HISTORY OF CASHMIR. 8? 



have been added to those of the princes lucky enough to have escaped 

 oblivion, or that the whole are carried too far back into antiquity, and the 

 date of Gonerda from which it starts, having been made much too remote, 

 it was necessary to elongate the respective reigns to fill up the protracted 

 interval : both these sources of error most probably exist, but there seems 

 reason to suppose, that, the first is more particularly the cause of the objec- 

 tionable duration assigned to several reigns. 



The Third Dynasty embraces ten princes, and a period of 592 years, but as 

 one of them Ranaditya engrosses three centuries, the remaining 292 

 years are to be divided amongst nine kings, giving an average of little more 

 than 32 years to a reign. The most remarkable person alluded to as connected 

 with general history, is Vicramaditya, the second king of that appellati- 

 on introduced by our author : he is placed in a period new to the many en- 

 quiries regarding his date, or in the year A. D. 117, shortly after which he 

 must have died, according to Calhana Pandit. We have no clue therefore 

 to the identification of this prince, and, in the absence of better grounds of 

 conjecture, may attempt it by adverting to the erroneous reign of Ranadi- 

 tya of three centuries, .as well as the long reigns of almost all the princes 

 of the dynasty. It seems likely, that the Vicramaditya, who put the brah- 

 man Matri.gupta on the throne of Cashmir, was the prince of that name 

 who lived in the 5th century, or in 441 :* that Calhana, or preceding writers, 

 confounding him with the Sacdri prince, although they did not make him 

 exactly contemporary even with Salivahan, placed him fully three centuries 

 too early : that when they came to the Cdrcota dynasty, they found out 

 their mistake, and could devise no other method of correcting it, than by 

 adding the deficient years to the reign of Ranaditya, and thus embellish- 

 ing their history with a marvel. The defeat of SilXditya by Pravarasena, 

 as has been noticed, confirms this view of the subject. The Vicramaditya 

 of the 5th century reigned, it is said, 100 years, dying in A.D. 541 but ac- 

 cording to the Satrunjaya Maltdtmaya, Siladit y a was king in 447 ; we may 

 therefore restrict the father to a sufficiently probable reign of about 35 

 years, when we shall have.PRAVARA.SENA, kinsfof Cashmir, in 470. Between 

 his accession, and that of Durlabha Verddhana, we shall then have an, 



* A. R. ix. 175. 



