________________
208
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[JULY, 1910.
Nayasena could hardly have occupied the position of oldest kayastha in the administration much more than 18 years. We obtain, therefore, a minimum possible interval between plates B and C of 18 years, and the maximum could not be much greater. Plate B must therefore, in all probability, date from the closing years of Dharmaditya's reign; and it is impossible that any reign could have intervened between him and Gopacandra unless it were very brief.
The conclusions, therefore, as regards the relative order of the plates, to which these. considerations lead are these:
1. Dharmaditya had a maximum possible reign of 40 years, and its probable duration was some years shorter (at least in this province).
2.
Plate A was executed in his third year, and B in the closing years of his reign.
3.
Gopacandra succeeded him, with no one intervening unless it was for a very short interval. 4. Plate C was executed in his nineteenth year.
5. The new form of the letter y came into use in this part of Bengal during the period comprising the last years of Dharmaditya and the first 19 of Gopacandra, that is, within a period of some 20 years or not much more.
As regards the approximate date of these plates, Dr. Hoerale has very kindly given me his opinion. He has made a special study of the period to, which these grants belong, and his opinion is far superior to any that I can offer.
From the graphic evidence of these inscriptions (which has been noticed above) and of the Bower MS. and other inscriptions, Dr. Hoernle assigns these three plates to the sixth century A.D. The full discussion of all that evidence will be published by him in his forthcoming Introduction to the Bower MS. and in a separate article in which he proposes to consider the chronology of these three grants. He thinks that the Emperor Dharmaditya is the Emperor Yasodharman, who took the title Visnuvardhana when he became emperor, and who was apparently known popularly as Vikramaditya. He was reverenced as an ideally upright and just monarch, and may well, therefore, have been popularly known as Dharmaditya also. He conducted a successful dig-vijaya or conquest of India during the four years A.D. 525-529 and established his supremacy in 529-30. It is presumably from that year that we should reckon his acknowledged reign, at least in the extreme eastern portion of his realm where these grants were made, because he had to acquire both the title of emperor and also that of Dharmaditya in this outlying province. That is therefore the basal date in calculating the dates of these plates. His third year then would have been A.D. 531, and that is the date of the first grant A. According to the above conclusions his reign would have ended in A.D. 568, and the second plate B, which was executed in the closing years of his reign, may be dated about 567. Gopacandra would have succeeded in A.D. 568, and his nineteenth year would have been 586; and this would be the date of the third plate C. These dates allow the maximum interval of 55 years between the first and the third grants. If the interval was less, the date of plate A would remain A.D. 531, and dates of B and C would be shifted earlier so as to suit the interval adopted.
Dr. Hoernle is further inclined to identify the Emperor Gopacandra with Prince Govicandra (= Gopicandra), who is mentioned in a certain confused tradition cited by Taranath in his Thibetan History of Buddhism in India. That tradition seems to suggest that Govicandra was a grandson of Baladitya and was son of the last Gupta Emperor Kumaragupta II, whom Yasodharman displac ed. If this identification is permissible, it can be readily seen why Govicandra alias Gopacandra should, while reigning (it might be) only over this extreme eastern province, take the title of emperor given him in plate C; he would have been simply asserting his right to the title held by his ancestors, the Gupta Emperors.
