1837.] on the Inscription of the Bhitdri Ldt. 9 



One remarkable fact, learnt solely from this inscription, is the 

 prevalence at the time of the Gupta dynasty, of the two opposite 

 sectarian forms of later Hindu worship : that of the exclusive devo- 

 tees of Vishnu on the one hand, whose favorite authority is the 

 celebrated poem (probably inserted among the Puranas by the com- 

 paratively recent grammarian Vopbdkva) called the Srimad Bhdgavata : 

 and that of the worshippers of Siva and his female energies on the other, 

 whose text books are those singular compounds of Cabalistic mys- 

 tery, licentiousness and blood, the Agamas or Tantras. — The princes 

 Chandra-gupta and Cuma'ra-gupta are expressly commemorated as 

 belonging to the former class, and Scanda-gupta as an adherent of the 

 latter. And here I must recall an observation that I hazarded when 

 commenting on the Allahabad inscription, (J. A. S. vol. iii.p. 268,) that 

 the worship of the Saktis, with its existing mysteries and orgies, was 

 most probably unknown in India at the date of that monument. The 

 terms in which that species of devotion is spoken of about a century 

 after, in the second* of the metrical stanzas in the present Bhitdri 

 inscription, shews that the same system was even then dominant, and 

 sufficiently powerful and seducing to enlist kings among its votaries. 

 And while this (if I am correct in supposing the age of the Gupta 

 dvnastv to be somewhere between the 1st and 9th centuries of our 

 era), may be among the earliest authentic notices of that mode of 

 worshipping Bhairava and Ca'li', — the mention of it at all furnishes 

 an additional proof to my mind of the impossibility! of referring these 

 monuments to the earlier age of Chandra-gupta Maurya, or that 

 of Alexander the Great, and the century immediately following. 



A far more plausible hypothesis is the identification of this Gupta 

 dynasty, with that which is mentioned in the prophetico-historical 

 part of the Vishnu-Purana, (Book iv. chap. 24,) as arising in this 

 precise tract of country, contemporaneously with other dynasties in 

 different parts of India, during the turbulent period that followed 

 the extinction of the last race of Indian sovereigns that reigned in 

 Magadha, and the irruption of Sacse and other foreign tribes from 

 the north-west. The dominion of the Guptas is there said to include 

 the great city of Praydga on the confluence of the Ganges and Jumna, 

 where their principal monument is now found, as well as the yet more 

 sacred city of Mathurd on the latter river, and the less known names 

 of Padmuvati and Kdnti-puri, (probably near the site of our present 

 Cawnpore :) it is also described as extending down the Ganges to 



* See Note A. t See Note B. 



