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capable of leading an army into the Punjab or the south or that he ruled for a long time. He may or may not have been in podsession of Bengal. The coins bearing his name and effigy and that of his consort Kumaradēvi the Lichchhavi, which an earlier generation of Numismatista assigned to this prince, are now taken as medals issued by the Emperor Samudragupta in memory of his parents.
The Möharauli inscription of Chandra states that he enjoyed suzerainty for a long time. But it is impossible to admit that Chandragupta I reigned for a long time. There is a consensus of opinion among orientalists on this point, and, as far as is known, Mr. Basak is the only advocate of this opinion. If we dismiss the doubtful evidence of the Bodh Gayă inscription of Trikamala or Turamals of the year 64 and the Gayå plate of the time of Samudragupta of the year 9 (P), the oldest known inscription of the Gupta dynasty which is dated is the Udayagiri inscription of Chandragupta II of the year 82=400 A.D.8 Now the initial year of the Gupta era is generally admitted to be the time of the accession, or rather the coronation, of Chandragupta I sometime in 318-19 A.D. Udayagiri, where this inscription is to be found, is in Eastern Mälava, a province which was conquered or subjugated by Chandragupta II. This is proved by the existence of a new class of silver coins of Chandragupta II based on the Malava and Saurashtra fabric of silver coins which were introduced by Chandragupta II in imitation of the silver drachma of the Western Satraps. The conqueror of a new province or country generally conciliates the subjects of his newly conquered province by issuing coins of the same type which was in vogne immediately before the conquest rather than offend them by issuing a type unknown previously. This was done by Mahmûd bin Sabuktigin, Muhammad bin Sam and his immediate successors in the Punjab and Delhi, and by Akbar in Gujarat. The conquest of a province and its settlement generally takes some time; and, if we assign fifteen or twenty years for it, we have sixty or sixty-five years left for the reigns of Samudragupta and Chandragupta. It is hardly possible even to think of a short reign for Samudragupta when we consider the amount of work he did to conquer and consolidate the Empire. By common consent forty-five or fifty years have been assigned to Samudragupta, and the majority of Indologists agree with the late Dr. V. A. Smith in assigning a very short reign of ten or fifteen years to Chandragupta I and a long reign of at least fifty years to his son and successor Samudragupta. So it is impossible to maintain that Chandragupta I enjoyed a long reign, and consequently it is not possible to identify him with king Chandra of the Méharauli pillar inscription, who enjoyed the suzerainty, acquired with his own arms, for a long time.
In the second place is it possible to maintain that Chandragupta I led an expedition into the Punjab and Afghanistan and the Dekkhan? The negative evidence of the Allahabad pillar inscription is decisive on this point. If Samudragupta's father had done any campaigning in the North-West or the South, then it is perfectly certain that an able panegyrist of the type of Sandhivigrahika-Kumārämātya-Mahadandandyaka Harishēna would have mentioned it and availed himself of such occurrences to extol the might of his master Samudragupta still further. The silence of the Allahabad prasasti on this point enables us to state with a tolerable degree of confidence that Chandragupta did not campaign in the land of the five rivers or Afghanistan or lead an army into the Dekkhan. It is a pity that the first three lines of the Allahabad prasasti can neither be completely read nor partially restored. It would have cleared up all doubts
1 Allan's British Mweum Catalogue of Indian Coim, Gupta Dynasties, Pp. lxiv-lxviii. + Cunningham's Malabodhi, pl. XXV.
Fleet's Corpus Inscriptiomum Indicarum, Vol. III, p. 25. • Allan's British Museum Catalogue of Indian Coins, Gapta Dynasties, p. lxxxvi.
Cunningham's Coinu of Mediæval India, Pp. 65-66. • Nelson Wright, Catalogue of Coins in the Indian Mwoum, Caloutta, Vol. II, p. 17.
Ibid., pp. 19-87. Ibid., Vol. III, p. 87. Early History of India, Third Edition, pp. 280-81.
