84 Errors owing to European Commentators. 



through Vaillant's investigation. The Sassanidan dynasty has 

 also been illustrated from similar materials by Froshn and Db 

 Sacy. Marsden has extended the same principle to the Muham- 

 medan princes of Persia and India, and to some few Hindu states, in 

 his Numismata Orientalia ; and its application may be still further 

 urged in the latter line with the greater success, in proportion to the 

 greater dearth of other materials for history, as is exemplified in the 

 coins of the Bactvian provinces. The first thing to be done will be 

 to expunge and lose sight of the learned but entansrled accounts of 

 Col. Wilforo and others, which, while they have confused, have 

 frightened critics at the perplexity of the subject. The three Vikra- 

 ma'dityas, and three Raja Bhojas, invented to reconcile discrepancies 

 in dates, will perhaps be found as little needed as the multiplication 

 of Buddhas, the two principal of which are now seen by the identity 

 of their biography to be the same personage. 



Of the confirmation of the testimony of inscriptions by that of coins, 

 we have remarkable instance in the Chandragupta and Samudra- 

 gupta of Kanouj, names first discovered on the Allahabad pillar, and 

 now fully made out, along with several others of the same dynasty, on 

 the gold coins found in the ruins of that ancient town. In no other 

 record have we any mention of these sovereigns*, who must have been 

 several centuries anterior to Chandra Deva, the founder of the last 

 reigning dynasty, which was overthrown by the Muhammedans. 



The native dates of events, as has been already stated, are most 

 va°:ue and uncertain : still there are instances in which thev have 

 undergone further perplexity from their European commentators. 



The looseness with which the chronology of the Pauranic genealo- 

 gies has been investigated, is pointed out in Mr. Wilson's remarks on 

 the Vishnu Pur ana, the authority whence Sir Wm. Jones' list was 

 furnished by his Pandit (Journal As. Soc. i. 437.) By some mistake 

 he gave 345 years to the Kanwa dynasty of four Rajas, and in this he 

 was blindlv followed by Wilford and Bentley, both professing to con- 

 sult the original. Now all the manuscripts examined by Mr. Wilson 

 give onlv 45 years ! Indeed, when the epoch of Chandragupta is 

 adjusted, the periods given in this Purdna from Parikshit (B. C. 1400) 

 down to the termination of the list in A. D. 436, are quite rational. 



A more glaring instance of error, sanctioned, nay almost perpetuat- 

 ed, bv the extent to which it has been spread, has oi'iginated in blind- 

 lv following the authority of the pioneers of our Sanscrit researches ; 

 and it is strange that it has never been detected, that we are aware 

 of, up to the present day ! We allude to the mode of convertingthe Sam- 



* See Journal As. Soc. vol. iii. 141-4. 



