INSCRIPTIONS. 



273 



verify the correctness of the date of the inscription. A 

 peculiar mode of notation, however widely spread, should 

 never be made a cause for distorting actual facts. 



Unluckily, in this case Warren's well-meant but injudi- 

 cious caution was to a certain extent the cause of all the 

 inaccuracies to be met with in subsequent works on Indian 

 chronology and history, some of which were published with 

 the intention of rectifying dates. 



For Prinsep, who followed in the footsteps of "Warren, 

 though well aware of this peculiarity, 30 omitted to reprint the 

 word expired at the head of the columns containing the years 

 of the Kaliyuga and the Saka. Moreover, Prinsep's note on 

 this subject is not accurate throughout, as we read in it : — 



" It should be borne in mind, that the natives, in speaking or 

 writing a date in simple years, always express the number of years 

 expired, not the current year, as is the custom in Europe. When 

 they mention the month, therefore, they mean the month of the 

 following current year ; but as the numerical denomination of 

 the Hindu, year remains unchanged throughout it, no thought 

 need be taken of the distinction of expired years unless where 

 a calculation has to be made from an initial epoch. In common 

 parlance they may be treated like the current years of any other 

 system, as being more consonant with our ideas, and less liable 

 to cause mistakes in transferring dates to and fro." 



Wherever the Brhaspati cycle is in use, the month given 

 helongs 'to the year of that cycle, and not to the Saka or 

 Kaliyu,ga year. As a matter of fact the Hindus use in com- 

 mon life always the current year, and seem only to deviate 

 from this custom when adding to it the expired Saka and 

 Kaliyuga year, which, being a matter of the past, is repre- 

 sented by a cardinal and not by an ordinal numeral. In the 

 same manner a person when asked how old he is, uses either 

 the cardinal numeral when stating the exact number of years 

 he has already lived (e.g., I am twenty years old), or he 

 employs the ordinal, saying : I am in my twenty-first year. 



30 See James Prinsep's Useful Tables, edited by Edward Thomas, pp. 163, 

 179, 180 and 201-212. 



36 



