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376 POLITICAL HISTORY OF ANCIENT INDIA
more unusual is the statement of a date as an independent achievement in a praśasti.” According to Fleet the use of the term "vochchhina” which is applied to sacred texts which have been 'cut off,'- 'interrupted'-quite prohibits the existence of a date. It may be added that there is no reliable evidence of the existence of a RājaMuriya-kāla in the sense of an era founded by the first Maurya. The use of regnal years by Aśoka points to the same conclusion. Jayaswal himself admits in the Epigraphia Indica,? that there is no date in a Maurya era in the 16th line," of the Hāthigumphā inscription.3
Dr. Jayaswal at one time took ti-vasa-sata to mean 300 years and placed Khāravela and Pushyamitra three centuries after Nandarāja whom he identified with Nandavardhana. But we have already seen that Nandavardhana or Nandivardhana was a Saišunāga king
1 An era of Samprati, grandson of Asoka, is however, mentioned in an ancient Jain MS. (EHI 4, p. 202n). If we refer the year 164 tomthis era, the date of Khāravela must be brought down to (cir 224-164=) 60 B. C. In "A note on the Hathigumpha Inscription of Khāravela" Barnett suggests the following rendering of the passage which is supposed to contain the words Muriya-kāla : "And when the Mauryan (?) time-reckoning......which consisted of lustres (antara) of five (years) each, had broken down, he found a new time-reckoning) consisting of lustres of 7 years each (saptikāntariyam) and mounting up to the 64th year (chatuh shashtyagram)." To retorm the calendar Khāravela introduced a new cycle of 64 years consisting of 9 Yugas of 7 years each. According to Dr. F. W. Thomas (JRAS. 1922, 84) antara = antargļiha = cell. The passage means that cells which had been left unfinished during the time of the Mauiya kings were constructed by Khāravela.
2 XX. 74.
3 His latest reading of the inscriptional passage is as follows:"Patalako, chaturo cha vedūriya-gabhe thambhepatithāpayati, pānā. tariya satasahase(hi); Muriya-kāla-vochhinam cha choyath (1) Aiga satika (m) turiyam upādayati."
**Patalaka(?)...... (he) sets up four columns inlaid with beryl at the cost of seventy-five hundred thousands ;...(he) causes to be compiled expeditiously the (text) of the sevenfold Amgas of the sixty-four (letters)." Ep. Ind., XX, pp. 80, 89.
