1865.] Coins of the Nine Nagas. 119 



2nd of Magadha in the year 93. But if we assign Chandra Gupta 

 1st to the year 98, we must then allow that he continued to reign for 

 at least eleven years after the accession of his own great-grandson the 

 Raja, of Sanakanika. According to Mr. Thomas's arrangement of the 

 Gupta coins, with which I generally agree, the pieces that bear the 

 title of Vikramaditya are assigned to Chandra Gupta 1st, and those 

 that bear the simpler title of Vikrama to Chandra Gupta 2nd. We 

 know from Abu-Rikan that in his time the origin of the Saka era was 

 attributed to a prince named Vikramaditya after his victory over the 

 Sakas. We learn also from the Allahabad pillar inscription that 

 Samudra Gupta, the son of Chandra Gupta Vikramaditya, professed to 

 have received tribute from the Sakas. From all these concurring 

 testimonies, I am inclined to adopt the Saka era, which began in 

 A. D. 79, as the actual era of the Gupta dynasty, and to attribute its 

 establishment to Chandra Gupta 1st. 



6. According to this view the date of Samudra Gupta, and there- 

 fore also of his contemporary Ganapati Naga, would be the beginning 

 of the second century, or about A. D. 110. The dynasty of the Nine 

 Nagas may accordingly be assigned to the first and second centuries of 

 the Christian era. In the following list I have arranged the names of 

 the Naga kings according to the devices on their coins, beginning 

 with those types which seem to me to be the earliest on account of the 

 more ancient appearance of their accompanying inscriptions. It is 

 worthy of note, as corroboratory of the date which I have assigned to 

 the Nagas that the whole of the devices on these copper coins are to 

 be found on the silver coins of the Guptas themselves, or on those of 

 their acknowledged contemporaries. 



