118 Coins of the Nine Nagas. [No. 3, 
for a long name. Thus on some of the coins of Brihaspati-Naga the 
name is given at. full length, while on others it is contracted to Bri- 
haspati and Brihaspa, and even to Briha. Similarly, the name of 
Deva Naga is contracted to Deva Na and Deva, while that of Gana- 
pati himself is variously rendered as Ganapatya and Ganendra on the 
larger coins, and as Gana and even Ga on the smaller coins. A simi- 
lar omission of the family appellation may be observed on. many of the 
contemporary coins of the Guptas, on which the names of Chandra, 
Samudra, Kumara, Skanda and Nara are found alone under the Raja’s 
arm without the additional title of Gupta which, as we know from 
other coins and inscriptions, certainly belonged to all of them. From 
these instances I infer that the title of Naga belonged not only to 
Ganapati himself but to every one of the early princes of Narwar, 
whose coins form the first series of the accompanying plate. 
5. The period to which these princes must be assigned depends 
solely on the date of their contemporaries, the Guptas. In 1851, 
when I wrote my account of the Bhilsa Topes, I referred the begin- 
ning of the Gupta era to the year 319 A. D., but shortly afterwards on 
comparing the Gupta gold coins with their Indo-Scythian prototypes, 
and the Gupta silver coins with the Sah coins of Saurdshtra, I saw 
that the first Guptas must certainly have been contemporary with the 
earlier princes of the Kushan Scythians, and consequently that their 
date could not possibly be later than the first century of the Christian 
era. In 1855 Mr. Thomas devoted a special essay to the determina- 
tion of the date of the Guptas, in which the subject was most fully 
and ably treated. In this article, and subsequently in his valuable 
notes on Prinsep’s essays, he inclines to refer the dates of the Gupta 
coins and inscriptions to the Saka era, an opinion in which I fully 
concur. But in assigning the Bhilsa inscription of Chandra Gupta, 
which is dated in the year 93 to the first king of that name, he must 
have overlooked the Udayagiri Cave inscription of the year 82, which, 
according to H. H. Wilson, refers to Chandra Gupta’s great-grandson, 
the Raja of Sanakanika. The only scheme, as far as I can see, that 
will suit all the known dates and other conditions of this dynasty, is 
to make Chandra Gupta Ist, the founder of the era. By adopting this 
scheme, his great-grandson the Rajé of Sanakanika may be allowed to — 
have been reigning in the year 82, and his grandson Chandra Gupta 
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