3rd. The date of Skanda Gupta's death, which is found upon the Kuhaon Pillar, is the year 133.* No era is stated; but it must of course be that era which was used by the "royal race of Guptas," of which he is said to have been born, and which could only have been the Gupta-kál, or Gupta era. His death, therefore, occured in 319+133=452 A. D., as given in my table.

4th. The date of Budha Gupta has been determined by the inscription at Eran,† which records the erection of a pillar in the year 165, or A. D. 484. An inspection of the table will show how well this date agrees with the period which must be assigned to Budha Gupta on the authority of Hwan Thsang; according to whom FO-THO-KIU-TO, or Budha Gupta, was the fourth prince prior to Siladitya's conquest of Magadha in A. D. 600. The coins of Budha Gupta may be seen in Plate II., figs. 55, 57, of Mr. Thomas's essay on the Sah kings of Surastra. I can confirm the reading of the legend which he gives with some hesitation as Budha Gupta. I procured five of these silver coins from a traveller at Benares, of which I have given away four; but I still possess sealing-wax impressions of them all, from which I have been able to recognize the engraved specimens.

5th. The coins of NARA GUPTA Báladitya are scarce. Of two specimens in gold that have been in my own possession, I still have impressions; but • Prinsep's Journal, vii. 37. + Prinsep's Journal, vii. 634.

the type may be seen in Fig. 22, Plate xviii. of Wilson's "Ariana Antiqua." On the obverse, under the Raja's arm, is written Nára, and on the reverse, Báladitya. The small silver coin Fig. 19, Plate xv. of the same work, most probably also belongs to Nara. I read the legend:

Paramadhi Raja Sri NARA-GUPTA Baladitya.

6. As the correct determination of the epoch of the Gupta dynasty is of the first importance to the religious as well as to the political history of ancient India, it becomes necessary to examine the chronology which Mr. E. Thomas, with much critical skill and ingenuity, has proposed for the Sáh kings of Gujrat and the Gupta princes of Magadha.* We agree as to the facts, but differ in our deductions. The facts are these:

1st. The beautiful silver coins of the Sáh kings are all dated in the fourth century of some unknown

era.

2nd. The silver coins of Kumára Gupta and of Skanda Gupta are evident and undoubted copies of those of the Sáh kings, and therefore these two princes must have reigned at a later date than the last of the Sáh kings.

7. In making his deductions from these facts, Mr.

* See Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. xii., “On the Dynasty of the Sah Kings of Suráshtra ;" by Edward Thomas, esq., Bengal Civil Service; a most valuable contribution to the ancient history of India.

L

Thomas has based all his calculations on M. Reinaud's translation of the passage in Abu Rihán, which gives the year 319 A.D., for the beginning of the Gupta era, and also for the final extinction of the Gupta dynasty. In adopting this version of Abu Rihán's statement, Mr. Thomas is obliged to search for some other epochs as the starting points from which to count the dates of the Surashtra and Gupta coins. The earlier era which he uses for this purpose is that of Sri Harsha,* which was entirely unknown until the publication of M. Reinaud's extracts from Abu Rihán. This era dates from B. c. 457, and the epoch of the Sáh kings of Surashtra is thus fixed between 157 and 57 B. C.†

This will place the reign of

8. Between the Sáh kings and the Guptas, Mr. Thomas interposes the Indo-Scythians, whose conquest he places in 26 B. C., and he proposes to count the date of Chandra Gupta's inscription at Sanchit from 78 A. D., which is the well-known commencement of the Sáka era. Chandra Gupta in 78 +93 171 A. D., and the reign of Buddha Gupta in 78 + 165 = 243 A. D., after whom there is time for the reigns of a few more princes before the asserted extinction of the family in 319 A. D.

=

9. My reasons for assigning the Guptas to a later period have been given already; and I will

See Mr. Thomas's Essay, p. 43.

+ See Mr. Thomas's Essay, p. 45.
See Mr. Thomas's Essay, p. 5.

now state as briefly as possible all my objections to Mr. Thomas's chronology.

1st. According to the Chinese historians, the power of the Indo-Scythians remained in full force until 222 A. D.; after which it began to decline. This statement is supported by Ptolemy the geographer, who between A. D. 140-160, assigns the whole valley of the Indus, including Sirastrene, or Surashtra, to the Indo-Scythians.

2nd. Samudra Gupta, according to the Allahabad and Bhitari inscriptions, was the fourth prince of the Gupta dynasty, and if we allow twenty years to each reign, Samudra will date from 60 to 80 of the Gupta era, or from 138 to 158 A. D. But in the Allahabad pillar inscription, Samudra mentions the Sháhán-sháh (that is, one of the Sassanian kings of Persia) as his contemporary, whose dynasty did not attain the throne until A. D. 223; and as in his account of the tributary and conquered provinces he omits Magadha, Suráshtra, and Ujjayani, it has been inferred by James Prinsep, * and is admitted by Mr. Thomas himself, that these provinces must have formed his own proper dominion. dominion. But as Sirastrene belonged to the Indo-Scythians at the very date that must be assigned to Samudra by Mr. Thomas's chronology, we must either reject his scheme altogether, or conclude, that both the Chinese historian and the Alexandrian geographer were in error.

* Journal vi. 975.

3rd. The independence of the native princes of Gujrat between 157 and 57 B. C. is completely at variance with the Greek accounts of Menander's conquest of Sarioustos or Surashtra, between 160 and 130 B. C., which is further authenticated by the longprotracted currency of his coins at Barygáza or Baroch.

*

4th. The alphabetical characters of the Surashtran coins are so widely different from those of the Pillar and Rock inscriptions, and at the same time are so much similar to those of the Guptas, that it is impossible not to conclude that there must have been a long interval between Asoka and the independent Sáh kings, and an almost immediate succession of the Sáh kings by the Guptas. But Mr. Thomas's proposed chronology exactly reverses this conclusion, by making the interval between Asoka's death and the earliest date of the Surashtra coins not more than sixty-five years, while the interval between the last of the Sáh kings and the rise of the Guptas is one hundred and thirty-five years, or more than double the other.

• Another evidence in favour of the later date of the Sah kings of Gujrat is furnished by the gateway inscriptions at Sánchi. These date in the early part of the first century of our era (see No. 190); and though they show the nearest approach to the forms of the Sah alphabet, yet the latter is certainly posterior to the Sánchi inscriptions. This result agrees with the period which I have assigned to them, from A.D. 222 (the beginning of the Indo-Scythian decline) to A.D. 380, the accession of Samudra Gupta.