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DATE OF KHĀRAVELA
265
placed Khāravela's accession in 103 B. C. J. F. Fleet, however, denied the occurrence of a date in the Maurya era and was followed by Prof. H. Luders, who fixed up the accession in 224 B. C., taking the term 'ti-vasa-sata' (line 6) as 103 years since Nandarāja, counted from 322 B. C., the last date of the last Nanda ruler. But the theory of a date in the Maurya era was again revived by Dr. S. Konow,3 and carried forward by K. P. Jayaswal and R. D. Banerji." Later on, however, on a close scrutiny of the record," they also changed their views, now denying the existence of a date in the Maurya year. R. D. Banerji® has given a sequence of events of Khāravela’s life, placing him in the first half of the second Century B. C., following K. P. Jayaswal's synchronism of Khāravela with Demetrius, the Indo-Bactrian king, and (Bșihaspatimitra) or Pushyamitra, the first Sunga ruler of Magadha.
In this way, we find that scholars were divided into two different schools-one in favour of occurrence of a Maurya date in the record and the other denying it ; and both the schools were followed by numerous scholars. Recent readings and repeated examinations of the record have finally decided in favour of the latter school, viz., the absence of a date in the Maurya era. What the supporters of the former school read as Muriyakāla (line 16) viz., Maurya era, has been read by the others as Mukhiyakalā meaning the principal art and thus changed the very sense of the phrase.
3,
1. JRAS, 1910, pp. 242f & 824, 2. EI, X, No. 1345.
Acta Orientalia, No. 1, 1923, pp. 12f. 4. JBORS, IU, 1917, Pt. IV, pp. 425.85. 5. EI, XX, pp. 83f. 6. HO, Vol. I, 1929, pp. 91-92. 7. D. C. Sircar, SI, Vol. I, 1912, No 91, pp. 206f. 34
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