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९० . कहाऊँ स्तम्भ एवं क्षेत्रीय पुरातत्व की खोज fore them after expelling the Sakas from northern India, and the era was optionally called Ballabhi or Gupta. And as Abú Raihán gathered his information in Western India, he was right in saying that the era dated from the extinction of the Guptas, meaning their expulsion from Gujarát, without implying their total annihilation. This theory affords a very plausible solution of the question; but I must leave it aside for further research; the more so as two such distinguished Indian archaeologists as General Cunningham and Mr. Thomas are engaged in discussion on the subject, and it is quite unnecessary for me to join issue with either of the disputants. I need here only observe that my own conviction is that the era of the Chandra Gupta inscriptions of Sánchī, of the Skanda Gupta inscriptions of Júnágash, Kuháon, and Indor, of the Budha Gupta inscription of Eran, and of the Hastin inscriptions, are all dated in the Saka era which being current and well known, needed no special specification, and is accordingly indicated by the word Samvatsara, which means “a year” and not an era, as it has been erroneously suppsed by some. The aptote noun samvat also originally meant a year, but it has been so uniformly used in connexion with the era of Vikramaditya, that the secondary meaning must now be accepted as the right one. When the abbreviation H occurs in an inscription, it may mean the samvator Samvatsara, and therefore it would be unsafe to take it for samvat for certain. There are many unquestionable instances in which it has been used for other than the Samvat. Under this conviction I accept the record under notice to be sixteen hundred and fifty years old, or, in other words, to date
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