of the great king Gupta,-grandson of the great king Ghatot-kacha,—son of the great king, the sovereign of kings, Chandra-gupta,-maternal grandson of Lichchhavi,-born of the great goddess-like Kumára-deví,—the great king, the sovereign of kings, Samudra-gupta :

:

Of him, when the accepted son was pronounced to be the son of Deví, daughter of Mahadaitya, the incomparable worshipper of the supreme Bhagavat (Krishna), the great king, the sovereign of kings, Chandra-gupta,-then his son, before addicted to illiberality, and a man of great parsimony, was purified by the waters of destiny. Such was the excellent blessedness of the worshipper of the supreme Bhagavat, the great king, the sovereign of kings, Kumára-gupta, celebrated for his mildness of disposition, and of subdued passions united to accumulated fame,-a blessedness pervading even the forests and desert lands.

(Verse). Having well surmounted the calamities that oppressed the earth, the chief and unique hero of the Gupta race, of face like a lotus, displays the glory of conquest: even he, by name Skanda-gupta of distinguished and spotless renown,who in the spirit of his own dreadful deeds danced in the fierce dance (Sivalike after his vengeance for Síta's death).

Possessed of a clear insight into the profound wisdom of the Tantras, with a spirit of unceasing silence (on their incommunicable mysteries;—and, in accordance with their precept and discipline,) mangling the flesh of the refractory in successive victories; he by whom their challenge in battle being accepted and answered, forms a splendid spectacle in every quarter of the earth,-is declared even by alien princes to be one whose mind could not be shaken by sudden and unexpected calamity.

For, afterwards, by him to whom the keeping of his treasure was committed,—the boundary, which was given as a sacred deposit and worthy to be extended to the extremities of the earth, was treacherously taken away; and the prosperity of the family removed from it,-(even by him, the minister aforesaid), coveting the wealth of that family, having previously professed much attachment in words, but destitute of the light (of truth), and followed by calamitous defection.

Yet (having conquered) the land, his left foot was fixed there on a throne yet untrodden by mortals, and having obtained excellent room, and laid by his weapons, he reposed from war on his (inaccessible) mountain. His pure and noble exploits, the exploits of a man of unspotted fame, although long opposed by the kings of the excellent seven hills, are now sung even by them,

In every region did men surround that young prince, when his father had gone to heaven, as one who had attained most illustrious prosperity: whom his father's brother and the other chiefs did first (thus surround, hailing him) as their new sovereign, in the midst of the joy of conquest, with tears in their eyes.

May he, who is like Krishna still obeying his mother Devakí, after his foes are vanquished, he of golden rays, with mercy protect this my design!

Whatever prince in this place perpetually worships this sacred image, is considered by Rudra (Siva) himself as one whose understanding is ennobled and rendered praise-worthy by this affectionate devotion, even in the land of Arha (Indra) and the other celestials.'

REMARKS ON THE ABOVE INSCRIPTION.

The account of the parentage of Samudra-Gupta, son of ChandraGupta, which closed the Allahábád inscription, forms, in nearly the same words, the beginning of the present; and his panegyric, which pervaded the earlier monument, is the leading subject in the prose part of this. The first new fact is the designation of his son and successor, ChandraGupta the Second; whom it seemed most obvious, on the first reading of the names, to identify with the expected son and heir of the eighteenth line of the pillar of Allahábád, the offspring of Samudra-Gupta and his principal queen, the daughter of the proud princess Sanháriká. This identification, however, is removed by the terms of the inscription itself: this son does not succeed by right of primogeniture, but as peculiarly selected ( parigrihíta), on account of his eminent virtues, from the rest of the family or families of the polygamist king, and is the offspring, not of Sanháriká's daughter, but of the daughter of a prince named Mahádaitya. The son and successor of Chandra-Gupta II. is Kumára-Gupta, who is represented as having been a very unprincely character at the time of his father's adoption as heir to the throne; but, having been disciplined by some unnamed fortune, becomes, on his own accession to the throne, an emulator of the mild virtues and the Vaishnava devotion of his parent. The next king is Skanda-Gupta, who may be most probably supposed to be the son of his immediate predecessor, Kumára-Gupta ; but, on this point, the verse, which here takes the place of the more narrative prose, is unfortunately silent. We only hear of his distinguished fame as a warrior; and that his piety, congenial with his acts, does not take the same turn with that of his two nearest predecessors, of devotion to Vishnu the Preserver, but attached itself to the opposite system, now so prevalent in this part of India, the deep, mysterious, and sanguinary system of the Tantras. After the conquest and slaughter of many opposing kings, we hear of his eventful triumph over a more formidable enemy than all, a treacherous minister, who, for a time, succeeds in dispossessing him of his kingdom. After vanquishing, however, the rival monarchs of the seven hills, and resting peacefully on his laurels in his inaccessible mountain throne, (localities which carry us away from the immediate vicinity of the Ganges, but whether towards the north or Central India, we have no means of determining,) this worthy worshipper of Siva and Durgá ascends to heaven; and his brother and the other chiefs, with mingled feelings of grief and affectionate allegiance, proclaim his young child the heir to his father's crown and conquests. This youth is described as obedient to the queen dowager, his mother, as was Krishna to his mother Devakí; but the part of the inscription that proceeds to speak of him is confused

and unintelligible; neither does he appear to be once named; unless we conceive some letters of line 18 to give his name thus: Mahesapríta Gupta, 'the Gupta attached to Siva, or beloved by Siva.' He is probably the Mahendra Gupta whose name occurs in several of the newly discovered coins of this dynasty.

The royal family of the Guptas, therefore, as adapted to the time of this inscription, stands as follows; the Arabic numerals denoting sovereigns, or those to whom the prefix Mahárája Adhirája belongs, in the order of their succession.

[The next item of evidence is derived from the inscription on the eastern Gate at Sanchí, near Bhilsa. Prinsep, in his introductory comments on this monumental writing, remarks:-]

It records a money contribution and a grant of land by an agent of the ruling sovereign, Chandragupta, for the embellishment of the edifice (or perhaps for the erection of the ornamented gateway) and for the support of certain priests, and their descendants for ever.

The value of a facsimile in preference to a copy made by the eye was never more conspicuous than in the present instance. Turning to the engraving of Mr. Hodgson's copy in vol. iii. Jour. As. Soc. Beng.', we find his artist has totally omitted all the left-hand portion of the inscription, which has been injured by the separation of a splinter in the stone! The initial letter of each line is, however, distinctly visible on the stone beyond this flaw; and as not more than four or five letters in each line are thus destroyed, it is not very difficult to supply them, without endangering the sense. This has now been done by the Society's pandit; and the only place at which he

hesitated was in filling up the amount of the donation, in the seventh line, which may have been hundreds or thousands or upwards, but could hardly have been units, in a display of regal beneficence. I have endeavoured to make a literal translation:

(TRANSLATION).

To the all-respected Śramanas, the chief priests of the dvasath ceremonial,1 who by deep meditation have subdued their passions, the champions (sword) of the virtues of their tribe :

2

The son of Amuka, the destroyer of his father's enemies, the punisher of the oppressors of a desolated country, the winner of the glorious flag of victory in many battles, daily by his good counsel gaining the esteem of the worthy persons of the court, and obtaining the gratification of every desire of his life through the favor of the great emperor Chandragupta;—having made salutation to the eternal gods and goddesses, has given a piece of ground purchased at the legal rate; also five temples, and twenty-five (thousand?) dínárs; 3 (half of which has been spent for the said purchase of the said ground), as an act of grace and benevolence of the great emperor Chandragupta, generally known among his subjects as Deva-rája (or Indra).

As long as the sun and moon (shall endure), so long shall these five ascetics enjoy the jewel-adorned edifice, lighted with many lamps. For endless ages after me and my descendants may the said ascetics enjoy the precious building and the lamps! Whoso shall destroy the structure, his sin shall be as great, yea five times as great, as that of the murderer of a bráhman.-In the Samvat (or year of his reign?), (in the month of) Bhadrapada, the tenth (day).'

1

a fire-temple, or place where sacrificial fire is preserved' (Wilson's Dictionary); also a particular religious observance.' The latter is preferable, as the fire-worship is unconnected with the Buddhist religion.

2 This epithet is doubtful: the pandit has supplied a☎ to make it intelligble, शरभङ्गामु (क) रातिः

3 This document, if I have rightly interpreted it, teaches us that the current coin of the period was entitled dinar, which we know to be at the present day the Persian name of a gold coin, although it is evidently derived from the Roman denarius, which was of itself silver; while the Persian dirham (a silver coin) represents the drachma, or dram weight, of the Greeks. The word dinára is otherwise derived in the Sanskrit dictionaries," and is used in books for ornaments and seals of gold, but the weight allowed it of thirty-two ratis, or sixty-four grains, agrees so closely with the Roman and Greek unit of sixty grains, that its identity cannot be doubted, especially when we have before us the actual gold coins of Chandragupta (didrachmas) weighing from 120 to 130 grains, and indubitably copied from Greek originals in device as well as weight.

[Burnouf, in noticing the occurrence of the same word, adds a note in reference to this passage, which I transcribe ::-"Celui qui m'apportera la tête d'un mendiant brâhmanique, recevra de moi un Dînâra b.” —‘Introduction à l'histoire de Buddhisme.' 4 [Major Cunningham, in his work on the Bhilsa Topes, has published a facsimile,

b

['Din' 'a pauper' and 'ri' 'to go'-' what is given to the poor'! (Wilson's Dictionary).

[L'emploi du mot dinara,' dont Prinsep a positivement démontre l'origine occidentale, et l'introduction assez récente dans l'Inde.... Ce mot est très-rarement employé dans les livres Sanscrits du Nord, et je ne l'ai jamais rencontré dans ceux des 'Sutras' que je regarde comine anciens, du moins pour jusqu'à présent, citer que deux exemples,.,. (Avad.-çat.' f. 195,) 'lakchana

le fond. Je n'en pu ce qui doit signifier "deux Dinaras' marqués de signes." Le second exemple

hatam dinaradvayam," (Divya-avad.' f. 211. b) "cent Dinaras' pour chaque tête de religieux buddhiste." Dans les 'Sutras anciens, le terme qui paraît le plus souvent est 'Suvarna.'"]

[The two ciphers constituting the date in this inscription are now by common consent admitted to convey the number ninety-three: the epoch to which this record refers is however still an open question, and will be examined more at large in its proper order. Nor, it must be observed, is there anything definitive to shew which of the two Chandra-Guptas -the third or the fifth-on the family list, is alluded to in the text.

The comprehensive inscription on the northern face of the Junagarh Rock, in which mention is made of Skanda Gupta, should have appeared in this place, but I regret to say that up to this time no more satisfactory account of its purport and contents can be given than is to be found in the brief notice published by Prinsep, in April, 1838.2

In 1842, Major Jacob and M. Westergaard copied this inscription anew, and a lithographed facsimile of their transcript was published in the April number of the Journal of the Bombay

as well as a transcript and a translation, of the Udayagiri Inscription, which he attributes to Chandra Gupta, the second of our list. The assignment, at the best, rests upon slender grounds; and, if the present revised translation is to supersede his rendering, it must be deemed altogether fallacious. I annex his transliteration and interpretation: "Siddham samvatsare 82 Sravana-mása suklekadasya.' 'Parama-bhattáraka Maharajadhi Chandra Gupta pádánadátasya.' 'Maharaja Chagaliga potrasya, Maharaja Vishnu-dása putrasya.' Sanakánikásya Mahá (rája

-

*).' Finished in the year 82, on the 11th of the bright half of the month of Sravana; [the cave] of him, bowing to the feet of the paramount, homage-receiving, supreme Mahárája, Chandra Gupta, the grandson of Mahárája Chagaliga, the son of Mahárája Vishnu-dása, Mahárája (name obliterated of Sanakanika.)'

p. 150. The Sanskrit transcript adopted will be seen to vary but slightly from the version in Roman type inserted above. The translation approved of by Prof. Wilson, however, differs very materially:-at the same time I must freely admit the disadvantages have laboured under in having to follow the lithograph of a London artist, while Major Cunningham's transliteration has been made, I presume, from the original itself.

सिद्धम् ॥ संवत्सरे ८२ श्रवण मासे शुक्लकादश्यां परमभट्टारक महाराजधि (राज) श्रीचन्द्र गुप्तपादानुध्यातस्य महाराज छगलिग पौत्रस्य महाराज विष्णुदासपुत्रस्य सनकानीकस्य महाराज- *

*

(May it be) auspicious! On the 11th day of the light fortnight, in the month of Sravana, in the year 82 of (?) the great King of Sanakáníka, son of the great King, Vishnu-dása, (and) grandson of the great King, Chhagaliga, (who, viz. Chhagaliga, was) son of the supreme monarch (and) paramount lord of great kings, the auspicious Chandra Gupta

ני

[Sáh Kings of Saurashtra,' Jour. Roy. As. Soc., xii., 5; Bhilsa Topes, p. 152; Lassen, Ind. Alt., ii., 939. (1852).]

2 ['Jour. As. Soc. Beng.', vii., 347].