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Dr. Charlotte Krause : Her Life & Literature
concluded that he must have lived down into the reign of Candragupta II. For though Samudragupa, as has been pointed out before, is now included in the number of those rulers who bore the appellation of Vikramāditya, and though, therefore, it is yet to be decided which of the literary references to Vikramāditya, ascribed to Candragupta, actually point to that ruler, and which to his brilliant father, still the fame of the ‘Sakāri' will probably remain on the shoulders of Candragupta II. Therefore, the nine gems, too, would remain connected with the latter, and it would appear that Siddhasena, though he addressed the Guņavacanadvātrimśikā to Samudragupta, was also conspicuous at the court of Candragupta II as the Ksapanaka-Śrutasena mentioned in the Jyotirvidābharaṇa. Later on, legend obviously mixed up the several features of the two Gupta ‘Vikramādityas', welding them into the figure of one single monarch, who, from a tolerant and philosophically inclined ruler, who favoured and patronized the famous Jaina logician and probably liked to hear Jaina Philosophy expounded alongwith the Six Hindu Darśanas, gradually became a Śrāvaka King in the light of Jaina Tradition.
Not only this much, but this king seems gradually also to have become invested with the title of 'Samvatsara-pravartaka', being made responsible for the introduction of the ‘VikramaSamvat'. This presupposed the feat of projecting this ‘Vikramāditya', and with him his 'Guru', back by several centuries, so as to enable their existence in 56 B.C., which ( vide the second chapter of this paper ) the Prabandhas and Pattāvalīs report, fusing this already synthetic 'Vikramāditya' with the assumed mysterious prototype of all the numerous ‘Vikramādityas', 'Sakāris' and 'Samvatsarapravartakas' of the ensuing ages, viz., the genuine founder of the ‘Vikrama-Sasvat’, thus leaving philologists and historians, in Siddhasena's words, paraṁ vyaṁsitāḥ!
And yet, who can say whether Siddhasena's patron Samudragupta was not indeed a 'Samvatsara-pravartaka', only not
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