HISTORY OF CASHM1R. 89 



•without any apparent cause. Vijaya who succeeds Tunjina seems to have 

 had an equally undefined claim. Arya or the resuscitate 6. Sandhimati, was 

 evidently an impostor, who succeeded Jayendra, after an interval, which is 

 not specified.- Meghavahana, though called the great grandson of Yud- 

 hishthir might have been a more remote descendant, and the period as- 

 signed for the foreigner Matrigupta's election and government, appears to 

 be much too contracted : it is not unlikely therefore that the transactions of 

 the period are imperfectly narrated, and that the blank intervals created by 

 the omission, have been distributed amongst such portions of the record as 

 have been preserved. 



The farther back we proceed, the more likely it becomes, that such omis- 

 sions have extensively and frequently occurred, and accordingly we find 

 the reigns increase very materially in their assigned duration. The aver- 

 age of the 21 reigns of the first dynasty, exceeds 48 years ; there are how- 

 ever several chasms in the history, which have been noticed at the time of 

 their occurrence, and it is difficult to admit any very material reduction of the 

 date of the first of the series, in consequence of our author's near agreement 

 with the Chinese and Tibetian writers as to the existence of Sacya about 

 ten centuries anterior to the Christian aera. We have only one clue to a re- 

 duction of this date : it is possible, that the text has confounded the ori- 

 ginal Buddha, with the Sacya of the 6th century before Christ. This is the 

 more probable, because from earlier events it appears that, JBauddhism pre- 

 ceded in Cashmir the Sacya alluded to ; consequently he could not have 

 been the primitive Buddha, the founder of the faith : if this be the case, we 

 shall reduce the date of the 3rd Gonerda to something more than a centu- 

 ry and a half subsequent to the Gautama, who flourished about 542 A. C. 

 or to about B. C. 388 and this will leave us an average of no more than 18 

 years for the reigns of this dynasty. 



That the third Gonerda reigned about the beginning of the fourth century 

 jbefore Christ, derives some, support from the possible connexion between 



L 



