44 Notes on the Eran Inscriptions. [No. 1, 



rest, the word data signifies " petal" as well as "leaf." I am told 

 that " it is only on the leaf of the lotus that water is tremulous, and 

 not on its petals." Indeed ! 



In preceding volumes of this Journal,* I have stated that Babu 

 Rajendralal Mitra has interpolated an inscription, and thereby created 

 a new king ; and this myth, Mahendrapala II., has been adopted as a 

 reality, in Professor Lassen's Indian Antiquities. ,f 



Your obedient servant, 



F. E. Hall. 



King's College, London, Nov. 9, 1863. 



P. S. Colonel Cunningham, in his Archaeological Survey Report, 

 published in your Journal for this year, writing of the year in which 

 the inscription naming Skandagupta is dated, says : " Professor Hall, 

 on the authority of Bapii Deva Sastri, the learned astronomer of the 

 Benares College, prefers the era of Vikramaditya." I have never 

 expressed any such preference ; and I have never appealed, on the 

 subject, to Pandit Biipu Deva. Colonel Cunningham was thinking of 

 the inscription of Budhagupta. I have explicitly said : " Not to my 

 knowledge, is there one particle of proof that Kumaragupta preceded 

 Budhagupta, or that Skandagupta did, whether immediately, or after 

 an interval."| The year 141 in the inscription that speaks of Skanda- 

 gupta I have not suggested to place either before or after Budha- 

 gupta's year 165. 



By the by, the Udayagiri inscription is not dated in S'ravana, as 

 according to Colonel Cnnningham's decipherment, but in A'shadha, 

 and very distinctly. I read the word on the spot in the spring of last 

 year. 



* 1861, p. 199; 1862, pp. 5 and 15. 



f Indische Altertliumskunde, Vol. III., pp. 827 and 1169. 



% Journal As. Soc. Beng., 1861, p. 388, 



