381 
Letter on certain recent 
[No. 4, 
forefathers. It has been, therefore, with no little gratification, that 
1 have read Babu Rajendralal Mitra’s paper on the Toramanas, in 
the last number of our journal which has reached me.* Consulting 
the Babii’s welfare, I would, however, exhort him to the study of 
accuracy, and to an advised consideration in the choice of his pre- 
mises. Several remarks of mine he has lately honoured with his 
notice ; and there are those who, prompted by curiosity to read what 
he has written, would scarcely accord more than a glance, if even 
that, to my “ Note on Budhagupta.”f The design of the present short 
letter is, to point out a few instances in which the Babu has mis-stat- 
ed my conclusions, and in which he has taken for postulates positions 
which are still unestablished. 
Speaking of Mr. James Prinsep’s “translation of the Eran re- 
cords,” the Babu, after calling it “ sadly defective in many respects,” 
goes on to say : “ Even the proper names, in two instances, are mis- 
represented ; and the paramount sovereign Tarapapi appears only 
to be a mislection of Toramana. Col. Cunningham was the first to 
point out the mistake with regard to the name of the King ; but, 
by assuming the rest of Prinsep’s translation to be correct, lie was 
led to opinions which the advantages of subsequent researches shew 
to be other than well-founded. Pie supposed, that the record advert- 
ed to a regency of Dhanyavishnu, during the minority of the young 
prince Toramana, and, by a curious mislection of the document now 
under notice, made him the son of Matridasa, and the grandson of 
Matrikula. According to him, the principality of Toramana extended 
from Eran to the banks of the Jumna, and his reign from A. C. 520 
to 550. Mr. Fitz-Edward Hall, in his ‘Note on Budhagupta,’ 
accepts these deductions, with only a few reservations. He assumes 
Toramana to have been ‘ an usurper, and a proximate, if not the 
immediate, successor of Budhagupta, the first sovereign of a tenta- 
tive independent branch [of the Gupta dynasty ?] which almost 
certainly ended with himself. ’ ” 
Manifestly enough, the drift of this passage is, in the main, to sum 
up the errors of Mr. Prinsep and Colonel Cunningham. The 
summary finished, I am taxed with accepting “these deductions, 
with only a few reservations.” What deductions are intended ? 
And how many of them have I accepted ? Can the Babu indicate 
* Vide supra, pp, 267-278. f Vide supra, pp. 139-150. 
