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NOVEMBER, 1891.]
THE GUPTA-VALABHI ERA.
379
the initial day of each year, At any rate, in the dates hitherto obtained there is nothing opposed to this view.
The initial day of Gapta-Samvat 163, therefore, is to be taken as Chaitra sukla 1 of SakaSamvat 405 current. And, if we go back on the analogy of this, the initial day of GuptaSamvat 1, not yet determined either as current or as expired, would be Chaitra sukla 1 of Saka-Samvat 243 current.
2.- The Arrangement of the Lunar Fortnights. This point is determined by means of the date in another of the Parivrajaka grants, of the Maharaja Samikshóla, in which the details (loc. cit. p. 117) are: - The year 209 in the enjoyment of sovereignty by the Gupta kings; the Mahi- Ašvayaja suvatsara; Chaitra sukla 13: and, at the end of the record, (the month) Chaitra, the (civil) day 28.2
This double record is explicable only on the understanding that, in the months of the Gupta year, the dark fortnights stood first, according to the púrminánta arrangement, by which each month ends with the day on which the full-moon occurs. By this means only can the thirteenth tithi of the bright fortnight be the twenty-eighth tithi, and answer to the twenty-eighth civil day, in the entire month.
A double record of the same kind is, as a matter of fact, contained in the grant referred to above as C. ; in which, in addition to the full date as given above, we have at the end the words "the month) Migha, the (civil) day 3." But this instance is not conclusive; as the tithi and the civil day, being under fifteen, might possibly be the tithi and day of the fortnight and not of the entire month.
To prove the point definitely, what is required is a tithi and day the number of which, exceeding fifteen, shows itself to be referred to the entire month, and not to the fortnight only. This we have in the grant of the year 269. And this record proves for certain that, for practical purposes, the purnimanta arrangement of the lunar fortnights is the one that was used for the Gupta years during the period in which those records were written; and probably that this is the original system, from the commencement of the era.
II. - THE ERA AS USED IN NEPAL.
D.- The Khatmandu inscription of the year 986. This date comes from Nepal, and is contained in an inscription of Månadeva, of the Lichchhavi family of Managriha, on a pillar at the temple of the god Chângu-Narayana, about five miles to the north-cast of Khatmandu.
D. The details (loc. cit. p. 95) are: - The year 386; Jyêshtha sukla 1; when the moon was in the Rohini nakshatra ; in the Abhijit muhúrta. By actual trial it is found that the exact day is tho 28th April, A. D. 705; on which day the tithi ended at 59 gharís, 12 palas, after sunrise (for Khatmandu); the moon entered the Rohiņi nakshatra at 11 gh. 3 p., and continued in it during the whole of the remainder of both the tithi and the day; and the Abhijit muhúrta, being the eighth among the thirty muhúrtas into which the sixty ghalis of the day are divided, and beginning after the fourteenth ghali, occurred both while the moon was in Rôhiņi and while the given tithi was current. The same conditions of the nakshatra and the muhúrta, with the tithi, did not oocur either in the preceding or in the following year.
1 read the day, first as 29 (upta Inscriptions, Texts and Translations, p. 110, and afterwards as 27 (id. Introduction, pp. 73 and note 3, and 117).- Accepting Prof. Jacobi's rulo that the abbreviation di, either with or without and ba or ra, denotes the civil day on which usually there ends (or occasionally there begins) the Rithi the numeral of which stands in connection with it (ante, Vol. XVII. p. 145), and finding that the thirteenth tithi endod, and the fourteonth began, a considerable time after sunset, - and, in fact, even after midnight, - vis. at about 46 gh. 55 p., 18 hrs. 46 min., aftor mean sunrise (for Bombay). I think that the value of the second numeriosl symbol must be corrected once more, and, no matter what may be suggested at first sight by the value of similar aymbols elsewhere, must be finally fixed at 8; i.e. "the (civil) day 28," (on which there ended the tithi 15 + 19 = 28.)
