1864.] 



J?ehewa Inscription of Raja Bhoja. 



225 



to the genealogy of the prince named." He then goes on to say that 

 " it may appear strange that Col. Cunningham and Professor Weber 

 should, from a mere identity of names, infer the identity of persons, 

 and yet both of them found the name of a Bhoja in the monument 

 under notice, and per saltum came to the conclusion that it was that 

 of Dhara, overlooking," &c. As the most complete refutation of this 

 strange statement, I need simply refer the reader to the difference of 

 one whole century between the date of A. D. 1133, as suggested by 

 me, and that of A. D. J 030, the well-ascertained period of Raja 

 Bhoja of Dhara. 



In my proposed reading of the date I assumed that a single cypher 

 had been unintentionally omitted. But this assumption the Babu 

 dealares to be " a guess at random which can claim no confidence," 

 although I had most pointedly drawn his attention to a blundered 

 date in one of my Kajraha inscriptions (J. A. S. B. 1860, p. 396), a 

 facsimile of which inscription was with the Babu when he penned the 

 above paragraph about a random guess. I will now further refer him 

 to the Buddha Gaya inscription published by himself in J. A. S. B. 

 Vol. XXVII. p. 74, for an actual omission either of the final letter of 

 the word Samvat, or of the initial cypher of the date, I refer also 

 to this particular inscription on account of the date itself, which has 

 been misread by Rajendra as 781, instead of 981. I grant that, in 

 1858, before he had seen my Gwalior inscription of S. 933, in which 

 the figured date is accompanied by a written one, it was only natural 

 that he should have read the Buddha Gaya date as 781. But the 

 case is altogether altered when in the present year he still quotes this 

 same inscription as being dated in 781, and makes use of this erro- 

 neous date to prove that the Kutila character had a range of at least 

 four centuries, or from Samvat 781 = A. D, 724 to 1124. That this 

 might be true no one, to my knowledge, has ever denied, and it cer- 

 tainly was not likely to have been denied by me when I have had in 

 my possession for many years the following dated inscriptions in slight 

 varieties of the Kutila character. 



Inscription from Baijnath, dated Sake 726 = 804 A. D. 



Ditto 



» 



Gwalior, „ 



Samvat 933 



= 876 A. D. 



Ditto 



5? 



Kajraha, „ 



» 



1011 : 



= 954 A. D. 



Ditto 



?? 



?> ?? 



?> 



1058 : 



= 1001 A, D. 



Ditto 



?? 



Gwalior, „ 



?? 



1161: 



= 1104 A. 1). 



2 g 2 



