Chronological Systems of Gujarat

Author(s): Bharati K Shelat
Publisher: Pranav Shelat

Page 73

56 THE CHRONOLOGICAL SYSTEMS OF GUJARAT defenders of the Jain faith in their tradition recorded in works like Kālakācaryakathā59.
This view deserves special notice here as all the literary dates mentioned above occur in Jain works. But this assumption lacks in adequate evidence, since Saka dates can hardly be traced to the Jain works eomposed in the earlier centuries of the Saka era.
As far as the political history of Gujarat is concerned, it is clear that the era used by the Saka Ksatrapas, yielded place to the Gupta era and probably the Kalacuri era. Politically, the Saka era ceased to be in vogue in Gujarat from about 400 to about 750 A.C. The occurrence of its use in Jain works, seems to be incidental, in the sense that the Saka era was not adopted into the official records of the dynasties ruling over the regions associated with those works.
The Saka era thus seems to have been regularly re-introduced into Gujarat through the Rāştrakūtas who extended their power over Gujarat by the middle of the 8th cent. A.C. The Rāstrakūtas hailed from South India where the Saka era was in common use. They seem to have adopted it from the early Cālukyas, the earliest known date in whose records is Šaka year 465 given in the Badami Rock Inscription of Pulakesin 160. The early records of the Cālukya appear in the Bijapur District of the Mysore State. The era gradually spread northward with the extension of the Cālukya empire. For long they, however, dated their records in the Kalacuri era in the northern parts of their 59. D. C. Sircar, IE., p. 236 60. El., Vol. XXV, pp. 4 ff.