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D. C. SIRCAR
historians, but may be really correct, because we have now discovered in a Mathura inscriptions a seventh century Maurya king named Candragupta whose grandson Dindirāja Karka claims to have burnt the city of Kanyakubja.
Recently our attention has been drawn to a statement in the Sanatkumăracaritram which is a section of Haribhadra's Nemināhacariu. Haribhadra, a pupil of Śricandra who was a pupil of Jinacandra, completed the Neminahacariu in Apabhramśa in the year 1159 A.D.9 We learn from the colophon of the said section that Vira of the Pragvāța community was Mularaja's minister in charge of the tankaśālā (mint) which produced coins bearing the figure of the goddess Lakṣmi.10 Pragvāta is the Sanskrit form of the name of the Por or Porwär belonging to the Porwal community of merchants of Western India, being one of the eighty-four gacchas or families of the Jains.11 The said Mularāja is Mūlarāja I of the Caulukya or Solanki dynasty of Gujarat, who ruled in 961-96 A.D.,12 because Mūlarāja II of the same family reigned in 1176-78 A.D.,13 i.e. sometime after the composition of the Nemināhacariu.
The above tradition, recorded by Haribhadra in 1159 A.D. about a century and a half after the death of Mūlarāja I in 996 A.D., seems to be genuine ; because, in ancient and medieval India, coins once in the market remained in circulation for centuries, and it is possible that Haribhadra saw some such coins of Mularāja I. However, the tradition assumes some significance when we remember that no coins of the Caulukya or Solanki family have as yet been discovered. The question
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7 Bābi Chote Lala Jaina Smrti Grantha, Calcutta, Part IV, pp. 129ff. 8 See also Ep. Ind., Vol. XXXII, pp. 207ff.
9 Winternitz, Hist. Ind. Lit., Vol. II, p. 511.
10 Choudhary, op. cit., p. 232. This Vīra of the Pragvata clan may be different from Mularaja's minister of the same name who is supposed to have belonged to the Capotkața clan (A. K. Majumdar, Caulukyas of Gujarat, p. 32).
11 See Wilson's Glossary of Judicial and Revenue Terms, s.v. Porwal. 12 H. C. Ray, DHNI, Vol. II, p. 1047.
13 lbid., p. 1048.
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