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JULY, 1892.]
THE INSCRIPTIONS OF PIYADASI.
207
2. It is in the same ora that the inscriptions and coins, on the one hand of Nahapana, the Kshaharata, on the other hand of the Kshatrapa Benas of Gujarat, are dated. The monuments, known to belong to the former, relate to the years 118 to 124 A.D., and the rule of the latter dynasty extended from about the year 130 to the end of the fourth century A. D. The great inscription of Rudradâman at Girnar dates from the third quarter of the second century of our era.
3. The reigns of the five Andhrabbritya kings, whose names I have given above, and the order of whose succession we are enabled to determine with the aid of various monuments, from Gotamiputa Satakani to Siriyani Satakani, All the greater part of the second century of our era.
These conclusions put us in a position to date several epigraphical monuments which are certainly of decisive importance for the linguistic history of India. It is desirable that we should be able to do more, and to attain to equal certainty both with regard to the preceding period which separates the inscriptions of Asôka from those of Kanishka, and for the subsequent one. Unfortunately the elements for analogous deductions are not forthcoming, and we are, as a general rale, reduced to indications borrowed from palæography, to which it is prudent to accord but a limited confidence. I should add that, so far as regards the principal question with which we have to deal, this uncertainty very luckily does not appear to have 'very serious consequences.
There is one class of monuments, the coins, concerning which I have not much to say. M. de Sallet20 has submitted the problems connected with them to an examination at once complefe and thorough. I doubt whether the main lines of his conclusions can be seriously altered by later researches. Under any circumstances, I do not believe that the uncertainties which may remain unexplained, or the errors which may require correction, are of such an extent As to compromise the deductions which philology can draw from the legends of the coins.
It would be more essential, but it is more difficult, to fix with confidence the relative dates, and the order of all the inscriptions which belong to the same period.
By the side of those which bear the names of Kanishka, Huvishka, and Väsndêva, whose dates, as I admit, are certainly to be referred to the Saka era, there are others which various indications connect more or less closely with the same series, without its being proved, or even shewn to be probable, that they employ the same era. I refer especially to two characteristic inscriptions in Indo-Bactrian characters, that of Taxila, 31 dated in the 78th year, and belonging to the great king Môga, and that of Takhtibahi,2, dated the year 103, and the 26th year of the reign of a king whose name is read as Gudapharas, most probably the same as the Gondopbares or Yndopherres of coins and of legend; but if this identification is admitted, and if, on the other hand, we also allow the identification, which has been proposed, of king Môga with the king Mauas of the coins, there are, from a numismatic point of view,23 serious difficulties to be met in fixing the epoch from which to count this year 78, so as to calculate these two dates. All that is at any rate certain is that these monuments belong approximately to the same period as those of the Tarushka kings; and the study of the former should not be separated from that of the latter.
As regards the two inscriptions of Mathurg (No. 8 and No. 9 of Dowson) which are dated in the year 135, and the year 280 respectively, I see no decisive reason against referring them to the series of the SA ka era.
90 Die Nachfolger Alexandera des Grossen in Baktrien und Indien. Of., however, also Gardner and R. 8. Poole, Coins of the Greek and Seythie king of Bactria and India in the British Museum.
21 Cf. Dowson, J. R. A. 8. XX. 921 and f.
23 Dowson, J. R. A. 8., N. 8. VII. p. 876. Of. now my Notes l'Epigraphie Indienne, in the Journal Asiatique, 1890, I, pp. 114 sad ff. 45 Cf. Ballet, op. cit. pp. 48, 51, 157.
# Cf. Dowaon, J. R. A. 8., N. 9. V. pp. 182 and l.
