________________
NOVEMBER, 1882.]
tied together. He called out, "We are lost! we are lost.!"
"Not at all, you gaby," answered his wife, and walked towards the tiger and the jackal. When she got within hail she called out,
INITIAL POINT OF THE GUPTA ERA.
"Now this is what I call kind, Mr. Jackal, to bring me such a nice fat tiger, but considering how many tigers there are in your father's house, I think you might have brought me two: one will hardly be a mouthful."
321
General Cunningham has lately given-in the appendix and the preface of the 10th volume of the Reports of the Archæological Survey of Indiaa detailed exposition of a new method devised by him for the purpose of fixing the initial date of the Gupta era. Some remarks regarding this method had already been made by him in the 9th vol. of the Reports. His method is based on a series of four copperplate inscriptions of king Hastin and his son Pank shobha, the petty chiefs of Uchahara, each of which furnishes a double date, one noting the year of the Gupta era and the other the current year of the twelveyear cycle of Jupiter. Details about these inscriptions and their dates are to be found in the Archeological Reports and need not be given here; a short re-statement of the nature of the twelve-year cycle of Jupiter however will not be out of place. This cycle is founded on the circumstance of Jupiter performing a complete revolution, roughly speaking, in twelve years (accurately in 4,332 days 14h. etc.), so that one year of Jupiter is the time in which the planet passes through 30°. The names of the single constituent years of the cycle are derived from the nakshatras in which in the course of each year Jupiter's heliacal rising and setting takes place. As, however, it was manifestly intended to employ this nomenclature for civil purposes also, it became necessary to make some arrangement in order to establish a clearer agreement between solar and bárhaspatya reckoning. For this purpose it was necessary to establish a period which comprised an integral number of solar and likewise of Jupiter's years. The Indian astronomers of the Siddhânta Period, whose knowledge of the mean motions of the planets was on the whole very accurate, had of course no difficulty in handling this problem. As Jupiter passes in one solar year very nearly through one sign plus the eighty-fifth part of a sign, eighty-five solar years are very nearly equal
Hearing this the tiger became wild with fright and quite forgetting the jackal and the knot in their tails, he bolted away as hard as he could, dragging the jackal bumpity-bump-bump over all the stones. In vain the poor jackal howled and shrieked to the tiger to stop; the noise behind him only frightened the beast more, and away he went over hill and dale, till he was nearly dead with fatigue, and the poor jackal quite dead with bruises. Moral. Don't trust cowards.
SOME REMARKS ON GENERAL CUNNINGHAM'S NEW METHOD OF FIXING
THE INITIAL POINT OF THE GUPTA ERA. BY G. THIBAUT, PH.D., PRINCIPAL BENARES COLLEGE.
to eighty-six of Jupiter's years, and consequently in order to utilize the names of the twelve year cycle for civil reckoning, the provision was made that in the regular recurring series of the 12 Jupiter names each 86th name was to be expunged. For two of Jupiter's years terminate within the limits of each 85th solar year, and the 86th solar year must therefore receive the name of the 87th of Jupiter's years.
These are briefly the principles according to which astronomers like the author of the Surya Siddhanta and Varaha Mihira would have calculated the periods of Jupiter's years to be expunged, and according to the same principles Pandit Bapu Deva Sâstri, the distinguished Mathematician and Astronomer of the Benares college, has computed for General Cunningham's use a table of the Jovian twelve year cycle extending from B.C. 8 to A D. 2068, in which all the expunged years are marked. The dates were also computed by General Cunningham himself. Comparing with this list then the dates of the four copperplate-inscriptions of Raja Hastin and his son Sankshobha, which are dated in the Gupta era, and at the same time mention the name of the current Jovian year, and noticing that in the series of 54 years between the date of the first inscription (G. 156) and that of the last (G. 209) no name of the Jovian cycle is omitted (as appears from the table on page 117 of the appendix) Gen. Cunningham proceeded to examine which of the different unbroken series of 54 years that are to be found in his table can, with the most probability, be identified with the series marked by the first and fourth of the mentioned four copperplate inscriptions. Availing himself of the various indications found elsewhere, which may assist one in settling the question, he finally decides in favour of A. D. 167, as most probably being the initial year of the Gupta era, so that the date of the first inscription-Gupta 156-would coincide
