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



bited in the last number PI. IX. fig. 24, had struck me, before I saw the 

 engraving, as seeming to bear on the obverse the name of Ghatotka- 

 cha, (not, however the father of Chandragupta so named on the pillar, 

 from whom the title of Adhirdja is withholden, as I before remarked — 

 but areigning prince of the same name and family.) But another gold 

 coin of the same class, in Plate I. fig. 19 of the XVIIth. volume of the 

 As. Res. seems to me an undoubted coin of our Chandragupta*. 



Unfortunatelv, the catalogues of the children of the Sun, in the 

 Hari-Vansa, the Bh&gavat, and the Vansa-lata, as published by Dr. 

 Hamilton, are far from being so full and ample as those of the Lunar 

 race, (to which the heroes both of the Mahabharata and the Sri Bhaga- 

 vat belong :) and neither these, nor I believe the Vishnu and Kurma 

 Puranas, extend their lists to the princes of this particular dynasty. 

 From the first formation of this solar royalty at Canouje to its extinction 

 in the person of Jaya Chandra, A. D. 1193, I know no authenticated 

 name but that of Yasovarman, said in the Raja Tarangini 'to have been 

 the patron of the dramatist Bhavabhu'ti, and to have been expelled 

 from his kingdom by the Cashmirian conqueror Lilita'ditya, about 

 A. D. 720 : — till we come to the last five, viz. the Rahtore princes, 

 whose names from Chandrade'va to Jayachandra, are known from 

 inscriptions and coins, allin modern Devanagari, and posterior by several 

 centuries to our inscription. (A. R. vols. 9,15,17). Until further lists 

 be obtained, therefore, the apparent absencef of all date on this part 

 of the column, must preclude any thing like exact determination of the 

 time that elapsed between its hero Samudragupta and Yasovarman. 



As far as it is possible to form a judgment on internal evidence con- 

 cerning the age of so short a composition as this, from the enumeration of 

 deities, or the traces of manners that may be discoverable in it, I should 

 be inclined to think that it was written after the hero-worship, which 

 the sacred epics first introduced, had begun decidedly to take place 

 of the simple elementary adoration visible in the ancient hymns of 

 the Vedas — yet before it had altogether its present shape, and appar- 

 ently before the worship of the linga, and that of the sactis, the most im- 

 pure parts of an impure system, had begun to attain the footing which they 



* No. 13 bears the cognate name of Sasigupta, and Nos. 5, 7, 12, 17, &c. con- 

 tain names, more or less distinct, of others of the same dynasty. — Mr. Prinsep 

 •whose attention I called to those coins, thinks also that No. 12, which is in his 

 possession, bears the name of our Samudragupta : and indeed the resemblance 

 is sufficiently striking to authorize the belief. 



t Unless indeed the mysterious isolated words at the end, ^T^H"£ " on the Arm's 

 bank or shore," should be thought to inclose a date. According to some numeral 

 rules used amongst Hindu mathematicians, these words might denote 22 : and this 

 applied to the era of Vicrama'ditya, the usual era in those parts, would bring us 

 to B. C. 34. But I need not observe how slippery such a conclusion must be. 



