1837.] on the Inscription of the Bhitdri Ldt. 1 1 



ment of the reign of these Guptas posterior to Sandracottas, and 

 conseqtiently to Alexander the Great, by (137 -f- 112 -(-45 + 456 4* 

 1399 -f. 300 -f 186 =) 2635 years, — and therefore as really future 

 to us as to the prophetic Muni and his hearer. But setting aside all 

 other considerations, it is only the four first of the seven component 

 periods of this sum that will appear to an attentive inspection of the 

 Purana itself, to be entitled to the least attention : viz. the spaces as- 

 signed respectively to the Maurya, the Sanga, the Kanva and Andhra 

 dynasties of Hindu sovereigns in Magadha : of which the name of 

 each individual king is set down, their several numbers 10, 10, 4 

 and 30 agreeing perfectly with the durations assigned to each race*. 

 But the fifth and sixth periods of 1399 and 300 years have no such 

 catalogues of kings accompanying them, but only a statement that 

 in the former there should rule in succession seven kings of the 

 Abbhra caste, 10 Gardabhiras, 16 Saka or Scythian kings, 8 Yavana 

 or Grecian, 14 Tushara, 13 Munda, and 1 1 Mauna kings : and in the 

 latter period of three centuries, Paura and 1 1 other unnamed sove- 

 reigns. This enumeration, strongly indicative of the disturbed and 

 semi-barbarous condition of affairs, which caused the suspension of all 

 the ancient records, — and in which synchronous dynasties might 

 easily be mis-stated as successive ones, and the sum of years readily 

 palmed on the Hindu reader, to enhance the antiquity of the classical 

 and heroic ages of the country, — is succeeded, in the last period 

 immediately preceding the rise of the Guptas, by something more 

 resembling the records of earlier times. As this list, occupying 

 the seventh period above mentioned of 186 years, has not yet been 

 published, — (that of Hamilton in the corresponding period being 

 somewhat different and much more confused,) 1 will here set it down 

 from my MS. of the Vishnu-Purana. 



* These may all be seen, as they stand in this and other Puranas, in p. 100 

 of Mr. J. Prinsep's Useful Tables. The accuracy of these lists is strongly con- 

 firmed by the collateral testimony of the Chinese travellers in India in the 5th 

 century, whose relation is published in the London Asiatic Journal of July last. 

 Their king of Kapila, Yue-gae, Beloved of the Moon, whose ambassador sent 

 presents to China A. D. 428, is (not Chandra/nanda, as the learned translator 

 of that work suspected, but) Chandra-sri', the king immediately preceding 

 Pulomarchis, the last of the Andhra dynasty at Magadha,— who was reigning 

 at this precise time. This removes the hope entertained by Mr. J. Prjnsep, 

 (to whom 1 am indebted for the communication of this paper) and myself, that 

 this might prove to be the Chandra-gupta of the inscription, and makes the 

 latter posterior to him by probably three or four centuries. 

 c 2 



