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174 EPIGRAPHIA INDICA
[VOL. XXXI Kushiņas lost their hold on the Kausāmbi region. So, in their opinion, an era had to be found which was later than the Kushåns era of 78 A.D. but earlier than the Gupta era. And the only ers that would fit in would be the Kalachuri era of 248 A.D. Moreover, the areas in which these inscriptions have been found were either associated with the Kalachuris or were contiguous to the Kalachuri territories. D.R. Bhandarkar, K.P. Jayaswal and A. Ghosh were in favour of the Kalachuri era on palaeographic grounds. I found three lithic records of the Kalachuris of Tripuri in the fort at Båndhogarh. They are small inscriptions referring to the setting up of rock-cut images of fish, tortoise and boar, obviously representing the three incarnations of Vishnu, by one Gollaka alias Gauda who was the son of Bhanu and a minister of Sri-Yuvarājadeva. This ruler has undoubtedly to be identified with Yuvarāja I on palaeographic grounds and the inscriptions would therefore be the earliest records of the Kalachuris of Tripuri. But this family of rulers came into existence only about the last quarter of the ninth century with Kokkalla as the first ruler and very little is known of them before that date. It is doubtful if the Kalachuri-Chedi era could have been in vogue in Baghelkhand and the adjacent area in the age of the Maghas. But we have shown above that the script of the Bandhogarh inscriptions is allied to that found in the inscriptions of the Kushānas and the cave inscriptions of the Western Deocan. Though at first sight the alphabet of the inscriptions of the Maghas of Kausāmbi appears more developed than that of the Bāndhogarh records, there is nu doubt that the era used in both the Magha and the Båndhogarh records is the same. The reason why the script of the Bandhogarh records, even in those which are almost contemporary with the Magha records, looks earlier is twofold. At Båndhogarh, all the records are incised in caves and in the cave inscriptions particularly many of the archaic forms persist. Moreover, Bāndhogarh being out of the way, the script might not have been so developed as in Kausambi which was an important place and had better contacts with important cities like Mathurā and others,
There are other unsurmountable difficulties in accepting the era as the Gupts or the Kalachuri era. If we accept the era as the Gupta era in spite of the diffioulties of palaeography, we have to assume that they were vassals of the Gupta rulers. Similarly, if we refer the dates to the Kalachuri era, the last three Magha rulers at least would be contemporaries of the Gupta emperors Chandragupta I, Samudragupta and Chandragupta II. Kausāmbi at the period was included in the Gupta empire and therefore these rulers of Kausāmbi must have acknowledged the suzerainty of the Imperial Gupta monarchs. But there is no indication of this in any of the Magha records. Moreover, coins have been found of six Magha rulers, viz. Sivamagha, Bhadramagha, Vaisravana and Bhimavarman, who are known from inscriptions, and also of Vijayamaghs and Satamagha whose inscriptions have not been discovered so far. This fact would indicate their independent status and therefore they cannot be taken as the vassals of either the Gupta or the Kalachuri rulers. This being the case, the only other era left to us is the Saka era of 78 A.D. and let us examine the possibility of applying this era to the Magha records. This of course hinges on the initial dato of the Kushāna era. If we accept that this era started in 78 A.D., as seems to be the opinion of the majority of scholars now, some of the years of the Magha rulers will fall within the reign of the Kushāņa rulers Huvishka and Vasudeva whose coins have been found at Kausāmbi. One would therefore think normally that the rule of these two Kushāņa rulers also extended over Kaubāmbi and that the Maghas were therefore subordinate to the Kushäņas. But there is nothing in the inscriptions to show that this was the case. During the excavations at Bhiţă, seals of Sivamagba
1 JNSI, Vol. II (1940), pp. 95 ff. and Plato. • Ibid., Vol. IV, pp. 10-11.
• Prish thariya, whose coins and seal have been discovered, had obviously nothing to do with Potbasint of Bindhogarh. See Mirashi, above, Vol. XXVI, p. 999 and n.2. [Prial thatriya seems to be the misreading of what is really Pranahthafriyah.--Ed.)
