148 
[No. 2, 
Note on Budhagupta. 
logists during the last seventy years, sifted critically and arranged 
scientifically by a man of the most extensive learning, and of the 
soundest principles of criticism. His work may, indeed, be consi- 
dered as bringing to its conclusion an important period of Sanskrit 
philology, which had taken its beginning with Sir W. J ones’s trans- 
lation of S'akuntala.”* Elsewhere, however, tlje same admirable 
scholar punishes, with a severity only too suitable to their deserts, 
certain unnamed projectors who have schemed about the things of 
this country. His words are: “Not only have general conclusions 
been drawn from the most scanty materials ; but the most ques- 
tionable and spurious authorities have been employed without the 
least historical investigation, or the exercise of that critical sifting 
which, from its peculiar character, Indian literature requires more 
than any other.”f 
Unsatisfactory indeed is it, after so much destructive criticism, to 
have little of instantly helpful truth to substitute in the room of what 
has been swept away. I have previously cast in my mite, in solving 
the real age of Budhagupta ; and, on twofold grounds, it is no 
longer defensible to postpone him, as in the theories of Mr. Thomas 
and Colonel Cunningham, to Skandagupta, with whom, to all appear- 
ance, the glory of the Guptas set for ever. Still, it would be unad- 
vised to innovate to the length of banishing him from that family ; 
and, not thus innovating, if we would assign him a place, we are 
driven, for the present, to conjecture. That, at one period, there 
were two sets of Guptas ruling simultaneously, may prove, by and 
bye, to be a not unreasonable suggestion. At all events, nothing 
hitherto made public is irreconcilable with it. Budhagupta, by 
possibility, may have been the first sovereign of a tentative inde- 
pendent branch which almost certainly ended with himself; for 
Toramana, his proximate, if not immediate, 1 successor, was not a 
Gupta, and very likely was a usurper. J 
* History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, &c., pp. 2, 3, foot-note. 
t Ibid, p. 6. 
J See what has been cited from Colonel Cunningham, in another note, on the 
ancestry of a Toramana. 
If there was a Mahendragupta, not identifiable with Kumtfragupta, who knows 
but he was of the hypothetical gentile offshoot to which I propose to refer 
Budhagupta ? 
