Page:Annual Report of the Archaeological Survey of India Vol 9.pdf/11

Rh at Ajudhya, and bears on the reverse the usual Gupta pea­ cock with expanded tail. The whole legend seems to read as follows:—

Devajaya viji [tava] niravani pati Ddmodara Gu(pta).

The name of DAmodara Gupta is found in the Aphsar inscription of the later Guptas. He was the son and suc­ cessor of KumAra Gupta II, who was the opponent of SAnti Varrna. DAmodara must therefore have reigned, according to my calculation o f the Gupta chronology, from about -ICO to 480 A.D., a date which agrees with the statement of the inscription that he had successfully encountered “ at the battle of Maushari the tierce army of the "Western Hunas.” I have also given a pretty long account of the Kulachuri dynasty of Chedi, illustrated by numerous inscriptions. All of theso are dated in an era of their own, w hich is called both Chedi Samvat and Kulachuri Samvat. The starting point of this era I have fixed with some certainty in the year 249 A.D. My account of the era is founded partly on the mention of the Kulachuri Kings in the dated inscrip­ tions of other dynasties, and partly on the mention of several week days in some of their own inscriptions. After­ wards I was lucky enough to find two separate notices of the Chedi Kings by independent authors, which serve to establish the correctness of the date that I have assigned to the lieginning of the era.

The first of these notices is a very short paragraph of Abu RihAn, the contemporary of Mahmud of Ghazni, which lias escaped the notice of all previous enquirers. After mentioning KAlanjor ho says, “ thence to Dah&l, o f which the capital is Bituri, the kingdom1 of Kankgu.” Now these names are only a slight disguise in Persian characters for Ddhal, which was another appellation o f the country of

1 Sec Reiunml, Frayturnlt d r a in ft Frrtnnt p. 106, ao«l Elliot'i JfoAomMiiJiia //■»• torwM bjr Uowton, 1, 68. Soc alio p. 106 of tliii volume.