342 Supplement to the Historical Remarks [July, 



Vijaya Chandra, who died in 1168. Respecting all his ancestors they 

 are altogether wrong, and have expanded into seven centuries a dynasty 

 which lasted but 120 years ; for the same inscription which relates the 

 conquest of Chandra Deva is utterly silent as to the crown of Canouje 

 having been his by right of hereditary descent fromNAYANA Pala, or 

 any otber. We have therefore little reason to credit the Marwar chroni- 

 clers in the other part of their statement ; viz. that this Rahtore dynasty 

 thus reduced to one century, was the first and only dynasty of the solar 

 race at Canouje. It is far more probable that princes of purer de- 

 scent than they (whom Colonel Tod suspects on very probable grounds 

 to be of partly Scythian origin) occupied that seat of empire from a pe- 

 riod at least as early as that named by their chroniclers, viz. in the 

 fifth century, or perhaps long before it. To some of these the kings 

 mentioned in our inscription may have belonged, whom these au- 

 thorities, if admitted as true, would exclude altogether. 



A greater assistance might perhaps be obtained from Colonel Tod, 

 had he given us the Jain inscription to which he alludes in pp. 140 and 

 211 of the first volume of the Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society, 

 as written in an ancient character (very probably that of our inscrip- 

 tion) long disused in India, but known to the Jain hierarchs, and of which 

 he promises to the Society a key. For this inscription relates to a certain 

 Avanti Raja or Lord of Ujjayini, called Chandragupta, and is dated in 

 the year 427*, which if applied to the era of the great monarch of that 

 city Vicramaditya will be A. D. 371, but if applied to the Jain era of 

 Mahavira will be B. C. 106. But the localities specified in the Alla- 

 habad pillar all seem to indicate a Gangetic kingdom rather than one 

 whose centre is at Oujein. 



In the line of the Chohan princes of Ajmeir, closed by the name of 

 the heroic Prithu-Rai, (who possessed himself in the 12th century 

 of the ancient kingdom of Indrapristha or Dehli, only to be the last 

 Hindu prince that ever reigned there) we find a Chandragupta, son 

 of Mahasinha and grandson of Manikya-Rai, the latter a king 

 of some celebrity, whose date is fixed to A. D. 695. But the men- 

 tion of these names, together with that of the son and successor in the 

 kingdom, which is not Samudragupta but Pratapa-Sinha, is alone 

 sufficient to remove all idea of this being the Chandragupta of our in. 

 scription ; even without recurring to the decisive reason, that the Agni» 

 kula class of Xattriyas, to which this Chauhana family belongs, is ex- 



* On the second mention Colonel Tod, apparently from inadvertency, makes the 

 date of this same monument 466, i. e. 39 years later than before. 



