126 Notes on Sanskrit Inscriptions from Mathird. [No. 2, 



The era to which these several years belong, would at first sight 

 appear to be the same which is used in the Wardak, Manikiyala, 

 Hidda and other Aryan inscriptions ; but No. vi has the word, s 'alee, 

 " in the year of S'aka," distinctly given, the h being indicated by an 

 upright cross with a mark on the top for the vowel-point, differing 

 thus from the figure for 4 which is formed like an oblique cross in 

 Nos. 1 and 2, and it may be fairly asked if the word san in the 

 other cases is not an abbreviation of s 'ake, the usual mode of indi- 

 cating the elision of a letter being a dot or an anusvara after the 

 preceding letter : in many instances, the s alone is given without 

 the dot. No. xv uses the word samvatsare which means " in the full 

 year," probably of the prince named, or possibly, but not likely, in 

 the samvat year. 



It is not at all likely, however, that different eras would be used 

 in documents of one class, and arguing on this premiss, it would not 

 be unreasonable to conclude the dates of all the inscriptions to refer 

 to the S/aka era. The character, style, language, the princes 

 named, and the circumstances detailed, all point to the first two cen- 

 turies after the birth of Christ, and by reading the dates as belong- 

 ing to the S'aka era, we bring the documents exactly to that epoch ; 

 the earliest 44 being equal to 120 A. D. and the latest 140, to 216, 

 A. D. Dr. Bhau Daji, in his valuable paper on the ancient Sanskrit 

 numerals in the cave Inscriptions, has already pointed out that the 

 S 'aka was a Scythian era, and if this inference be tenable, and, as far 

 as I am aware, there seems to exist no very cogent argument to 

 bring against it, the Aryan records may all be assigned to the same 

 epoch. No. xv would suggest the idea of that document being dated 

 on the 44th year of Vasudeva's reign, but the record is so full of 

 breaks that we cannot by any means positively declare that the 

 genitive Vasudevasya relates to samvatsara and not to some other 

 word. If it be excluded as belonging to the era of Yasudeva, still 

 the argument would remain unaltered in regard to the others. 



I have appended to the plate a reduced facsimile of an inscrip- 

 tion on the pedestal of a statue of Buddha found in the village 

 of Sahet Mahet in Oudh. The village has been identified by Ge- 

 neral Cunningham with the S'ravasti of the Buddhist records. It 

 bore a date, which is now completely obliterated. The General reads 



