266 Remarks on the Inscription, No. 2, [June, 



concerned : but only with the light that it may help to throw on the his- 

 tory of the people for whom it was written. 



Were there any regular chronological history of this part of Northern 

 India, we could hardly fail in the circumstances of this inscription, even 

 if it were without names, to determine the person and the age to which 

 it belongs. We have here a prince who restores the fallen fortunes of 

 a royal race that had been dispossessed and degraded by the kings of 

 a hostile family — who removes this misfortune from himself and his kin- 

 dred by means of an able guardian or minister, who contrives to raise 

 armies in his cause ; succeeding at last in spite of vigorous warlike op- 

 position, including that of some haughty independent princesses, whose 

 daughters, when vanquished, become the wives of the conqueror — who 

 pushes his conquests on the east to Assam, as well as to Nepal and the 

 more western countries — and performs many other magnificent and li- 

 beral exploits, constructing roads and bridges, encouraging commerce, 

 &c. &c. — in all which, allowing fully for oriental flattery and extrava- 

 gance, we could scarcely expect to find more than one sovereign, to 

 whom the whole would apply. But the inscription gives us the names also 

 of the prince and his immediate progenitors : and in accordance with 

 the above-mentioned account, while we find his dethroned ancestors, his 

 grandfather and great-grandfather, designated only by the honorific 

 epithet Mahd-rdja, which would characterize their royal descent and 

 rights — the king himself (Samudragupta) and his father are dis- 

 tinguished by the title of Mdha-rdja Adhirdja, which indicates actual sove- 

 reignty. And the last-mentioned circumstance might lead some to con- 

 jecture, that the restoration of royalty in the house began with the fa- 

 ther, named Chandragupta, whose exploits might besupposed to be re- 

 lated in the first part of the inscription to add lustre to those of the son. 



Undoubtedly we should be strongly inclined, if it were possible, to 

 identify the king thus named — (though the name is far from being an 

 uncommon one) with a celebrated prince so called, the only one in whom 

 the Puranic and the Greek* histories meet, the Chandragupta or San- 

 dracoptus, to whom Seleucus Nicator sent the able ambassador, from 

 whom Strabo, Arrian and others derived the principal part of their 

 information respecting India. This would fix the inscription to an age 

 which its character (disused as it has been in India for much more than a 



* This identity, which after the researches of Schlegel (Indische BibliotheJc) , 

 and Wilson (preface to the Mudra Ravasa in the 3rd volume of the Hindu Theatre) , 

 may he considered as established, has been questioned on very insufficient grounds by 

 Professor Heeren in the last volume of his admirable Researches into the Politics, 

 Intercourse, and Trade of the Principal Nations of Antiquity. The Indian accounts 

 vary as much from each other concerning Chandragupta as they do from the 

 classical accounts of Sandracoptus. 



