367 
1874.] Rajendralala Mitra —On a SJcanda Gupta Inscription. 
is made to an era determined by the annihilation of a series of powerful 
princes that diction which is least dyslogistic should he studiously selected. 
Congruously with such avoidance of an invidious term as has been indicated, 
it is likewise not at all singular that a direct encomium should he bestowed 
on a potentate who, however truculently he may once have lorded it, having 
been dust and ashes nearly a century and a half, could be favourably com¬ 
memorated without antagonism to the impulses of family pride and without 
hazard of irritating popular prejudice. Pending the emergence, as establish¬ 
ed historical entities, of dynastic successors to Skanda, it will, then, be per¬ 
fectly safe to look upon him as the last of the Guptas. Even should it 
transpire that he was survived by descendants who were not entirely dis¬ 
endowed of power, yet in him, so far as we are informed, the lustre of his 
lineage underwent definitive and irremediable eclipse. On collation of the 
wording of Hastin’s grants with that of the Kahaun pillar, we thus dis¬ 
cover no trifling corroboration of the statement derived from the Arabian 
traveller: and his language, in passing, will endure no alternative construc¬ 
tion.”* 
The immediate cause of this change of opinion was the discovery of a 
passage in Abu Raihan al-Biruni’s work which, as quoted in Thomas’ Prin- 
sep’s Indian Antiquities, runs thus : 
^ GG bof j 
rpl (JUij| ^Jjf uAj 
Reinaud has thus rendered it into French : “ Quant au Gupta-kala (ere 
des Gouptas), on entend, par le mot Goupta, des gens qui, dit-on, etaient 
mechants et puissants ; et here qui porte leur nom est l'epoque de leur 
extermination.”! Had the text of which this passage is a rendering been 
unquestionably correct, the necessity for a reconsideration of the case 
would have certainly arisen ; but M. Reinaud was particular in affixing to 
his translation this remark : “ Deja je me suis excuse sur l’imperfection de 
ce qui est dit ici, et j’ai averti que les resultats que je presente offraient 
quelque incertitude, vu les nombres qui excedent celui de cent.” In 1854, 
several years before Mr. Hall penned his first essay, General Cunningham 
had also shown that the original Arabic text was obscure, and that the words 
Ub would be better and more correctly rendered by “ and 
then became extinct along with their epoch” than by “ et l’ere 
qui porte leur nom est l’epoque de leur extermination,”J and the 
attempt to make the inscriptions confirm the authority of the Arabian 
* Ante XXX., p. 3. 
f Fragments Arabes et Persans inedits relatifs a l’lnde, pp. 138-143. Apud 
Thomas’ Prinsep’s Antiquities, I, p. 269. 
f Bhilsa Topes, p. 139. 
z z 
