3 
1861.] Of Two Land-grants, issued by King Ilastin. 
In supersession of a proposal formerly put forth, and from which 
my present state of information would have withheld me, I now 
accede to the veiw that the Kahaun inscription is dated from the 
overthrow of the Guptas, of whom Skanda must have been virtually 
the last.* The land-grants adverted to have wrought this reversal 
chronological violence. If, to this end, I am satisfied of the probability that the 
reading was intentional, correct Sanskrit demanding 
I scarcely doubt that any scholar will discern, from my subsequent annotations, 
that the inscriptionist was, presumably, not quite incapable of such an aberra- 
tion from grammatical orthopraxy as I here assume in him. 
It may be added that xr^T'SC was, very likely, the vernacular transitional form 
intermediate between the pure Sanskrit xp^T^rT and the Hindi xprfTH. The 
Mahrati is xr?|[TH. With this compare the Prakrit See Professor 
Cowell’s admirable edition of Vararuclii’s Grammar ; III., 44. 
* See the Journal of the American Oriental Society, Yol. VI., p. 530. Annexed 
is the commencement of the Kahaun memorial, with a version of it which 
I regard as more tenable than the one I published as above. 
tTfrrstrrf^T^rfr^Tfrrqr^rrT 
Vi ^ ^ ^ 
Trsq ’SU^l 
■sni qqit 1 1 
« The month of Jyeshtha being current, the empire of Skanda Gupta — the 
floor of whose audience chamber had been Bwept by gusts from the bowing of 
the heads of kings by hundreds ; sprung from the line of the Guptas ; of wide 
extended fame ; opulent beyond all others j comparable with S'akra ; lord of 
hundreds of monarchs — being extinct for the hundred and forty-first year,’ etc. 
My former translation, which will be referred to further on, runs as follows ; 
« The month of Jyeshtha having arrived, in the one hundred and forty-first year ; 
the empire of Skanda Gupta * * * being quiescent,’ &c. 
A1 Birunf, as reproduced, in French, by M. Eeinaud, assorts : “ Quant au 
Goupta-kala l’ere des Gouptas, on entend, par le mot Goupta, des gens qui ont 
ete mechants et puissants ; et 1’ hre qui porte leur nom est 1’ epoque de leur 
extermination.” 
Now, the use, in close juxtaposition to mention of the Gupta kingdom, of so 
equivocal a term as in one inscription, and of in another the later of 
Hastin’s, was enough, as soon as observed, to arrest attention. The former word, 
to be sure, bears the import of ‘ quiescent,’ ‘ serene,’ ‘ tranquil,’ ‘ unperturbed,’ 
‘ flourishing,’ no less than of ‘ discontinued,’ ‘ extinguished ;’ but the latter, if 
unqualified by a temporal particle, denotes ‘ possession,’ or 1 fruition,’ only as a 
