114 
Note on Budhagupta. [No. 2, 
Burt’s lithographed facsimile to second it. In fact, only the Pro- 
fessor’s unconfessed guess is adverse. A Buddhist Budhagupta is 
a high improbability, on the one hand ; just as, on the other hand, 
would be a Hindu Buddhagupta.* At the gentlest touch, therefore, 
the Professor’s theory falls to the ground. 
But, independently of the orthographical difficulty fatal to his 
assumed identification, it is not without resort, at every stage, to 
measures of more or less violence, that he introduces seeming harmony 
among invincible incongruities. 
The implication that the paleography of the Eran columnt marks 
an age posterior to that of the monuments which record the names 
of Sumudragupta and Skandagupta, cannot he admitted. The letters 
of Hastin’s grants, when compared with those employed on the 
monolith of Samudragupta, are seen to he, in some particulars, 
apparently of a more antique confirmation. At the same time, 
Hastin was, unquestionably, later than Samudragupta by a good num- 
ber of generations. J But the case is widely different as concerns the 
symbols found on the Eran column ; and I expressly challenge the 
instancing, from it, of a single character of an aspect more modern 
than what the same character wears on the monument of Samudra- 
gupta. As for Skandagupta, inasmuch as he was one of Samudra- 
gupta’s successors, and, especially, since the memorialist who eulogizes 
his power lived a hundred and forty-one years after the extinction of 
his kingdom, to dwell here on the writing of the second inscription 
adduced by Professor Lassen would be altogether superfluous. 
When Matrivishnu and Dhanyavishnu, elder and younger brothers, 
set up the Eran column, their liege was Budhagupta. Some years 
after, Matrivishnu having died in the meanwhile, Dhanyavishnu erect- 
ed a temple to Narayana. In the inscription on its chief idol, he 
makes mention of Toramana, and in terms which, equally with those 
* Of the two coins which Mr. Thomas assigns to Budhagupta, one seems to 
leave very little scope for hesitation. See the Journal of the Royal Asiatic 
Society, Vol. XII., pp. 70, 71, and Plate II., figure 55 ; also this Journal, for 
1855, p. 512. 
t Mr. Thomas says that the i is symbolized in one way in one of the Eran 
inscriptions, and in another way in the other. The difference he contends for I 
am unable to perceive. Sec this Journal, for 1855, p. 517. 
J Vide supra, p. 5. 
