Collection of Prakrit and Sanskrit Inscriptions

Author(s): P Piterson
Publisher: Bhavnagar Archiological Department

Page 16

almost exclusively to the great king Rudradâmau. The second inscription gives us more information with regard to this monarch than we liave for any of the other ruliny members of his house. It refers to an event which happened, according to the inscription" in the 72nd year of the Mahakshatrapa Rudraaman." It wonld in any case be difficult to believe that we were dealing liere with a sovereign wlio had himself been on the throne for so long a 1ract of time. But it is eviilent from corresponding passages in other Kshatrapa inscriptions that this phrase is to be understood as equivalent to "in the year 72: the Mahakshatrapa Rudradâman reigning." In other words the era is not an era of Rudradâman, but an era in common use in his time. It would not be convenient here to set out the reasons for or against the different theories which scholars have started as to what era is intended, and what the date of the occurrence described in this inscription accordingly is. There is a preponderance of authority in favour of the view which identifies the cra of these inscriptions with the Saka ora ; and the student may therefore take it that the event referred to here occurred in A.D. 150 or 151. That event was the bursting of the great dam of the Sudars'ana Lake--the Lake Beautiful--at Junaghar.
On the fourth day of the dark half of the month Mârgasirsha of the year named the dain of this lake, in spite of all precautions that had been taken in view of a clanger that had for some clays seemed imminent, gave yay, and what liad been a smiling sou was in a inoment converted into a desert. The rain and the wind had beaten friously against it. The ruin had turned the whole earth into a lake, and had swollen, beyond the feeble strength of the dar to resist them, the rivers Suvarnasikata, Palásini and other streams which from Girnar descended into the lake. Tlic wind had been of power to uproot and hurl into the lake cverything that stood in its way from the trees that crowned the summit of Girnar to the houses and villages that nestled at tlic foot of the hill. Through a great gap, four hundred and twenty cubits long, four hundred and twenty cubits broad, and seventy-five cubits deep, the jinprisoned waters rusherlicadlong to the sea. The calamity was an overpowering one ; and the officials on the spot, though not wanting in courage or administrative skill, saw no renedy. It was then that, by the personal interposition of the sovereign, the Pahlava minister Suvisakha, son of Kulaipa, undertook the mighty work of restoring the dam ; and
Ahol Shrutgyanam