.
"If we choose to interpret the Prakritic variant you have cited of the Brahmānda III.74.230, which is also present in the Matsya, namely, āndhrān-ānte, in a different way from yours, so that we have the Maghā-century returning after 2700 years 'at the end of the Āndhras' and not, as you interpret, 'in the end...', we shall have the Āndhra dynasty terminating in (2448 B.C.-2700=) 252 A.D. Understanding the preposition 'at' broadly and not as marking a precise point as though the Āndhras terminated in the very year when the 2700 years finished, we can bring into play the Purānic alternative 300 years for the duration of the Āndhras instead of the 364 which the date 252 A.D. involves and then their termination will be in 188 A.D., leaving a more plausible gap between it and the coming Guptas of the modern time-scheme.
"Thus even the Indian chronology can be made to bear us out. The inconsistency between the Purānic version and the version of Varāhamihira not only deprives the former of sole authority in the ancient field but also upholds the modern historical view so far as the Guptas are in question. Since in dealing with the Indian view it is the Guptas you are centrally interested in, your plea for identifying Sandrocottus with Chandragupta I, by force of the Indian chronology, is undermined, our usual identification of him with
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Chandragupta Maurya is left intact and our dating of the Guptas confirmed. Indian chronology itself frees us from the predicament you formulate."
The Fallacies of the Argument
The argument is fallacious in every way. But even otherwise it is not of much help. The alleged inconsistency between the Purānas and Varāhamihira does not abolish the situation that, according to modern historians, the Purānic pundits set contemporaneous Gupta kings over 600 years earlier. As the argument's date for Varāhamihira is c. 550 A.D., we have to exclaim: "Indian chronologists living under the Guptas (320-570 A.D.) differed by over 600 years about the existence of these very kings!" Confusion would be worse confounded: that is all. Now for the fallacies. As with the Aihole Inscription of 634 A.D., so with Varāhamihira, we have to ask whether his Brihatsamhitā could really fly in the face of the Mahābhārata whose final form was in circulation in that age and closely associated the Bhārata War with the Kaliyuga of 3120 B.C. without identifying in time the two occasions. Our question is all the more pertinent when we know that Varāhamihira is not only a savant in his own right but also an astronomer aware of Aryabhata who implies the Purānic sequence of the Bhārata War and the Kaliyuga.
However, assuming that he does reject this sequence, do we have the right to apply any Purānic time-indications like 1500, 836, 412 or 300 years if the starting-point is so wide asunder from the Purānic? Does Kalhana, who believes that Varāhamihira disagrees with tradition, dispose his history in such a fashion as to allow us to fix Chandragupta I in 320 A.D.?
In Rājatarahgīni I, 52-53, he gives Śaka 1070 as his own date -that is (78+1070=) 1148 A.D. - and counts 2330 years from Gonanda III of Kashmir to himself. Thus Gonanda III is dated to (2330-1148=) 1182 B.C. Between Gonanda II and Gonanda III Kalhana puts a long line of kings including familiar names like Aśoka, Jalauka, Hushka, Jushka, Kanishka. The last-named comes, for the majority of modern historians, in 78 A.D. But, for Kalhana, basing himself on Varāhamihira, he is beyond 1182 B.C., and Kalhana (I, 72) further says that Kanishka is 150 years after Buddha. So Buddha too is pushed up far beyond his com
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monly calculated time. We may "pooh-pooh" all this; but we may with equal justification "pooh-pooh" the idea that old Indian annalists following Varāhamihira could ever countenance placing the founder of the Imperial Guptas in 320 A.D. Although Kalhana may be deemed rather fantastic in his historical sequences, no Indian chronology will allow the Guptas to begin à la Fleet or the identification of Sandrocottus with Chandragupta Maurya.
Take Alberum's information from Indian sources. We have seen how he anticipates Kalhana by dating the Bhārata War to 2448 B.C., yet puts forward 320 A.D. as the end of the Guptas, not their beginning. And he makes the Śaka Era of 78 A.D. the end instead of the beginning of the Śakas. Modern chronology can get no fillip from the dating of the Bhārata War 654 years after the epoch of the Kaliyuga.
Lastly, we may take up the point: "Is Kalhana correct in his dealings with Varāhamihira's statement?" At once we can pick a central hole. Kalhana never bothers to refer back to Vriddha Garga whom Varāhamihira mentions and whose "theory" leads him to speak of Yudhishthira and of the asterism Maghā for the Seven Rishis. Bhattotpala, the astronomer who lived some centuries before Kalhana, has given us, while interpreting Varāhamihira in his commentary Chintāmani, the exact words of Garga. They' run: "At the junction of the Kali and Dvapara ages, the virtuous sages who delight in protecting the people stpod at the asterism over which the Pitris preside (that is, Maghā)."
From these words Varāhamihira's meaning should be unmistakable. If, according to Garga, the Seven Rishis were in Maghā at the junction of the Kali and Dvāpara Ages and if, according to Varāhamihira who is expounding Garga, Yudhishthira ruled when the Seven Rishis were in Maghā, then, according to Varāhamihira, Yudhishthira ruled within the same 100 years during which the junction of the Kali and Dvapara Ages occurred. Varāhamihira could never have meant that Yudhishthira ruled 654 years after the Kaliyuga's advent in 3102 B.C. Here is a simple syllogism which cannot be denied.
And what it provokes us to inquire is: "May not the Śaka Era which Varāhamihira declares to be 2526 years after the 'period' of
1. As quoted in H.T. Colebrooke's Essays, II, p. 313 and in Cunningham's Book of Indian Eras, pp. 9-10.
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Yudhishthira, be other than the one of 78 A.D.?" The Śaka Era of the Aihole Inscription has to be referred to 78 A.D. because this inscription is of King Pulakeśin II, who foiled the southward ambition of King Harsha whom Hiuen-Tsang names as his patron in India during 630-643 A.D.: the specified Śaka year 556 counted from 78 A.D. brings us to 634 A.D. We have no comparable outside-check for Varāhamihira's Śaka Era. And a Śaka Era different from the usual one is nothing incredible in itself. R. K. Mookerji1 writes: "There was an old Śaka era which started in about 129 or 123 B.C., the year that marked the settlement of the dispossessed Śakas in Bactria after the Parthian Emperor Phraates II was killed." A. K. Narain2 cites an older Śaka Era, one of 155 B.C., which is "widely accepted". A still older one is also quite on the cards. It would have to be at the end of 2526 years from the point at which "Yudhishthira's period" can be fixed. Properly to fix it we must bear in mind the fundamental association of Yudhishthira with Maghā. The "period" of the former must necessarily relate to that of the latter.
Yudhishthira's coronation in 3138 B.C. after the Bhārata War and his abdication in 3102 B.C. after Krishna's death fall within the century of Maghā but they coincide with no significant point of it from which a counting can be done. The two natural significant points can only be its commencement and its termination: 3177 and 3077. Has Yudhishthira any relation to them? The Mahābhārata' tells us that he died in the 25th year of the Kaliyuga. As the Kaliyuga starts from 3102 B.C., this means (3102-25=) 3077 B.C. Thus we get a date precisely suitable to mark the "period" of both Yudhisthira and Maghā. Counting from it 2526 years we come to (3077-2526=) 551 B.C. as the Śaka Era intended by Varāhamihira.
Is there any reason to doubt our interpretation? A second clue is afforded by Varāhamihira himself in the form of some particulars about the epoch of 427 Śaka he has mentioned for the Panchasid-dhāntikā (1.8-10), his earliest work. S. B. Dikshit4 notes alternative readings of the week day in Varāhamihira's sloka: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. Monday is what G. Thibaut has given; Dikshit
1.Ancient India (Allāhābād, 1956), p. 250.
2.The Indo-Greeks (Oxford, 1957), pp. 143-144.
3.Mahaprasthanika Parva, I.
4.The Indian Antiquary, Vol. XIX, p. 45.
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rejects it and prefers Tuesday to Wednesday out of the remaining versions. Whatever the week day, Varāhamihira clearly refers to the beginning of it and also the "beginning of Chaitra Sukla Pratipadi", the latter phrase meaning the ending of the Chaitra new moon. Dikshit, following Indian usage, takes 427 as the elapsed year, so that 428 would be the current year. But, taking the Śaka Era involved to be 78 A.D., he finds that 427 elapsed falls on none of the alternative week days from which we have to choose. If we substitute the Vikrama Era of 57 B.C., which is associated with the traditional king Vikramāditya who is called Śakari or Śaka-destroyer, we get, according to Dikshit, a Wednesday. But this is inadmissible to him. The sole way to keep Sukla Pratipadi and combine it with one of the alternatives possible and with 78 A.D. as the Śaka Era is to change Varāhamihira's Chaitra to Vaisakha, for then we arrive at a Tuesday. Dikshit, therefore, opines that Varāhamihira must have originally written Vaisakha and not Chaitra. V. Thiruvenkatacharya' legitimately objects to this opinion and points out that the whole artificial procedure arises from the obsession with 78 A.D.
If we stick to Varāhamihira's text, 78 A.D. (according to Swamikannu Pillai's Ephemeris) yields nothing except a Friday for 427 elapsed. Even if we regard 427 as current, 78 A.D. yields merely a Sunday. The usual Śaka Era is thus ruled out. But if we count 427 elapsed from 551 B.C. we get "the beginning of Chaitra Sukla Pratipadi", as indicated by Varāhamihira, at the end of a Tuesday, at nearly midnight, instead of at "the beginning" of a Wednesday - a small margin of error which is hardly serious and within the limits of probability. Thiruvenkatacharya justifiably concludes that Varāhamihira intended 551 B.C. to be the Śaka Era.
Bhattotpala's Confirming Testimony
Against the two clues we have cited, one of which seems decisive and the other definite enough, there is only the argument that later writers have believed Varāhamihira to have meant 78 A.D. But uncritical adherence to a belief is no substantial argument
1. Paper quoted on pp. 241-48 of Pandit Kota Venkatachalam's Chronology of Kashmir Reconsidered.
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And even in this argument we can trace flaws.
Bhattotpala quotes Bhaskara, the author of Siddhānta Śiromani, as giving his own birth-date - Śaka 1036 - at the end of this book and as stating that he wrote it at the age of 36, i.e., in Śaka 1072.1 In terms of the era of 78 A.D. we get 1114 and 1150 A.D. respectively. But, as Shrava2 points out, Bhattotpala himself has given the date of his own commentary on Varāhamihira's Brihatjātaka as Śaka 888, which, counted from 78 A.D., would bring us to 966 A.D. and thus be earlier than the astronomer he quotes. So, if Bhattotpala observes 78 A.D., Bhāskara's reference must be to a Śaka Era substantially preceding that year. Further, Bhattotpa-la's commentary culls a verse from "a Yavana king and astronomer" named Sphuji-dhvaja whose date is given as Śaka-kāla 1044.3 Here too 78 A.D. cannot be the era meant.
Nor indeed can we say that Bhattotpala's own Śaka 888 must hark back to 78 A.D. which he distinguishes as the date of the slaughter of the Śaka kings.4 There is no such designation for his 888 any more than for the years he reports of the two other astronomers. However, his Śaka-kāla must differ not only from 78 A.D. but also from Bhaskara's or Sphuji-dhvaja's. For, its identity with their era would once again land us in the anomaly of his alluding to people who came appreciably after him. Knowing that he has quoted Garga, we should expect him to be of the same mind as Varāhamihira. And that is exactly what we find on studying the full text which Shrava5 provides of the verse at the end of Bhattotpala's commentary on the Brihatjātaka: "Chaitramāsasya pan-chamyām sitāyām guruvāsare, vasu-ashta-ashtamite Śaka krteyam vivrtirmayā." Thiruvenkatacharya6 conveys the same information when on the basis of several editions he tells us of Bhattotpala stating that his commentary was written "in the year 888 of the Śaka Era on Thursday, Suklapaksha Panchami of the Chaitra month". To be exhaustive, Thiruvenkatacharya tries out both the Vikrama and the usual Śaka Eras. By Swamikannu Pillai's Ephemeris he shows that counting from the Vikrama Era of 57
1.Praśnadhyāya, sloka 58. See Shrava, op. cit.. p. 55.
2.Op. cit.. p. 55.
3.Ibid., referring to Indian Culture. Vol. XII, p. 81.
4.Benares Edition, p. 193. See Shrava, op. cit., p. 47, fn. 5.
5.Op. cit., p. 42.
6.Op. cit.. pp. 245-47.
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B.C. we find Chaitra Sukla Pānchami falling not on a Thursday but on a Sunday and, counting from 78 A.D., we reach a Monday instead of a Thursday. On the other hand, February 23 of 338 A.D. satisfies Bhattotpala's specification completely. If we go backwards by 888 years from this date we reach 550 B.C. as Bhattotpala's Śaka Era. As against the reading accepted by Thiruvenkatacharya we have the version in M. M. Sudhakar Dvivedi where a different week-day is given. Thiruvenkatacharya agrees with another scholar, Madimpalli Jagannatha Rao, who has made a special study of Bhattotpala, that Dvivedi has emended the original sloka because from the standpoint of the Śaka Era of 78 A.D. it appeared to be an obvious error with its required Thursday.
We may legitimately conclude: "There were a number of Śaka Eras. Two of them were much older than that of 78 A.D., and one of them which both Bhattotpala and Varāhamihira have used to indicate the epochs of their works went back to the middle of the 6th century before Christ: the year 551-550.
The Purānas, the Indian Tradition and 551 B. C.
Most interestingly, so old a Śaka Era is just what is needed by the Purānic time-scheme and by Indian tradition in general. The latter ranks Varāhamihira among the "nine jewels" of the court of the king whom it names Vikramāditya of Ujjayini and associates with the era of 57 B.C.' Varāhamihira himself, by declaring Śaka 427 to be the date of his earliest work Pānchasidhhāntikā, puts his composition in 124 B.C. according to the Śaka Era of 551 B.C. -that is, in the neighbourhood of, if not even within, the reign-period attributable to Vikramāditya. Amarāja,2 evidently with the same date in mind, gives for Varāhamihira's death a Śaka reference - the year 509 - which is 82 years after it. We thereby get, if we calculate the Śaka years from 551 B.C., Varāhamihira's working life between 124 and 42 B.C., a span making him a contemporary of the traditional Vikramāditya. Such a span also explains why, while alluding to the eras of Kali and Śaka, he fails to allude to the
1.We may remark, in passing, that there is also more than one era of Vikrama: we have the Chālukya-Vikrama-kāla of 1076 A.D.
2.S. B. Dikshit, Bharatiya Jyotih-sastra (Poona, 1931), I, p. 211.
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era of 57 B.C. If he died in 42 B.C., he may not have composed any work in the 15 years of his life after that era had been instituted, whereas if he lived in the 6th century A.D. his omission of it is rather odd, to say the least.
True, this era is not associated with the name "Vikrama" earlier than the 8th century A.D. But modern historians can hardly excuse Varāhamihira's omission on that plea. They hold that 57 B.C. was originally known as the Krita Era and then as the Malava Era.' In their opinion the present designation was coined some time after Chandragupta II of the Gupta Dynasty had called himself Vikramāditya and, on extirpating the Śakas of Western India, chosen Ujjayinī as a secondary capital and become famous in later tradition as Vikramāditya Śakari.2 The Krita Era, if identical with our Vikrama Samvat, is recorded in an inscription which, by the specified year 282, is as early as (282-57=) 225 A.D.3 The Malava Era, on the same assumption, first appears inscriptionally, by the specified year 461, in 404 A.D.4 Varāhamihira, coming in c. 550 A.D. and himself associated with Ujjayini, could have used any of the three names. That he did not serves as a bit of a poser to modern historians.5
The Purānic time-scheme requires the Śaka Era of 551 B.C. because it has to put, in more or less proximity to the reign of Chandragupta I in the 4th century B.C., three kings who were connected with the Śakas: (1) Gautamīputra Sātakarni, who was the 23rd out of the 30 members of the dynasty, Āndhra Satavahana, shortly preceding the Guptas, and who is known from both epigraphy and numismatics to have destroyed the Śaka Nahapāna's Kshaharata family, (2) the son of Chandragupta I, Samudra-gupta, who is styled overlord of the Śakas in the Allāhābād Pillar
1.Sircar, "The Vikrama Samvat", Vikrama Commemoration Volume, p. 582.
2.Ibid., p. 584.
3.Ibid., p. 580.
4.Ibid.
5.Of course, to set Varāhamihira in the 1st century B.C. would fix Āryabhata, whom he mentions, to a still earlier epoch and create another chronological problem. But such problems we must expect once we start antedating somewhere and they have to be grappled with at some time or other. At the moment they need not be our "headache". All we need do briefly is to quote The Classical Age (p. 322): "Aryabahata was born in Śaka 398" - and count from our era of 551 B.C., giving him the date (551-398=) 153 B.C. which puts him a little earlier than Varāhamihira.
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Inscription, and (3) the already-mentioned Chandragupta 11. Samudragupta's son, who proves himself the conqueror of the other Śaka family, the Kārdamakas, by replacing their coins by his own.
The last-named can serve also to show how 551 B.C. is precisely right for the start of an era of the Western Śakas. If his reign by the modern chronology is - as we have noted - 374-414 A.D., it is the period 56-94 years after the usual Gupta Era of 320 A.D. Purānically, we found his grandfather Chandragupta I coming to the Magadhan throne between 315 and 302 B.C. Then the years 56-94 (altogether 38) must begin between the two extremes of (315-56=) 259 B.C. and (302-56=) 246 B.C. Similarly the termination of these years has to lie between (259-38=) 222 and (246-38=) 208 B.C. The full span of the reign would cover at one end 259-221 B.C. and at the other 246-208. Let us bring these figures into relation with the career of the Western Śakas. Sircar1 informs us that they "are known to have used a continuous reckoning from year 41 to year 310". A recent discovery substitutes 41 by ll,2 but 310 remains untouched. Thus by our Śaka Era their coins were replaced by their conqueror's after (551—310=) 241 B.C. - that is, the conquest took place right in the midst of whatever reign-span we may allot Purānically to Chandragupta II.
Even within the general framework of Indian history, a Śaka Era of 551 B.C. appears to fit in excellently. The earliest date recorded by the Śakas of Western India is, as we have just marked, the year 11. So, by our computation, they do not go back beyond (551-11=) 540 B.C. This date not only falls, as it should, within the reign of the Achaemenid emperor Cyrus (558-530 B.C.) whose empire, according to Xenophon (Cyropaedia I. 1,4) included the Bactrians and Indians and (VIII.6,20-21) was bounded on the east by the Erythraean Sea, i.e., the Indian Ocean. The date also comes, as even more it should, later than both the phases of his far-flung eastern sway. Xenophon implies two campaigns. One (VI.2, 1-11) involves a campaign towards India before the war on Lydia in the west (c. 547 B.C.). The other is put by Xenophon (VIII. 6, 20-21) after Cyrus had reduced Babylon (c. 539 B.C.),
1.Op. cm
2.Sobhana Gokhale. "Andhau Inscription of Castana, Śaka 11", Journal of Ancient Indian History. Vol. II, Parts 1-2, 1968-69, pp. 104-115.
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but this is an error, as can be seen from Herodotus (1.178, 1.202) who says that Cyrus subdued every nation after the Lydian war and the last two expeditions of his life were against Babylon and the Śakas who lived east of the Caspian, so that the conquest of what Herodotus (1.179) calls "the rest of the continent" must take place before the overthrow of Babylon in c. 539 B.C. Soon after Cyrus's second passage into the Indus Valley - shortly in the wake of the Lydian victory - the Kshaharatas and the Kardamakas could have moved with their era into India and made their first inscription here in 540 B.C. Their initial establishment would be in Sind, immediately bordering the Erythraean Sea. That the Western Śakas ruled over regions in Sind in addition to Malwa, Gujarat, Kathiawar and western Rajputana is cogently inferred by Sircar' from the archaeological data available.
Then there is the title these Śakas use for themselves: "Kshatra-pa" or "Mahakshatrapa". The former is pseudo-Sanskrit corresponding to the old-Persian "Kshatrapavan", meaning "Province-guardian", of which the English version through the Greek is "Satrap", denoting a provincial governor. It indicates the Śakas' subordinate position. Prefixed with "Maha", it would show increase in power and is perhaps equal, in the Śakas' eyes, to the term "Rajan" which too they use. Our historians take the Western Śakas to be feudatories of the Kushānas. But the Kushānas never refer to any member of the Kshaharāta-Kārdamaka families nor have they any cognizance of the term "Kshatrapa". The Western Śakas, on their side, never allude to the Kushānas or mention any overlord.2 But they can figure most appositely as owing allegiance first to the Achaemenid emperor Cyrus and then to Darius I and his successors. From Darius onward we hear explicitly of the satrapies of the Achaemenid empire.3
However, we are digressing, though not irrelevantly. Going back to our proper theme, we may assert: "Whatever else may be demonstrable or no, our syllogism apropos of Varāhamihira will never allow anyone, on the strength of traditions, to separate
1."The Śaka Satraps of Western India", The Age of Imperial Unity, pp. 181, 182, 184.
2.Ibid,, pp. 180, 185.
3.D. R. Mankad has some pertinent observations on the Western Śakas and Darius I in his Purānic Chronology, pp. 184-87. We shall have occasion later to advert to it as well as discuss these Śakas at some length.
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Yudhishthira and the Bhārata War from the Kaliyuga of 3102 B.C.Indian chronology is not inconsistent at all. It is of one piece -the Purānic school and the Brihatsamhitd standing together in spite of Kalhana. Kalhana's reasoning is faultless on his own premisses; but his ignorance distorts Varāhamihira completely.
The Argument from Purānic Geography
Our historians may next offer the argument:
"Look at the geography of the Purānas. Around Mount Meru there is a ring of land, Jambudvipa, divided from the next continent, Plakshadvipa, by an ocean of salt. Plakshadvīpa in turn forms a concentric circle round Jambudvīpa and so on we make a total of seven continents, each circular and divided from its neighbours by an ocean of different composition. After Jambudvl-pa's ocean of salt we have oceans of treacle, wine, ghee, milk, curds and fresh water respectively. A.L. Basham,1 writing of this geography, comments: 'This brilliantly imaginative picture of the world, which aroused the scorn of Lord Macaulay, seems to have been implicitly believed in by later Hindu theologians, and even astronomers could not emancipate themselves from it, but adapted it to their spherical earth by making Meru the earth's axis, and the continents zones on the earth's surface.' If such an absurd fantasy for the familiar earth can be entertained by Indians on the authority of the Purānas, why should we take seriously the Purānic mind in history?"
No Analogy Possible
The answer is not difficult to give. As the astronomers refrained from accepting the Purānic geography in a literal manner but attempted an adaptation of it to the earth which they actually knew or scientifically envisaged, their example is irrelevant. The theologians' implicit belief in it shows that this geography had a religiously suggestive, not a scientifically descriptive, significance. And here we may note a few things Basham2 himself tells us.
1.The Wonder that was India (The Grove Press, Inc., New York, 1961), p. 489.
2.Ibid., pp. 488, 489.
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Mentioning an alternative geographical scheme set up by the theologians in which "the modest spherical earth of the astronomers" gives place to an earth described "as a flat disk of enormous size", he writes: "Around Meru were four continents (dvipa) separated from the central peak by oceans and named according to the great trees which stood on their shores opposite Meru. The southern continent, on which human beings dwell, had a jambu (rose-apple) as its distinctive tree, and it was therefore called Jambudvīpa.
There is the clear clue that only on Jambudvīpa do human beings dwell. Thus Jambudvīpa alone is our physical world: the term "earth" applied to the flat disk of enormous size including three other "continents" must mean a total cosmos of supra-physical no less than physical existence. Even Basham remarks apropos of the Purānic geography: "The seven continents cannot in any way have been related to actual portions of the earth's surface, though some modern students have tried to identify them with parts of Asia..." And, whenever accepted literally by either the common people or those theologians who were lacking in deeper religious understanding, the continents outside the ocean of salt were not the actual earth they knew but unknown territories in regard to which fantasy never clashed with fact. Facts were never preposterously blinked, though they must have been surrounded in addition with a legendary or mythical aura. So there is no comparison possible with the suggestion that the Purānic pundits put contemporary kings more than 600 years before their own time.
And, if we wish to realise the truth about the Purānic "fantasy", we may listen to Sri Aurobindo1 who tells us that an immense and complex body of psycho-spiritual experience, supported by visual images, is embedded in the Purānas, though more loosely than in the Tantras and cast out in a less strenuous sequence. Sri Aurobindo goes On to say: "This method is after all simply a prolongation, in another form and with a temperamental change, of the method of the Vedas. The Purānas construct a system of physical images and observances each with its psychical significance. Thus the sacredness of the confluence of the three rivers, Gangā, Yamunā
1. The Foundations of Indian Culture (The Sri Aurobindo Library, New York City, 1953), p. 354.
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and Saraswatī, is a figure of an inner confluence and points to a crucial experience in a psychological process of Yoga and it has too other significances, as is common in the economy of this kind of symbolism. The so-called fantastic geography of the Purānas, as we are expressly told in the Purānas themselves, is a rich poetic figure, a symbolic geography of the inner psychical universe. The cosmogony expressed sometimes in terms proper to the physical universe has, as in the Veda, a spiritual and psychological meaning and basis..." Even the description of Jambudvīpa, the human continent, is bound to have some symbolic elements and to mingle with the outward aspect an inward vision of the physical.
Thus no analogy is possible from the Purānic geography and we cannot certify the Purānic pundits lunatic enough to look at the king under whom they lived and to say that he had flourished over 6 centuries prior to them.
The Task before Modern Historians
Will our historians have anything else to urge against the predicament in which they are caught?
They are sure to harp on the merits of their own time-scheme and ask if any holes can be picked in it. Of course, anybody choosing the old chronology for the Guptas will have to search for defects in the new and reinterpret a lot of things, at the centre of which sit the Aśokan Edicts apparently as firm in their time-indications as the rocks on which they are inscribed. In Rock Edict XIII there are those five foreign kings led by a king who is called "Yona" (an adjective considered translatable as "Ionian", indicating "Greek") - five rulers whose names have been adjudged to correspond with those of five post-Alexandrine Greek monarchs. And there is also the version in Greek along with an unmistakably Aśokan message in Aramaic in the inscription discovered some decades ago in Kandahar. Since the discovery of this bilingual inscription another in Greek alone and two more in only Aramaic with Aśokan references have come to light. Can we dislodge these records from the middle of the 3rd century B.C.?
We must certainly try to do so, but our critics have first to realize the task before them. Unable to get out of their predicament they must consent to listen to all that we may set forth in order to add to its logicality a practical proof. This proof would
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come from a detailed circumstantial display of calculations and conditions obtaining in the immediately post-Alexandrine period in India and negating the modern chronology by creating a background against which the Aśoka of the Rock Edicts would be most improbable, if not impossible, around 250 A.D. In other words, our critics have to look closely at the evidence of Megasthenes.
It is our belief that whoever looks at it thus will feel compelled to credit the Purānic chronology in at least some general aspects and quite undeniably in respect of the Imperial Guptas, as well as to cast about for an understanding quite unlike the one current today of factors, Aśokan and others, that seem to tell convincingly in favour of modern historians.
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