270 Notes on €fupta Inscriptions from Aphsar and Beliar. [No. 4, 



at imposition was so transparent in this instance, that it conld not 

 possibly he mistaken. Major Hollings, therefore, got a baked clay- 

 impression of the inscriptions prepared and sent to the Asiatic Society, 

 in 1861. This at once showed that they were records of the Gupta 

 sovereigns of Behar, and had nothing to do with moral maxims, or 

 hidden treasure. An ink impression of the inscriptions was subse- 

 quently communicated to me by the Hon'ble Justice Sambhunath 

 Pandit. But it contained nothing that was not decypherable on the clay 

 facsimile, and did not help me to add much to the tentative reading 

 which I had already prepared. The accompanying plate is a reduced 

 facsimile of the clay impression, and every letter on it has been carefully 

 compared with those on the ink tracing. A copy of this plate was 

 placed by me at the disposal of General Cunningham, and he had an 

 opportunity of comparing it with the original during his Archaeological 

 Tour in 1861-62. The following is an extract from his report on the 

 subject. 



" One mile due east from the Darga, and about a hundred yards inside 

 the northern gate of the old fort of Bihar, there lies a sandstone 

 pillar which bears two separate inscriptions of the Gupta dynasty. 

 Unfortunately the surface of the stone has peeled off considerably, so 

 that both of the inscriptions are incomplete. The upper inscription, 

 which is of Kumara Gupta, has lost both ends of every line, being 

 probably about one-third of the whole. The lower inscription has 

 lost only the left upper corner, and some unknown amount at the 

 bottom, where the pillar is broken off. But as the remaining portion 

 of the upper part is letter for letter the same as the opening of the 

 Bhitari pillar inscription, nearly the whole of the missing part of the 

 left upper corner can be restored at once. This record belongs to 

 Skanda Gupta, the son and successor of Kumara Gupta." 



In the plate the upper inscription is numbered 1 and the lower one 2. 

 The former extends to 13 lines and bears the name of Kumara Gupta 

 whose eulogium it is perhaps intended to be. I say " perhaps" deliber- 

 ately, for a large portion at the beginning of every line being lost, and it 

 being impossible to give a connected translation, I cannot be certain 

 that the record did not contain same other name which has now been 

 lost. In the fourth line the word Kavya or " funeral cake" may refer 

 to Kumara Gupta whose name occurs in the 3rd line, and the record 



