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DECEMBER, 1891.)
THE VIKRAMA ERA.
409
that, as Chanakya puts it, the time is one for warlike exertion, not for festivities.17 In the prologue of a play which treats of war, it is the season of autumn that must be sung about 18
From autumn, the true vikrama-kála, it is but a short step to the year being called vikramakála, and in my opinion the Hindas did take this step, and the vikrama-kala of the dates origi. nally is nothing else than the poets''war-time,' from autumn transferred to the year. Since poets were accustomed to speak of sarad as vikrama-kála, it was but natural that this expression should have become connected also with sarad in the sense of year,' especially as sarad has always been with poets a most common word for year; and to describe the year as vikrama-kala must have seemed the more appropriate as suggesting that which was the characteristic feature of the year which people were using, namely the fact that that year commenced in autumn, the season of war. Thus the usage of the poets would first have led to the employment, in connection with the years of the era, of the terms vikrama-kála and vikrama-sainvatsara or vikramasash vat, the very terms which we meet with in the earliest dates that contain the word vikrama.
Afterwards, when the origin and the true meaning of the terms vikrama-kala and vikramayear had been forgotten, people would seek to interpret those terms after the manner of their time, and, Vikrama being a well-known name of famous kings, they would naturally connect the ern with a king of that name who would be supposed, either, like their own kings, to have counted the years from his accession, or to have otherwise given occasion for the establishment of the era. The manner in which the change actually took place, is clearly indicated by the dates which we have examined. The vikrama-time and tbe vikrama-year became the time of the illustrious Vikrama' and 'the year of the illustrious Vikrama.'
The name thus created for the era could not of course at once have been used every. where, but would only have been adopted gradually; and accordingly, when we see it occur rarely in the earlier and more and more frequently in the later dates, this is exactly what, in conformity with my views, might have been expected. And curiously enough we find that even down to V. 1400, in general only poeta described the era by the new name, just as the usage of poets had first suggested its invention, and just as it is the poets who, at an earlier stage, had described the same era as the Mâlavs era, - a name whose direct connection with the later name appears to be only this, that both are essentially poetical names of the era with which we are dealing.
Others have intimated that the Vikrama era was invented by the Brahmane to get rid of the Saka era, supposed to have been obnoxious as being the era of the Buddhists. I have not been able to discover anything which would support such a theory. What an examination of the dates teaches, would rather appear to be this, that the (Karttikádi) Vikrama year was peculiarly the year of the warriors or Rajaputras, while the Brâhmans who were responsible for the making of the calendars would naturally have been reckoning by Chaitrádi ('Saka) years, as we most do now when calculating or verifying a Hinda date. And it is at any rate a fact that the Vikrama era has been adopted, more than by others, by the non-Brâhmanical Jainas, just as the official description of it as Vikrama era, in early times, is especially peculiar to the kingdom of Anhilvâd, the stronghold of the Jaina religion.
Some matters of detail regarding the calculated dates. Irregular dates: - Returning now to the list of calculated dates, I would first obviate a misunderstanding for which my own classification of the dates might possibly, to some extent, be held responsible. I have sometimes heard it stated that the Hindus in recording their dates hare never been very accurate, and anybody holding such views would probably, in support of them,
IT See Mr. Telang's Edition, p. 116, line 3 of the commentary: an na sardagur
of the commentary: anena saradgura-kathandna yatro-samnha-samaya iti dhvanitam vakshyati cha Chanakyah suyan yayama-kol n-trava-kala iti Compare p. 188, 1. 3.
18 Professor S. Lévi's Théatre Indien, Appendix, p. 27.-Allusions to the fact that autumn (sorad) is the senson of war are also met with in inscriptions : see e. g. M. Barth's Inscr. Barucrites du Cambodge. p. 13, 6, and p. 16, 4.
