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EPIGRAPHIA INDICA.
[VOL. XVIII.
century B.C., would be that the era used in the Patika plate was instituted in commemoration of the conquest of India by the dynasty to which Moga belonged, or of its emancipation from dependance on the Parthian overlords. In other words, the initial point of the era cannot fall before 88 B.C.
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The date of the Patika plate can, as is well known, be broadly fixed with reference to the Amohini votive tablet of the year 72, during the reign of the Mahākshatrapa Śōḍāsa. Professor Rapson, it is true, gives1 42 as the date of that epigraph. He seems to be unaware of the fact that Professor Lüders has proved that the symbol used in the Soḍasa inscription, something like a St. Andrew's cross, must be read as 70 and not as 40. So far as I can see, no other scholar has accepted Professor Rapson's reading, and so long as he has not shown that Professor Lüders' convincing arguments are inconclusive, we can safely adhere to the prevailing opinion.
I agree with most other scholars in referring the date of the Soḍāsa record to the Vikrama era. It accordingly corresponds to 15 A.D. In that year Sodasa was Mahākshatrapa. In the inscriptions on the Mathura Lion capital Suḍasa, i.e., Śōḍāsa, is mentioned as Kshatrapa, while his father Rajula is characterized as Mahakshatrapa. The Lion capital must accordingly be older than the Amohini tablet, how much older we cannot say. Sir John Marshall has shown that Rajula was probably ruling about the beginning of the Christian era, and we can provisionally date the Lion capital between, say, 1 and 10 A.D.
In addition to Rajula the inscriptions of the capital also mention another Mahakshatrapa, Knsulaa Padika, who cannot be anybody else than Patika, the son of the Kshatrapa Liaka Kusuluka, who issued the Taxila copper-plate. Sir John Marshall therefore suggests to date the Taxila plate about 17 B.C., and 1 do not think it is possible to refer it to an earlier period. A priori I should be more inclined to say between 10 and 1 B.C.
According to Sir John's theory we should accordingly have to state that about 17 B.C. an era, instituted by Moga, was in use in the country about Taxila, while, at the same time, the era of Azes had already been in use for forty years. This simultaneous use of two foreign eras at the same time and in the same neighbourhood during a prolonged period is not very likely, and the state of things becomes still more difficult if we admit, as I think it is necessary to admit, that Moga was still reigning at the time of the Patika plate, i.e., according to Sir John, about 17 B.C. In that case it becomes impossible to claim Azes, who is known to have succeeded Moga, as the establisher of the Vikrama era.
The Azes theory will, I think, have to be abandoned. Everything we know from Indian tradition points to the conclusion that the Vikrama era was a national Indian era, and ancient Indiar ideas seem to be traceable in the oldest Vikrama-dates. The eras used in Kharoshṭhi inscriptions, on the other hand, are partly framed after the model of the Macedonian calendar. That is evident from the occasional use of Macedonian month-names and from the habit of reckoning the days of the months through, from full moon to full moon, while the Indian calendar divided the month into two fortnights. It seems, accordingly, necessary to infer that the era or eras used in the Patika plate as well as in the so-called Takht-i-Bahi inscription are of foreign origin, and if it is granted that Moga was still reigning in the year 78 of that era, and we meet with Gudufara in the year 103, it is difficult to avoid the inference that both
1 l.c. p. 575.
2 Ep. Ind., IX, pp. 243 ff.
Archaeological Survey of India; Annual Report, 1012-13, p. 48
J. R. A. S., 1914, pp. 985. f.
Cf. Ep. Ind., XIV, pp. 185 L
